What does it mean to be? Part III: A silent surprise
If you have started wondering how much juice can one squeeze of this question, you are in good company. I too find myself asking this question. However, as soon as I begin to contemplate it, I go back to the question the question is about, and all heavens break loose. Take, for example, your very conversation with Jaanu about music: it came out of nowhere, and not only did you send Jaanu flowing down the stream of life, like a super-fluid, I too have had a strange renewal in how I perceive sounds: a bird song levitates me an inch off the ground till I stop hearing the sound of my own footsteps, and the breeze sieving through the naked branches of trees, streams melodies into my ears. All this is a pleasant respite from the the deafening voices in my head. Nevertheless, a brief one. As thoughts come spinning again, they rev a whirlpool inside me. Every thought that follows gets sucked into this whirlpool, making it spin faster and faster, any chance of recovery a lost cause, till it ravages one shoddy orchard after another, leaving naught but a barren existence, where at last, there is some stillness with nothing left to uproot.
But how am I to believe that this is my eternal fate after I have heard Jaanu speak of the silence he has cultivated.
“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
Singing songs of joy, and madness of hell”
The madness of hell? What could he mean by it? Is this the madness I am trying to escape? He still has to answer if one must experience silence to feel what it means to be. I wonder if I can crash your conversation with Jaanu at Zoka today.
As you and Jaanu trudge through a foot of snow up the gentle hill, Jaanu hums a strange tune.
“What are you humming, Jaanu?” You inquire.
“Oh, I was woken up by a Blue Jay this morning, excited at to see all this snow,” Jaanu starts excitedly. ”In fact, I need to thank you about something,” his eyes well up with gratitude.
“What about?”
“Well, these birds used to wreak havoc in my soul. But after hearing how music makes you feel, I have become strangely curious about all the sounds around me. I would have barked my head off at the damned bird that woke me up, but ever since you have induced that super-fluid state in my being, I just sit there with my eyes closed, and let the melodies wash over me.”
“Oh my heart aches to hear that that is all I needed to do to shut your barking,” you mumble ruefully.
“The annoying quack of the geese on Greenlake has become a mystery to me: as they extend their necks while quacking, a part of me wants to bite it off, but another part of me wants to sit, stare, and soak it all in.”
“Thank goodness I’m not going to have strangers cursing me for the fear you wreak in the goose world. Another burden you take off my back, Jaanu, how wonderful!”
Jaanu chuckles, “And even the three year old upstairs has stopped being the bane of my existence. Her crying comes like a thunderstorm at first. But instead of running away from it, I sit back and observe: as she throws herself on the ground, I imagine her body tightening up, extracting energy from every corner of her being, channeling into her diaphragm as she rides up towards the crescendo — I keep wondering how long she is going to stay there, of course, it all depends on when she cried last. I imagine it’s a little bit like hiking to the top of the mountain with all your might, and throwing your anguish down the mountain or suspending it in the clouds, then letting gravity do its wonder as you tumble down the mountain. She probably feels anew after every one of these bouts.”
“Jaanu, are you sure you are not projecting your own feelings onto this child?”
“Who knows if there is ever a moment we don’t project?” Jaanu wonders. “But the energy that builds up in a child is truly curious, and it is making me think I would probably benefit from a cry a day. But I wonder if that’s how she would have released that energy if she could go running around in the forest, climb trees, jump into streams, and play like good ol’ days,” he says dreamily.
“That’s an interesting thought. I know I would love to be out playing all day,” you bend down to pack a ball of snow, and hurl it Jaanu as he runs away from you.
“I too would not be such a mad dog if I were out in the woods all day,” Jaanu shouts back at you, but stops as he notices your shoulders droop. “I didn’t mean to make it like that. You’re a good man. You do what you gotta do.”
A silence prevails as you and Jaanu continue to the top of the hill. You follow Jaanu as he walks nimbly through the snow, distributing his weight on his fours while you sink a foot into the snow at every step.
