The Size of Reality

Sitting on a motorbike, being ridden back from Uluwatu (Bali), I had one of those extended moments of unselfconscious, blissful contemplation.In this case it was on the sheer size of reality. All of it. Just trying to comprehend the literally unimaginable scale and extent of the reality (or dream) we live in. Like our planet, billions of different people, billions of plants, ants, leaves, worms, animals, tiles, stones, bits of twisted iron, mobile phones…then you start thinking about the stars and everything out there…then if that’s not enough you can start to think about the interiors of everything – the billions of thoughts that go through each individual’s mind in their time in this body, multiplied by billions of people, multiplied by thousands of generations, added to the experience, reactions and impulses of every other non-sentient being. It is all quite, quite, large and dwelling in amazement is something that could take up a long time.

Lucky I was only a passenger…

Bangkok – Thailand

A pleasant overnight train from NongKhai deposited me in Bangkok mid-morning. I was just in-time for the announcement of the twice daily moment of silence and stillness in honour of the king. People I had met along the way had not spoke highly of Bankok, but some shuffling of meetings actually meant I had to spend a couple of days here – much of it on skype or working.

And it was worth it. Khao San must be the most stereotypical backpacker destination on the planet, filled with cheap hostels, hawkers selling sunglasses, beer shirts, and everything else that can be cheaply, shoddily produced or reproduced. My room was still quite cheap, and pleasant with room enough for exercise in the mornings without having to do push-ups in the hostel hallway. And, fresh fruit salad, yoghurt and a scatter of muesli was available on the street – I ended up eating this for 2/3 of my meals!

My first afternoon was spent wandering the city, getting used to the local bus sytem, visiting an interesting American entrepreneur’s stunning collection of traditional Thai houses and art, and searching for distant and now-closed vegetarian restaurants from my guidebook. While I didn’t find the vego restaurant, I did find a beautiful ‘health’ park filled with exercise equipment, a few tai chi classes, and some impressively flexible older men (60 years old, perhaps?) playing ‘hacky sack’ but with a bamboo ball [sorry, I don't know what that game is called].

Jim Thompson's house

The park was also host to several hundred Thai women in leotards doing aerobics amongst the trees and lakes. I didn’t stare, just sort of stumbled through the middle of it. Unfortunately, I did myself a dis-service by then going a few blocks out of my way to stare take a skin-crawling walk down one of the famed streets full of strip bars and fat, old, seedy white men. I could barely bring myself to lift my gaze from the ground – what was I thinking coming here?

Throughout my visit I saw so many white guys with Thai girls, presumably just for the week. The conversation between some young, handsome, well-educated German guys about their relationships with their temporarily-employed ‘girlfriends’ were a bit sickening. I don’t really know everything that goes on, and how it works, but assumed the worst in most of the cases I saw. Which is perhaps not fair…

The following day I set myself a schedule of seeing most the best of the wats and palaces in town. Early morning at the Palace was relatively expensive, but quite phenomenal. Thailand is officially Buddhist, and has a monarch, so when the royals want to honour Buddha and have a nice palace there is no holding back. I actually cannot muster the words to decsribe the amount of gold, jewels, stupas, endless murals adorning the kilometres of interior walls the literally thousands of half-size, full-size and individually-unique buddhas. It was too much really. At some temples I feel reverence, in this case I just felt overwhelmed, and if a pilgrim would be seeking some quiet corner. Which is also great, because there is an abundance of quiet, yet incredible beautiful corners.

The overwhelming nature of this place extended to the size of the big golden buddha, the immaculate palace gardens, the intricate design and finishing of every roof or every building, and the descriptions of the yearly cycle of ceremonies and adjustment of the buddhas clothing to match the seasons. The icing on the cake was the museum, tucked away in one corner. I am not sure how many visitors make it through here – I was feeling exhausted myself from just an hour of sensory overload – but it was worth it. The museum was commissioned by one of the princesses who noticed quite a lot of nice stuff being thrown out during some renovations. And what stuff crystal buddhas, wood artefacts, golden thrones – honestly the museum would probably take pride of place in any other city or temple.

Another stunning Wat and river-boat ride later and I was in the north of the city again. I enjoyed watching a fish feeding frenzy, a short detour through some local markets, a great vegetarian, organic breakfast then haircut from a slightly nervous but ultimately competent hairdresser. Then on to the bus, then train for the long haul to Singapore.

More Bangkok photos are here.

Yuanyang (Delirious) – China

Yuanyang in SW Yunnan is an amazing place, a hilltop town increasingly famous for its picturesque rice paddies extending out across the steep valleys. Even more exciting is that more than 88% of the area’s population are ethnic minorities including the Hani, Yi, Dai, Miao, Yao and Zhuang. Those two factors, and the fact that it seemed relatively remote, mean I planned to stay there for four days to finish some work, hang-out, meditate and enjoy the views and culture.

