What does it mean to be? Part II: To be is to flow
To be or not to be, is not the question, for the question is, what does it mean to be. To our pleasant surprise, we learned in our previous exploration that this question, which has baffled the greatest of minds, is actually rigged: there is no general answer to the question as applicable to all beings, and that you alone — depending on your perspective — are doomed or empowered, to find the answer. It also means that it is not necessary at all for you aspire to gorge all of human knowledge in this adventure: you may learn what the greatest minds had to say about the matter, but the question as it applies to you, may continue to remain elusive. Of course, I do not mean to dismiss the most wonderful enterprise of acquiring knowledge, it is just that the answer can only feel like it is your answer, if it is soaked in the feeling that it truly is yours, that you alone were the one to have conceived it; some of you may argue such a feeling to be nothing but an illusion, for we merely are constructs of our times, with which I strongly agree, except, perhaps, when we slide layer under layer of these constructs, the feeling I speak of, can seize our beings, and voila, all heavens break loose.
So, what have you had to say since we last asked the question? Are you still shrugging your shoulders, wondering, what the point of the question is, because, you say, is not all existence what it means to be? Or, like me, you find yourself a little confused after what your dog, Jaanu, had to say. I don’t know about you, but I find myself thoroughly confused. Jaanu’s rant about doing nothing had me convinced that all I needed to experience be-ing was a little bit of nothing. But then, the mad dog came running back to break it to you, that even when he is singing, dancing, kissing, he feels like he is be-ing. So, what is it really? If the sum total of his existence is what it means to be, then why not simply say that? Why all this verbal gymnastics about observing thoughts, doing nothing, making love, and all the hoopla, to say such a simple thing as that? Well, if it is really so, that our entire existence is what it means to be, then have we learned anything new at all? Was that not the reason why you shrugged your shoulders at the question, in the first place? Why are we wasting our time going through our own verbal gymnastics, only to realize that we should get on with our lives, because that is what it means to be, and there is nothing more to learn here. You have indeed, found a very good reason to leave right now, because I can guarantee that there is absolutely nothing you can learn from what I have or will have ever written. But that, perhaps, is the best reason to stay, for when we have shed the illusion of gaining insight, we begin to play, we begin to loosen up, letting our primordial state of being — that of play — emerge through the layers of concrete, plastered over our being by the tides of our existence, and we play. We play because playing is the state of being, in which we feel a strange sense of openness to all that comes across our awareness, and a question like the one at hand struts a pair of wings: enveloped in lightness, it takes off on an adventure, and with it, takes along the consciousness pondering it, for a flight. With this lightness in our beings, we march forth.
Jaanu said a lot in his rant, so I had to re-read him a couple of times. As I sat down to ponder his thoughts about his thoughts, I noticed myself straddling between thinking about his thoughts and thinking about how I was incapable of sitting still for more than a few moments. As I noticed the discomfort in my body, I gently nudged myself towards Jaanu’s thoughts till the discomfort, slowly departed. I wondered to myself, “am I doing what Jaanu does, observing my thoughts?” But before I could answer the question, I found myself in the kitchen grabbing a handful of nuts, wondering how I got there. “Not quite there yet, eh?” I responded, and dragged myself back to my chair, resolved to contemplate.
While Jaanu’s thoughts about his thoughts, had stood out to me at the time, a few lines from his poem struck a deeper chord this time:
“In the silence that prevails, no stories 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…”
Silence, is what I wanted. I wanted to hush the voices, not in my ears — for I love a conversation — but in my mind. I had not found silence since that hike in Hawaii a month ago: a few miles into the hike, as I walked through the thick forest bed, all I could hear was the sound of my footsteps and the tropical birds singing in the overgrowth. I only realized as I started setting up camp in Waimanu valley, that I had not thought about a thing for hours. I wonder if that is how Jaanu feels on any given day, sitting on his chair. I was so excited about this realization, I wanted to hike back up the two thousand foot cliff, hike the eight miles back to where I started from and hike back down all over again. But Waimanu had me seduced, so I let myself be hers.
