What does it mean to be? Part I: The question is rigged
How dare I ask such a question? I am no Buddha, Socrates, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, or Camus, but I cannot help but wonder, and I do know that a question like that can help me usher you here, where you can bless my words with your invaluable attention. Be you here in the hope that you shame the absurdities uttered at any attempt to address such a question, or in the hope that you walk away with a clue in your own venture of looking for an answer to this most wonderful, profound, and intimate question: what does it mean to be? Please, do tell me what it means to be? Yes, I am asking you, the awareness that is perceiving these words as they shoot one by one, letter by letter, through a set of fluid lenses that transform the light — a Fourier transform, for the scientifically curious — into electrical signals, that travel to the back of your brain, through strings of meat, where they are transformed yet again — reverse Fourier transformed — into the image you ‘see’. I got a little carried away there, by the infinite beauty of a process as simple yet so complex, as sight, but I beg you to tell me what it means to be, because when I wrote the title, I had no claim to an answer: I was merely crying out loud, pleading, hoping someone, or all of you, could tell me what it means to be. If you came looking for an answer, I must break it to you, that there is some bad news. But, there is also some good news. In fact, there are two versions of good-news-bad-news, and I do not know which one to share first. Here I was, hoping that if I floated the question gently into the cosmos, an answer may come flowing my way, and here I am, faced with the most trivial of dilemmas about which of the two versions of good-news-bad-news I should go with first. Such is life, full of spontaneity, and surprises; so let us march forth.
The good news is: I do not have an answer to this profound question. You sigh with relief. But the bad news is, that you are the only one, who alone must find the answer to it. If that is so, what am I even trying to do here, wasting your time, babbling away. Well, I am here to explain how it is not such bad news that you alone must find the answer: in fact, the good news is that you are the only one, who is qualified to answer the question — the question is rigged, by the way — and the bad news, actually, is that I have no answer. Is it not truly wonderful, that there exists at least one question in the universe, yet unanswered, which you alone can answer? Is this not an empowering feeling, one which can wreak a feeling of vitality in your being? However, it is also a little intimidating at the same time, for what if you feel like you can never answer it? What if you have already thought about it, and no answer seems to be looming on the horizon? And what if you have already answered it? Well, in that case, I bid you farewell, for you all set (please leave me a thought so I can inch my way closer to the answer). For those of us, who have yet to find out what it means to be, what an adventure have we in store! Because let us remind ourselves of the glorious adventure we are embarking on: we are trying to find an answer to a question, which is set up, such that you, and only you can find the answer. You alone, looking through those beautiful eyes of yours, scanning the page, projecting these words into your being, is the being that is going to whisper to yourself, show yourself, unleash into your awareness what it means to be.
Well, now that I have manged to hold your attention for a second — an intense challenge in this buzzing world of goodness — let us play for a moment, to warm up to the adventure ahead of us.
What does it mean to wonder what it means to be? What would this question really mean if I were to not have any existential or philosophical motivations. Consider a dialogue between your dog and yourself. You ask your dog:
“What were you up to last night?”
He replies: “I was just be-ing,” with a smile stretching back to his ears.
Mystified, you ask, “What does it mean to be?”
He looks at you, the smile inching yet a little wider.
It is interesting to note here, that it is you who is asking the question: the dog already knows what it means to be, and since we said previously, that the only person who can answer the question is the one asking the question, the dog can say absolutely nothing in the vain of an answer. It is with this humble perspective that I embark upon this adventure with you: I have nothing to offer but an ounce of joy as I wonder about the question with you. However, what we can try and describe what happens when one claims one is be-ing. So the dialogue continues:
“Well, I was just sitting, doing nothing,” the dog continues.
“What do you mean, you were sitting, doing nothing?”
“Exactly that”!
“You mean, you were not reading a book, or listening to something?”
“Nope.”
“Were you thinking about something?”
“Hmm, yes, for a bit. Every now and then.”
“So you were doing something, you were thinking,” you breath out a sigh of relief.
“Yes, for a bit”
“And when you were not thinking, what were you doing then?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t get it.”
“What don’t you get?”
“How can one do nothing? One is always doing something.”
“Well, that is what happens when you sit on a chair for long enough.”
“That you start doing nothing?”
“Ahan.”
“That makes no sense”!