While the views were great on the first afternoon, the rest of the time it was quite cold, and the whole area was covered in a thick, thick mist. Seriously, you could hardly see 5m in front of you. But what I could see was great – every woman emerging from the mist on the road or in the markets was wearing some amazing hand-sewn costume that was both practical and beautiful. The fog was a blessing forgetting work done, though not for getting my clothes to dry out.

Below is a brief description of my experience on the last day in Yuanyang….

After being locked in my cell-like accomodation, I walk to the filthy, permanently wet toilet area then on to the slick streets. Emerging from Chen family’s guest house, my spirits lift slightly as the fog has cleared a bit to give nearly a full 20m of visibility! Sunshine too is reaching through, meaning there is a bit of warmth in the air. Even some patches of road are dry – something I haven’t seen for days.

With a few more steps I realise I am slightly delirious, probably attributable to releasing myself from the stage pattern of the last few days. I start quietly but insanely giggling with joy as I pass more of the beautiful and intricately adorned Hani women. I walk past one, standing slightly apart from a huddle of 5. Just as I look and admire the stitching and colour on her clothes, she makes a loud guttural noise, gathers a huge wad of phlegm and spits it out into the street.

How simply wonderful and divine!!!

This juxtaposition keeps me giggling for a good 10 minutes more… I wander in and through the markets full of fresh vegetables and freshly slaughtered domestic animals (goose, pigs, dogs) then on to my hot bun lady. Everyday I have been here I have stopped to get some steamed buns. Some with sweat or vegetable filling, some plain (although you can choose from five different types of flour, including one mixed with red beans) and all for 0.5 yuan: about 10 Australian cents.

But, I think I really need something substantial for dinner. It is, after all, nearly 17:30: in half an hour all the street restaurants will be closed and dinner will be over. I choose my vegetables as the man heats sauces and broth in a clay pot over a jet-like flame of gas. As I sit to eat, and consider adding a whole tablespoon more of MSG, just to be ‘crazy’. Instead, I realise what the dish really lacks a bit of fire. No chilli was added to this bowl, the owner probably presuming I can’t take it. Well, I add about ¼ teaspoon of the chilli mix. Somehow, that miniscule amount of chilli manages to turn every mouthful of nearly 1.5L of soup, noodles and vegetables into a eye-watering test of my mouth’s ability to handle heat.

Fantastic!!!!

I continue laughing. Additionally rejoicing in the fact that almost every meal, every ingredient used here (MSG excepted) was probably grown or harvested within 5km (including the water), and if picked or chopped, the earliest it would have been done was yesterday. I find this totally amazing. And, even the fact that I find this amazing is the tragedy of modern food systems in ‘developed’ nations.

After dinner, I spend the night in the local eco-tourism visitor centre, the best of its sort I have come across so far http://www.yuanyangwindow.com/. I spend most of the time emailing off the work I have just completed, and researching some more links and people to meet up with on the rest of my travels, especially in Australia. And, I  then decide it feels the right time to leave Yuanyang.

The next morning I have meditated, packed, and am out the door by 6.30. A few more moments of joy and laughter borne of cultural and linguistic misunderstandings and I am on the bus towards Lunchun. Having not listened to much music this trip, and still being in a deliriously happy mood, I turn on my MP3 player. The first song that thumps out is a ‘Ministry of Sound’ uplifting house tune who’s sole line (repeated endlessly) is ‘I’ve got so much love to give’. I really do, did at that moment, have ’so much love to give’ for the world, and my experience in it.

And then more minority women with beautiful hands – shaped by oil, sun, work and care for craft and children – hopped on the bus and started gossiping in a beautiful, tonal yet utterly unintelligible language. Oh, and carrying an insanely large sweet, iced birthday cake in a bright pink box. GOD! What joy there is in ‘not knowing’ – about the box, the language, or whether the bus driver will avoid driving off a cliff in the heavy mist. The beauty of not knowing, resting safe in the knowledge that you have no idea whatsoever what is going on. For everything I don’t understand, I want to know and am curious, but also hilariously aware of the incomprehensibility of it all.

Wonderful!!!!

So beautiful I started to cry. Cry at the beauty, love, joy that is always available in every moment if only I could be bothered to look. I celebrated my joy by coaxing a large glob of phlem out of the back of my throat and spitting it out the window of the bus. I felt so proud – another step taken towards being truly Chinese.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Tiger Leaping Gorge for Christmas – China

In NW Yunnan, about 4 hours north of Lijiang lies Tiger Leaping Gorge. One of the world’s deepest gorges, close to the first bend of the Yangtze River, and a popular destination for travellers wanting a decent trek for some amazing views.