But here is the problem: Just when I crave silence, and want to think no more, my mind turns against me, like a beast, riled up at the sight of the leash. With claws out, it goes for my jugular, and screams into my ears: “You shall have your silence only in faraway lands!” I protest, “but Jaanu experiences silence in the comfort of his home,” my mind screams back. The voice responds, “he is a dog, and you have been doomed to think!” I sulk. I wonder, “could Jaanu tell me how long I must sit on my chair to find silence for a few moments, a respite from my own wrath?” But of course, I do not want to hush my thoughts for good: my thoughts give me a feeling of vitality, wonder, and mystery. Nevertheless, it would not be so shabby to have a few moments of silence. Oh, how I long for silence, so I can just be. Perhaps you can check with Jaanu if I must experience silence to feel what it means to be…
“Jaanu!” You tower over the dog, as he gazes at the sky, smiling, completely intoxicated from his rant, poem, and song earlier. You have something to say, so you want to kick him out of his daydream. You notice, that acting on your urge comes at the cost of spoiling the state of pure joy the poor fellow is in. You look away because the urge is sniveling around in your mind, you must say it. But you also want to stare at Jaanu’s hysterical face, beaming a smile you have never witnessed before. The state of angst reminds you of how you felt at Golden Gardens last week: as you watched the sun drop behind the Olympics, painting the underbelly of clouds in blood orange, you wanted to keep staring at it all, the orange turning red, the pink turning purple, but you noticed an urge to pull your phone out to take a picture. You wanted to let this urge go. As the pink darkened to a red, so did your desire rage strong: “instragram it!”, it bellowed. So unbearable was the urge, that it became painful to sit there watching heavens turn red, so you finally pulled your phone out, took a picture, and slid it back into your pocket, only to find your thoughts wandering off to instagram and facebook, wondering how the world would feel about your wonderful experience. Before you knew it, the wonder of your actual experience faded with the fading light. You did not want to feel this way again, you did not want to give in to these urges, so you stood your ground, and kept staring at Jaanu.
You had been staring at his face for over a minute now, yet no end in sight. At this rate, you thought, it would take hours for his smile to arch back down to earth, so you gave him a gentle kick, “Jaanu!”
“Woah!” he startles at the sight of you towering over his little body. “What was that for?”
“Well, you were gazing at the sky like a clown for the last hour, and I did not want to sit here staring at your face like a fool. I got places to be, things to think!”
“Touché.”
“So, what’s the deal?”
“About what?”
“You say, you are… what did you say… a fun-addict of doing nothing, and that’s what it means to be. Is experiencing silence really what it means to be?”
“How am I supposed to know what it really means to be? I was just telling you how I like to be some times.”
“But it must make you feel something deep. Why else would you go on such a rant about it?”
“Perhaps it does. In that state of doing nothing, everything in my perception becomes weirdly unified. I don’t go seeking this state, it just descends upon me in of itself. The more I long for it, the more elusive and fleeting it is.” He looks at you, wondering if he made sense. “Wait, but why were you even asking me this in the first place?”
“I don’t know. I was just sitting here in my hammock, watching you chase that fat duck around, and before I knew, I had this overwhelming urge to ask you what were you up to last night. It felt quite strange why I suddenly cared so much to know such a thing,” you look a little mystified.
“Hmm… I was this close to catching that duck! It could have saved you a box of the dirt you feed me.” Jaanu sulked.
“But Jaanu, your rant about the dirty business of thoughts is causing me some nausea. I did not realize how random our thoughts are!”
“Oh, I feel bad now.” He walks over to you and snuggles up into your lap. “I told you. Observing thoughts is one of my strangest pleasures.”
“Well, it is not making me feel so great right now,” you look away.
“I was just describing my thoughts. Your thoughts probably work differently,” Jaanu jumps to his feet excitedly.
“Probably. Anyways, I kicked you out of your daydream because unlike you, I got places to be, things to do, and before I go, I wanted to say something. I don’t get this business of doing nothing, but I do feel I am be-ing when I am listening to music.”
