Being a Buddha

Sometimes, more often than not, i feel like i’ve become a Buddha.

Ok, i gave you the catchy phrase, and now you can just not believe me (and that actually doesn’t bother me at all), but i would like to share with you my personal experience about being a Buddha (if you follow me you know i’m a nihilist, so i’m taking about Chen or Zen Buddhism here), about mindfulness, or, as i like to call it, meditation, and then you can let me know what you think about it, because i’m always interested in discussion as a form of learning and growing.

This is also one tale about how i lost faith, and became a nihilist. As you will read, i will tell it not like i lost something, but as i gained something new. I warn you: if you are a faithful believer in any kind of religion, you may be offended by the tale i’m going to tell, so if you are not curious enough i invite you to stop reading right now!

I was born Christian. Up until when i was about 12 years old, i was the perfect, stereotypical italian boy. In my case the transition of my belief system was slow and painful, but in my mind there is the photograph of the exact moment when it started.

My parents had divorced about a year before, and for me it was a bad moment. I probably suffered from depression, even if i was never diagnosed, and i’d say i was obsessive-paranoid. I overthought everything, trying to figure every possible outcome of my actions, in an endless cycle that basically blocked me about everything.

Only years later i realized that during that time my IQ probably had a considerable boost due to all the thinking and meta-thinking, and apart for developing my creativity, it left me some interesting skills, like the ability not to think about something (just try it).

But let’s continue with the story. As i said, this unfortunate condition of mine was present, but the real trigger was an experience i had while my mother (to whom i was entrusted) was driving. What happened is that we almost made an incident with another car (the choices in that situation were going for a frontal, of falling down a cliff). Somehow we survived, but in the few instants of the event something else happened.

You know how they say that when you die you see all your life flashing before your eyes? Well, that was exactly the case.

In the span of a few moments a 12 years old boy saw all his life until then. He had lived not long enough to have serious regrets, but he was sad for not having the possibility to continue. To experience his future. To have a girlfriend.

Then he survived, but that few moments carved in his mind, and shaped him.

That was my true moment of epiphany, because put everything in the right place. But again, as i already told you that was only but a starting point poi a slow process of change, which was surely helped by my state of mind of that time.

For me the realization was that things that up until that moment had a paramount importance in my life, suddenly were marginal, unimportant. In fact, everything was just unimportant. But i was alive, and this to me made some kind of sense. As i stated, up until that moment i was a faithful christian, but my belief system didn’t help me at that time. What, instead, helped me was a pragmatism i just discovered to have. I didn’t see providence or miracle in my survival, but only chance. I had an opportunity: to live a life that i had taken for granted up until that moment. I didn’t feel blessed: i only understood the value of what i already had.

This somehow redirected my obsessive-paranoid thinking process, but not for the better, or at least, not for some years. What happened is that i started thinking not only about the consequences of my actions, but also about their causes. I started questioning everything i know. Is the way i’m doing this right? Why do i believe this? And more questions followed the answers.

This lasted several years. Somehow my thinking process stabilized. I was less immobile than before, i could see people and interact with friend, but it was difficult for me. People were out of my control. I was still stuck in trying to figure out some meaning to which attach the life i understood i valued.

Fast forward to the last year of high school, my life went by without noticeable achievements apart from an overall high grades and my first girlfriend (i sometimes questioned if i really did love her. We stayed together for three years, and eventually grow too different to stay together, but i am afraid that i exchanged the longing for human attachment to love at that time).

Having challenged my belief system for so long i didn’t know what i knew, but i knew i didn’t believe anymore. At that time i was a pure agnostic, incapable to accept any form of gnosis. It was that last high school year that i discovered nihilist philosophy, through the works of Nietzsche, in particular the concept of Uberman. This somehow made something click inside of my mind.

It was the same realization i reached that day of the almost-incident, but through Nietzsche words i finally managed to understand it. There is no god. There is no truth. Man cannot reach any kind of ultimate understanding.

It took me a while to understand it completely, but in the end i felt relief. I did not need to search for ultimate answers anymore. I could afford to build the meaning of my life by myself.