Given I would be spending  Christmas alone in China, I marked this out as a nice spot to enjoy what nature had to offer, and get in a bit more meditation and exercise. You could do the walk in one day, but taking three days away from Lijiang gave me time  to relax a bit.

Once I arrived at the start of the walk, at Jane’s Guest House, I found there were quite a few other travellers with the same idea. I met a couple of Texans, and four friendly Australians who I walked with, or crossed tracks with several times over the three days I was out there.

We weren’t alone either with many other walkers of various abilities tackling the trail , and tour buses zooming along the road closer down to the water. Given it was cold, Christmas, and the low season, I can’t imagine how busy this gorge must be in peak  season. There are actually guest houses perched on the hillsides at regular intervals, and almost all were doing some serious work to expand their number of beds.

For Christmas, I actually spent most of the day alone. And, thought I would take a set of photos looking out, and in at hourly intervals during the day. You can see a movie of these images below (or link here), the scenery (even when looking out the toilet door) being far more impressive than my face pre and post meditation. Watching it reminds me of how little I did that day – spending half the day meditating before starting to walk.

It was well worth the bus ride our from Lijiang, and was yet another one of those experiences that gave me a small taste of the wonders this part of the world would offer if I had more time. Some photos are below, and more on the Picasa site.

Dream of roaring silence

This morning, I awoke very confused, multiple conversations about many arrangements with friends which change and where talking only confused things more.

Then, sort of day-dreamed between 13:30 and 16:30.

Walking down a deserted beach. Far down the line a woman walks from the water and cartwheels towards her towel, back to me. I get closer, we look into each other’s eyes and all thoughts and expectations evaporate. We turn to the sea together, smiling at the setting sun…then we turn back to towards the land and walk together.

No words are spoken. All I can hear is the roar of reality as it is, directly experienced, as words, thoughts, feelings evaporate in the heat of surrender. And so it remains. We travel, arrive in Australia, our existence completely synchronised and wordless, never speaking. All engagements, requests, interactions with others are resolved through spontaneous realisation of ‘other’ about what they need to do: a strange situation where neither party is reading each other’s minds but just knows from Big Mind.

I then sat up, turned, and that very second my alarm rings….

What if I were to do this experiment? Commit to being silent for.. a year? Surrender all interactions and actions to fate and possibility? Placing myself in front of people and all they could do is guess what you want – a guess that is probably right, but a guess at an option they think someone in this state might want – a direct reflection of their own state and perceptions.

I just…might…do it.

Ritual – mindful or mindless?

After traveling through Iran, Pakistan and India, I have seen and been part of my fair share of rituals. These include such things as namaz (Muslim daily prayers), offerings to Hindu gods, morning cups of tea, the precise process of washing hands, morning yoga and sun worship etc.

It is interesting to keep expanding the concept of what a ritual is, what purpose or intent it serves, what the experience of performing it is, and what impact it has. This may mean you include your daily commute as ritual. If reframed as such, would this make you do anything differently, or would your experience of your daily commute to work be any different?

In terms of religious, spiritual or cultural rituals, I am all for them really. As long as they are done mindfully. While I am always knocked into a sense reverence whenever I hear the call to prayer in Muslim countries, that may wear thin after a few months or years. The ritual would then become empty, perhaps a meaningless gesture. For myself, my morning meditation and exercise has not been performed as unbendingly regularly as the Islamic daily prayer. But, when I do it regularly I really enjoy it, and it makes a significant different to my experience of the day, and hopefully my behaviour in so far as it is observable by others. AND, I know that there have been periods of days or weeks when I have treated meditation as a  mindless ritual, and not really been committed to ‘letting go of everything’ when I sit down.

The point I am arriving at, and what I am advocating for, is that ritual can be great, but it is what is not observable that really matters. That one person could be bowing and prostrating in an act of complete surrender, another person could be bowing and prostrating in an act that was primarily about keeping up appearances and doing what is expected. You would hope that, doing something daily but mechanically and with no clear intent, you would have to be struck on certain occasions by the hypocrisy in your actions and jolted into remembering what the hell you were doing it for. But, if our daily commute, our days at work in front of computers, your regular watching of a TV programme, or regular evening meal of meat and potatoes, how conscious do you think you are of the implications of those actions, their reverence and significance in the wider scheme of things? If you are not, does it matter?

Perhaps what I am wondering is, why would ritual be a path to enlightenment, to expanded consciousness, to better behaviour? Perhaps it is part of it, but only if performed with clear intent. Otherwise, it may be a  culturally interesting, but otherwise non-transformative process.