“Alright, here is how it goes: I go to my chair and lay my body on it; nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing listen to, no one to talk to — It helps that you do not have internet at home. A while goes by, when I realize I have been thinking about everything I could possibly think in a single day, and funnily enough, I think about all these things without any intention to think about them. Furthermore, when I am thinking about them, I have no idea I am thinking about them. A few moments go by, and I realize that, since my last realization, I have been thinking again: I have thought about a million other things. As I think about how quickly my thoughts move from thinking about my thoughts back to thinking thoughts again, I realize I have thought, yet again, about everything under the sun: people I know, places I have been, things I have said, done, or am supposed to do, or should not have done; the thoughts do not discriminate whatsoever, in the kind of things they like to think about, and are in fact a true manifestation of the explorer inside of us. And, lo and behold, I realize I have been thinking again, swimming down a thoughtly river for a while. As I think about the fact that I was thinking, I realize, that too is a thought, for what is a thought about a thought if not a thought itself. But thoughts about thinking are a little more fragile than thoughts about thoughts, so you find yourself thinking again, swimming. You catch yourself very soon, and crave for a few moments of respite from thoughts. But how could that be? What does it even mean to be without thoughts? Well this thought too is fleeting, for after you find yourself thinking all over again, about all the things in the cosmos and beyond, you come back, eventually, to the thought that you were thinking; you keep thinking about thinking for a little bit, and think a little about not thinking anything. You find yourself in the deep end of thoughts again, thinking. But as you swim back ashore to your thoughts about your thinking, you realize, there was a moment, tucked away between all these thoughts, when you were not thinking about anything: this sends a surge of excitement up your spine, and you start thinking about the moment when you did not think about anything. And of course, you are already thinking again, at which point you think about the fact that you are thinking again, and start thinking about not thinking anything, and wonder what that moment felt like when you did not think about anything. You start to crave not thinking. Soon you realize, between this and half a dozen other thoughts that follow, there was a moment, yet again, perhaps two, when you were not thinking about anything, and you still cannot believe such a thing is even possible. You start to imagine what all those sages must have meant, when they described what it feels to not think anything for a brief period of time: a state of plain awareness. Of course, you find yourself thinking again, but come back soon enough, to the thought of the moment when you had thought nothing, and as you keep thinking about not thinking anything, you realize there were a few moments yet again, between the thought of thinking nothing and thinking when you were not thinking anything. Yet, a few moments later you realize you were thinking about the cute puppy you played with, on your walk on Greenlake this morning. When you catch yourself next, you realize: after the thought of the puppy, you had not been thinking about anything for a while. As you continue to sit longer and longer and longer, you keep spending more and more time not thinking about anything, till you realize you can spend an eternity in it. It gives me a weird sense of clarity about my place in the world, about what it means to be a dog. So that is usually how I am be-ing. Does that make sense?” your dog implores, reflecting the puzzled look in your eyes.
“Sense? Senselessness is what you have just made. But why on earth would one want to do nothing?”
“To feel how it feels to just be. It is the strangest thing I enjoy,” he says with a childlike, meek smile.
“You are weird,” you chuckle.
“I know,” he giggles. “I have even written an ode to be-ing. Would you mind if I…”
“Oh please! As if this has not been absurd enough.”
“Okay, okay. Here it goes:
The art of be-ing, I have mastered so well,
In it’s warm embrace I could forever dwell.
Rising in the morning to its sweet smell,
Melting into the moment, continuing to swell
Into the void inside, I reach for the bell
Whispering to the chatter, fare thee well!
In the silence that prevails, no tales to retell
No past to bewail, no future to foretell;
In a state of disbelief, I wonder how I fell
So deeply into the moment, that if were to yell
My being would gently curl, into a lonely shell,
And hum the silent tones, that words could never tell
Cast them through the breath, like a mystic spell
Uniting songs of joy, and madness of hell.”
The dog whispers, and saunters away. You sit there and wonder. He reminds you of a poem by another curious character, Richard Feynman:
“I wonder why. I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!”
Our adventure has just begun, and we will continue to wonder together. I have become such a funaddict of be-ing that I must do absolutely nothing for a few hours every day, so I need to go back to it. But what a calamity, you’d say, what a waste of space-time. Well, that is what it means to be, for me: oscillating between observing thoughts and nothingness. Have you ever tried to do nothing for a few hours, and observed how your being unfolds? Try it, if only, for once.
The dog comes back, running, and starts before even catching a breath:
“I lied earlier when I said, I am a funaddict of doing nothing. I wish I could do nothing most of the time, but I also like be-ing while I am…”, he takes a deep breath and sings:
“I also like be-ing, while I am
Writing in pain, singing in rain,
Dancing on air, talking with flair,
Yoging in breath, listening with breadth,
Sulking in disgust, bursting with lust,
Painting in vain, running insane,
Poeming in joy, flirting with coy,
Physicsing in flow, wandering so low,
Loving on fire, kissing with desire,
Wondering how I came, to be who I am.”
He sinks to the ground, as if he has relieved himself of a cosmic burden.
We are going to continue to wander off into the woods as we wonder what it means to be, in all of these realms of be-ing. Till then, if you wonder what it means to be, for you, I would love to hear about it.