It wasn’t much time since i started meditation practice. I discovered that Nietzsche developed his philosophy largely inspired by eastern cultures, so i wanted to know a little more. I literally fell in love with the less religious aspects of Indian, Japanese and especially Chinese cultures. I somehow realized that the concept of Nirvana was familiar to me, not much in its religious sense, but in terms of internal peace. I was starting to see that i was part of everything. I was no longer scared of death (a thought that terrified me before), and i somehow had become, after long years, emotionally dull.

I will talk about my meditation practice in a while, something i researched only at the beginning, and then adapted to my own thought process.

I was probably 20 at that time. I was somehow convinced by the buddhist concept that to reach Nirvana you have to let go of any emotion. This didn’t prevent me from falling in love, for real this time.

This is probably the point when i definitely abandoned Buddhism, to develop my own personal philosophy (yes, you may call it daiquiriism if you like, my nickname comes basically from this).

Even if the girl i loved wasn’t the one that i would have married, some years later (she is special for reason that are less connected to “me”, and more, much more with “us”), she helped me understand that i couldn’t leave without emotion. That happiness and sadness, fear and anger were all part of my life. I could fight them, but i couldn’t let them go, because in the end i’m not a Buddha, nor i’m interested in being one. You could say i’m a daiquiriist, but it just means that i am myself.

What i saved from Buddhism, and this time not because i had embraced a new philosophy, but because i was sincerely convinced, were basically two things.

• God is dead: allow me to use Nietsche words to make this first point clear. I’m a nihilist and later i discovered being also a constructivist. This means that i essentially accept the basic paradox that “the only truth is that there is no truth”.
• I’m water: not knowing any definite truth, i can accept change, even in my basic belief system. Like a river which, as Eraclitus states, changes while stayng the same.

If this is the starting point, there is much more. You may argue that i don’t have morals, but i have them. They are part of my belief system, but i am open to evolve them, because i decided to adopt them.

I would like to spend my some more words in this post talking about my meditation practice. You may wonder why, and the answer is simple: it helps me a lot. This is also part of my belief system!

Part of this is also that i want to leave the world a place just a little better of how i found it and help other in doing the same (this is my personal definition of Paradise, if you were wondering where it comes from), thus i share these practices with you in the sincere hope that it can benefit you, and improve your life.

So this is about mindfulness, or meditation. I prefer the second name, because the first one feels to much a marketing one, but feel free to chose the one you like, the practice is the same, and i will present you as a set of progressive steps that you can follow to reach a state of mind similar to the one i experience, which is characterized by low levels of stress, a general sense of happiness, and an overall sense of accomplishment. But the truth is you can ultimately choose how to feel, as i do.