“What does it feel like?” Jaanu’s pupils dilate as he fixes his gaze at you.
“As the music takes over my soul, it feels like I start flowing, flowing like a super-fluid, on and on, nowhere to go, nothing to do, I find myself spreading in all directions and disappearing into the horizon…”
“Sorry to cut you, but what’s a super-fluid?” Jaanu asks curtly.
“Really Jaanu?” You look dumbfounded. “That’s why you cut me just when I was beginning to flow?”
“Well, in order to feel how you feel, I have to imagine I am flowing like a super-fluid too, but I haven’t the slightest idea what it is.”
“It is not important!” You grunt, and continue. “I feel…”
“But it is,” Jaanu interjects. “I want to feel how you feel so I feel what be-ing feels like to you. So, I must know. When I was trying to explain how I go about doing nothing, I couldn’t just say, I don’t think. You would have thought I was nuts.”
“When did I say you weren’t?” You feel a surge of frustration run up your spine, and beat into your temples. However, the sting melts as you see Jaanu’s eyes brimming with curiosity.
“Okay, okay. A super-fluid is a fluid that flows with absolutely no resistance within the liquid, so the particles of the liquid do not act as individual entities but are in complete unison with each other, a little bit like that unifying feeling you described. In a normal liquid, on the other hand, particles resist other particles from flowing past one another, but all the particles in a superfluid move in synchrony.”
“That’s fascinating!”
“Look at liquid helium just be in this video…”
“That’s insane. That’s being, that’s being!” Jaanu gets on his feet with excitement, and starts running in a circle, squealing, “that’s be-ing, be-ing!”
“Jaanu, sit your bottom down now,” you pull him by his collar. “That’s how I feel when I am listening to music. Every note releases some tension in my being, till I start flowing down the stream of life, like super-fluid helium, absolutely free. A note here strikes a chord in my body, releasing with it all the pain it was holding onto in that moment, a note there strikes a chord in my soul, releasing a story that had curled up quietly into the darkest corner of my being, the former strikes with might, the latter with delight. As the rhythm picks up, my soul riles up. It grabs the tangled web of strings, and with every melody, untangles a knot, letting the strings flow wherever they please. One by one, each string joins the other untangled strings till they all begin to flow like helium, unimpeded, without a destiny in mind, for flowing together in that moment becomes their destiny. The next melody seizes me by my feet, and as it surges, it lifts me up, gently, till my feet float an inch off the ground, holding me there, absolutely still. The next note raises me another inch, till I start levitating.”
As you bring your gaze down from the sky, you find Jaanu levitating a few inches off the ground.
“Jaanu, come back down. Laws of nature don’t give you the right to do that. Although, if you were a superconductor, which also goes through a similar phase transition to that of super-fluids, losing all its resistivity, and starts to levitate. Here:
“That’s what it feels like be-ing sometimes,” you take a deep breath and exhale.
As you stare into Jaanu’s eyes, you notice that he wasn’t listening to you, or looking at you: he was be-ing you.
“Why sometimes?” he inquires.
“Because I got stuff to do, things to think.”
“A little bit of not thinking has never killed anyone.” Jaanu smiles.
“Well, you know what differentiates you and I, right?”
“Please enlighten me.” Jaanu looks at you, suspiciously.
“I am because I think, and I am not really sure if you can even think,” you smirk.
“Low blow, my friend, low.” Jaanu grins, and gets to his feet.
“But before you leave, I feel like there was something I was supposed to ask you…,” you scratch your head, unable to recall what it is you were supposed to ask. Here, let me remind you, ask him if one has to experience silence to feel what it means to be. “Oh, I remember,” you jump to your feet, exhilarated, “must one experience silence to feel what it means to be?”
“Ahhh… My friend, you have induced a super-fluid phase transition in my being right now, and I must continue to flow yonder. Perhaps, we can chat about it over coffee soon. See you at Zoka Saturday morning?”
“Wait, that’s a week from now. I am gonna go crazy thinking about this question.”
“Perhaps you can give yourself a break, and not think about it,” he whispers as he saunters away.