I leave home in the hope I can catch you and Jaanu before you leave Zoka. The snow crunching under my feet amuses me for a while till the voices in my head get louder than my footsteps. You expect that dog to end your anguish? Go back and cuddle yourself in the little hole you have carved for yourself, listen to yourself, you are worthless useless, polluting mother earth while you feed at her breast she is hurt needs your love but how can you love you don’t know how to love you haven’t loved you’ve never loved you’re too obsessed too obsessed about trivialities to pay attention to the suffering her suffering mother’s suffering you’re choking with your plastic the oceans the trees you’re chopping you’re groping her breast her back it breaks she can’t take it she gives she screams you look while she screams you look away senses dead breath short breathe, take a breath, the voices. Take a deep breath what breath all futile. Neither silence, nor peace is your destiny. No, not this time, I trust Jaanu. He is a dog. But he is no dog, he is Dog. I walk briskly through the snow. Hush, hush, I whisper. Please hush.
You and Jaanu finally arrive at Zoka. The warm air, laden with the scent of coffee, wakes your soul. As Jaanu orders his coffee to go in a paper cup, you cringe:
“Jaanu, why do you have to trash the earth?”
“Look who’s talking,” as he points his gaze at people walking out with their cups of coffee. “It’s beautiful out there. I want to go for a walk.”
“It’s freezing. There is no way I am going back out!” You roar.
“Oh stop being such a…,” he picks up his coffee.
“Only if you are going to give me that fur you’re wearing,” you rub his back.
“I don’t think I could think any lowly of you even if you skin me, my friend,” Jaanu picks up his coffee and heads towards the door.
“Uggh. You better have a good answer to the damn question Jaanu,” you grunt as you follow him out of Zoka.
“Well the snowpocalypse has brought heaven down to Greenlake so I thought it would be nice for you to see it before you go to hell.”
“Look who’s talking!” You laugh. “You know why you’re dog in this life, right, Jaanu?”
“Of course! The sins of my past lives were forgiven, and we were gifted with humans for serfs,” he looks up at you, beaming a smile extending all the way to his ears.
“Is that what they tell you up there before they send you down here to catch ball and sniff butts?” You chuckle.
“No my friend. There is no one to tell us anything “up there.” We graduated from that a while ago. From what we see, I can’t help but think we’ve got the better hand,” he continues to beam his characteristic smile.
“Oh yeah?” you crackle. “How so?”
“You don’t wanna get me started, my love.”
“Oh no,” you get a little agitated. “I insist.”
“Where do I even begin?” Jaanu wonders, hoping you can let the question slide.
“I actually insist,” you continue.
Jaanu, looks down at the snow, and then looks at you, “I see a race breeding anxiety, loneliness, isolation, and emptiness, enclosing itself in concrete shells, accumulating junk, thinking a square plugs it buys with money are going to fill the round holes in its being, meanwhile ripping mother earths intestines with its claws, and finding solace in chocolate, candy, and tv shows…”
“Woah, Jaanu. Take it easy!”
Jaanu takes a deep breath to stop himself from getting carried away, but continues, “the difference between you and us, though is,” he stops, arches his body, and excretes, “that we care about mother earth as a whole, including you. Now pick that up,” he points at his little poo-dles, “they will keep your hands warm. It’s cold down there on the lake.” He saunters forth as you stand speechless staring at the steamy present Jaanu has left you. “Come on now, we have to get to the lake before the kids take over with their sleds and cuteness.” You scoop it all up in a plastic bag, put in your pocket, and let it warm your hand as you follow him.
I arrive at Zoka to find no trace of you and Jaanu while Jaanu leads you through the woods onto a wooden dock, floating on rubber tires, tucked away on the southern side of the lake. As he tiptoes to the end of the dock, you too have to get on your fours.
Jaanu whispers, “I thought I’d show you what silence is instead of burdening you with my words.” The lake lay quietly in front, frozen over, absolutely still. Three geese float a few feet away, surrounded by ice, shrouded in the mist that emanated from the lake, leaving only a faint outline of their necks. Where the mist became clouds was hard to tell, yet the trees stood out amidst the mist, each branch lined up with a layer of snow all the way from the bark to where the snow and branches became air. Every tree more bizarre than the other, branches hanging precariously under the weight of the snow, yet they all remained still, absolutely still.
“Take a deep breath,” Jaanu whispers, interrupting the silence. “Inhale this silence into your being,” inhales. “Hold it in, till you cannot hold it any longer, and then exhale.” He exhales a cloud of mist into the cold air. A strange sense of peace descends upon you, you stare, not a word going through your mind.