1. Learn to feel: This is not true meditation, but something preparatory to it. Still, it’s the most difficult step, and i personally suggest not moving from here until you truly master it, or you will probably fail. The basic idea is to learn focusing 100% of your attention to your body. If you like it you can use the lotus position, but my personal favourite is under the shower. Do small sessions, 10 minutes a day is more than enough (you may want to start from one or two minutes). What you want to do is start to learn focus, and the best way to do it is to concentrate your efforts through your senses. I’m not just talking about your inner self here, or your breath or heartbeat. These are cool, but don’t forget sight, hearing, touch. All the basic senses have something to say. You may focus on one at a time, or everything at the same time, it’s not important. Learn to feel, and not to discard also what you don’t feel. Learn the sound of silence, or the color that have your eyes when they are shut. The taste of your closed mouth. The smell of water. These are all sensations that your brain filters out automatically, and for this reason this is the most difficult step!
2. Learn to focus on the present: If you actually learned to feel, this is an extremely easy task. You are doing it already, congratulations! The true challenge here is to allow your mind to roam only on the present. Present in western culture is an extremely difficult concept. We are constantly focused on past, future or both at the same time, but the key to meditation is the focus on the present, that moment that goes between anticipation and memory. The good news is that your senses exist in the present, thus if you learned the first step you have already have an understanding of what present is. Now you can learn to allow your mind to roam in the present. Without worries or memories, you can appreciate what you see. Feel the passion of an artist imprinted in its painting and try to understand its message. Appreciate the nature that exists around you, and how everything just works. Understand what makes you upset, and how this feeling works. Don’t ask yourself “why”. Why is in the past, while understanding is in the present.
3. Extend: at this point you are probably doing this naturally, but if you don’t, it’s the best time to begin. What i men is that you may possibly still be in the lotus position (or under the shower, if you followed my advice). Now it’s time to learn to practice this process in real life. Start extending your meditation sessions. Do 20, 30 minutes a time, but don’t go over the hour. There will be a time when you will constantly be in a meditating state, but you are not ready yet. Start exercising during more relaxing moments, like a walk in the park (nature is the perfect master for these techniques), or your lunch break. Find your sweet spot, walk, relax and meditate. Don’t be afraid to jump back to step one, if you realize that your thoughts fly towards memories of things you just did, or worries for things yet to come. This is perfectly normal and common in an uncontrolled environment. Also, you may stop here. When you have reached this point you are already at an above average level for any westerner in term of mindfulness. Your life will improve, and you will feel less stressed. I tell you this because to make the next steps you have to be ready to change. I want you to understand that this is dangerous for your life. You may discover things about yourself, your life, your relationships that you don’t like. Continue reading only if you are not scared of change.
4. Learn to think: i lied when i said that the first step was the most difficult. Or to be more precise, in a way it is, because it puts in motion something that was still before. But this is probably a far bigger step. I hope that if you mastered the first three steps, this one should come easier. I don’t know, because this was the first step for me, and your objective is to learn to think what to think. This also mean also understand how not to think about something. I guess this is pretty hardcore, so i’ll try to split this into 2 sub-steps
   1. Learn to meta-think: meta-thinking means, literally, thinking about thinking. This is not an issue, humans do it continuously, but you have to do it in the context of the three first exercises. It means that you should be able to do a one hour meditation session, walking in a park, and focusing on your sense, on what your senses make you think, and on understanding this whole process, without going out of the present moment.
   2. Learn to focus away: once you know how to focus 100% (and no less) of your attention or something, you can decide to focus on something else, and if you truly think in the present, this basically means not thinking about something. Basic focus is the key here, the one you learned in step one, and that made it so difficult.
   I suggest you to practice these two exercise in different moments, and put them together in a second time. If you manage to do this, you will have mastered your thoughts.
5. Learn perspective: to me learning perspective meant going dangerously near death, and filter it through the words of Nietzsche, but i don’t say you have to go through such an extreme experience to learn new perspectives. This is one point that you can achieve in your personal life, even if you don’t meditate, and usually helps you, but in this context it has a special meaning. The point here is that you have to extend what you learned up until now to your whole life, but you cannot, reasonably, do it, until you find a way to manage past and future in this process. The trick here is that both past and future are not moments, but points of view. Objectives and worries are point of view of you in the future, but you can watch them from present. Memory can teach you something, and make you experience emotions, and this is the point of view of the past. Understanding these basic points of view means that you can meditate about past and future, but staying in the present. Also learning to see reality from others’ perspective can help your mental flexibility. At this point you are probably at ease with the concept of paradox.
6. Extend to your whole life: at this point you are probably ready to start making your practices longer and longer. Also, it will probably come naturally as that process of change i have warned you about. At some point you will realize that you are always meditating, and it will feel similar but different than before. At this point it will be difficult going back, because you will have internalized this process. You will live everything not just with a higher state of consciousness, but also in a very different way. I find it difficult to explain this to you, but if you read a description about how Nirvana is supposed to be, i find it quite similar (and for this reason i stated that i feel like a Buddha i the beginning).
7. Shape your own reality: Congratulation! You have, now, total control over yourself. You can now decide to be angry or happy. To be a good person or an evil one. You understand the flow of your own life. You may want to continue practicing deep meditation sessions, as i still do, but you are free to tweak the practice in the way you see fit to your personality, your body, your goals. You are the same person, but you have changed, and you can still change however you want.

This is it for my experience. What do you think about it, do you feel you will try something of what i tried to describe? Let me know in the comments!