Time’s a changin’

Time is a far from constant thing. One of the surprises of completing the training in the Leadership Development Framework was taking time to consider how different people at different stages in life have completely different conceptions of time. From the very young who have no concept of the future, to mature professionals who lead their organisations based on 5 years plans, to the more enlightened souls who primarily reside in place beyond time (forever NOW) and see the relevance and effect of their work on a more epochal time scale. The ideal perhaps, is to be able to choose the appropriate way of considering time based on the circumstances in which you are in.

One of the distinctions that EnlightenNext makes compared to Eastern spiritual traditions is to introduce a linearity in time. This linearity in time is important because that is the context in which the universe, earth, life, biosphere, mammals and ourselves have come into being I.e. Evolution. In an enlightenment context, this is important to convince some people to engage in the world, to convince them that their conscious participation in evolution is more important than stepping out of the cycle of lie.

Personally, I have been more and more conscious of my own time horizon expanding out to the decadal scale. This has been one of the drivers behind my move back to Australia: I don’t want to do short-term projects anymore, I want to work on initiatives that I can contribute to for ten, and twenty years and for me that can only happen in Australia.

Yet, as I have travelled this journey, I have become more and more aware of other timescales, for example:

• Many of the countries have different calendars to those that I am used to, either with different ‘year zeros’ or even different numbers of months.

• The ritual daily worhsip, and annual or regular pilgrimages performed in Iran, India and elsewhere alerted me to those sorts of cycles

• Working at Navdanya reconnected me with the daily, monthly and seasonal cycles that are the most critical to anyone earning a living from working directly with the land

• And I am sure many more strange cycles and non-linear perceptions of time are to come…tides, ages of landscapes, monsoons etc.

And, one for me to keep an ear out for in conversations, teamwork and cultural contexts: when we talk about the future, a project, or a desired outcome, are we talking about the same timescales?

Bodhgaya – India

A visit to Bodghaya completed my grand tour of some of the most interesting spiritual desintations in India (Amritsar, Rishikesh, Varanasi/Benares). I didn’t really plan to go to all these places, but as I trimmed down my ambitious plans these were the places that won through.

Bodghaya is where Buddha (the one we all know) attained enlightenment. The tree he reclined under is still there. That, and many other locations around the town are replicated in temples, books and verse the world over.

Mahabodhi at sunset

Small buddha under the branches of the bodhi tree

The reality of actually being there is still difficult for me to comprehend. Knowing the hundreds of millions around the world how have been inspired by this one human’s act of will and insight, it is amazing to be in the place where it all started. This is clearly analogous to the equivalent Sikh (Amritsar), Islamic (Mecca), and Christian sites, but this place appears to be relatively low-key compared to what I know of the others.

As a new friend (from Navdanya) explained, the monks and nuns are not just prostrating aimlessly, they envision themselves as part of the great mandala of life, surrendering to the spirit that created and infuses it all. And, with every prostration, they move one millionth of a step closer to once again becoming that formless, timeless, unimaginable bliss.

And what really struck me is how Siddartha was just another guy. Flesh and bones, mind and matter. As was Gandhi, as is Vandana Shiva, as are anyone I respect, admire and draw inspiration from. And, they make certain choices, commitments, and that makes all the difference to them, and the world. In Buddha’s case, his choices and realisations have resonated down millenia and remained as relevant to every living moment as they ever did.

Mahabodhi buddha (in centre of the large temple/stupa)

So, it was a great place to meditate, and soak up the atmosphere. The town really is quite small, in a very poor part of India, and with lots of people asking for money or trying to sell you things. My accomodation at the local authorities own hotel ‘Buddha Vihar’ was very cheap, but very sub-standard. Well, the bed was clean but the bathroom was indescribably bad. Think of the toilet scenes in the movie ‘Trainspotting’ and you get close…

Nicer were the restaurants run by Tibetan refugee’s, and the grand assortment of temples from every Buddhist nation. Thailand, Bhutan, Japan, China, Vietnam all had grand temples where their monks chant, pray, sleep and lead meditations. Especially memorable was the Bhutanese temple, filled with young boys chanting, droning, falling asleep, rocking and rolling around on their cushions while the senior monks walked around supervising, blowing horns and throwing rice around periodically.

Bodghaya continued my interesting snapshots from the lives of monks: texting away constantly, driving massive 4WDs like royalty, glued to Chinese soap operas, oe even playing internet role playing games in cafes…All this can seem quite contradictory to the image of a monk’s existence, but must be considered in the context that they basically spend all their waking hours in meditation or learning about spiritual truths, and otherwise have very little respite. Actually, even Buddhism itself is a completely different in a different cultural context such as India or other Asian nations. It really is a religion, more than the less strict forms I have seen or been involved in.

Anyway, much more to be said about Bodghaya, including about the ever-present dilemma of how to respond to begging, but I’m running short of time and room!

A serpent shelters buddhar from the rain, in the Muchalinda lake