“You ask me, if silence is necessary to feel what it means to be?” Jaanu starts, “I do not know if I have an answer to that because as I have never experienced silence.”
You look at him, a little surprised, “so you have been lying to me about all this business of experiencing silence?”
He remains quiet for a moment. “I haven’t experienced silence because I don’t think it is possible for our minds to ever be completely silent. If you hear someone claiming they experience complete silence, you must ask, how is there silence if is an awareness acknowledging what you are feeling is silence.”
“But I just felt silence descend upon me. And as I took a deep breath, I breathed this silence and stillness in. Was this not silence?”
“How wonderful to hear you feel that way, for our little adventure through the snow has paid off,” he says with contentment. “Look around at this stillness right now. Is this the stillness you breathed into your being?”
“Yes?” you respond in confusion.
“But look here,” he points at the ice under the dock. “Look how the ice constantly moves up and down as you and I stand here on the dock: where’s the stillness? Look at the geese over there: as they float around, with their bodies absolutely still, their feet are hard at work just like your heart. The snow draping over the trees looks absolutely still, yet it melts every moment, scaling down the trees, making the journey from the end of the branch down the wooden highway to the ground. The clouds up above, are in a perpetual state of motion too, yet to our eyes they look absolutely still. Is this the stillness you speak of?”
You wonder quietly as you look around.
“Yet when you take that deep breath, you feel a strange sense of stillness and silence descending into your being. You’re breathing the same breath when you feel you flow like a super-fluid, absolutely free. It is this breath I came down here to show. It is this breath that squeezes the feeling of stillness out of the chaos out there, and fills every nook and cranny of your being with peace. It is this breath through which you can inhale the entire cosmos into your being, all the way to its primordial state, of infinite density, and in a single exhale, write the entire cosmic story, creating space-time as the point of infinite density stretches in all directions at an unprecedented rate, turning into a dense soup of matter, from which not even light escapes, but the rising pressure then untangles light from the dense mess, illuminating the particles you see, which gravitate towards each other to form the first stars in the universe, spinning around each other, crashing into each other to form galaxies, these galaxies coalescing to form clusters of galaxies, filaments of galaxies, sheets of galaxies, walls of galaxies. And in this madness, a random little object in a random part of the universe, some thirteen billion years from when the whole madness began, comes into being, and breathes: as you breathe in, the cosmos breathes in, and as you breathe out, it breathes out. With every breath, you inhale the entire cosmos into your being, and with every exhale you unravel the entire cosmic story. It’s as if the cosmos has become aware of its own being. ”
“Thus with every breath you breathe in, the universe becomes more deeply aware of its own being in the present moment, and as you remain aware of your breath, you remain here in the present moment, and as long as you are in the present moment, you will live eternally, for the only moment that is eternal is the present moment.”
”Oh dear god, what have you been reading Jaanu?” You look dumbfounded.
“Well after your spiel about super-fluids and superconductors, I got a little curious about science and picked up a few of your magazines at home and have been gorging the story of the cosmos.”
“What of doing nothing you wrote all those odes about?”
“Well, a little bit of doing something has never killed a dog,” Jaanu excuses himself. “It is absolutely fascinating that with each breath, I feel I can tell a completely new cosmic story, exploring every possible outcome: I feel like I’m in the multiverse, living every possible outcome. So with every breath, I now tell a new cosmic story. What do you think?”
“That’s some cargo science, Jaanu!”
“Well, your mathematics does not forbid me from it.”
“Jaanu, breathing deeply is all great, but what of the question we came down here to answer? Given that all this time, you had been extolling the necessity of silence to experience what it means to be, how does one feel what it means to be if not in perfect silence?”
“Wait, wait, I see a duck walking into the woods,” Jaanu sneaks past you. “While you soak this stillness in, I want to make this universe be one where I do not have to eat the dirt you have me eat every day. Let’s continue at Zoka next Saturday.”
“God damn it, Jaanu!” You cry as you watch him disappear into the woods.
It seems to be so easy for Jaanu to say one thing and then say the complete opposite the next moment. But really, if there is no silence, does it mean that I will never be able to hush the voices in my head? What of the madness of hell? Why does Jaanu have to keep evading the questions? Perhaps, I can camp at Zoka next Saturday and catch him myself.
