I find myself sitting alone on the beach of a tropical
isle. The sun shines, the surf rolls gently, the air is warm. I am clothed in
my usual tartan flannel shirt, grey shorts, and sneakers with white crew socks.
I am comfortable upon a large piece of driftwood. I watch waves crashing upon
the reef a short distance away. I do not know how I got here or where I am. I
have no other belongings or gear or food. I seem to be sitting here out of time
and space, surely out of the world as it is normally known by me. I seem to be
quite physically alive yet wonder if I have not perhaps died and somehow been
delivered of this place, which is of heaven at the moment. I am not worried
right now about my survival, though I turn and look inland from the beach where
I see a forest of palm trees and some thickly-leaved trees with underbrush. The
land rises, becoming darker and rockier as it rises into a jungle before
becoming steep, fissured hills and eventually much higher mountains. In fact I
don’t know if this is an island; it could be a peninsula or even a coast,
though from where I am, it is bounded by the ocean on three sides and I am
unable to see a beach that doesn’t appear to curve around rather than extend
itself straight in any direction. I would rather just sit here. I don’t really
even want to know if I am dead or alive; I am just here.
I recall a few nights ago when I sat in my big recliner
in front of the fire. I seemed to lapse into a kind of sleep. My eyes were
closed. I sat there even as I sit here. What I first noticed was that my mind
was a blank; I was not thinking whatsoever. I felt as if I had just vanished,
as if I simply did not exist. I had no feeling, no preference or
non-preference. As I said, it was as though I did not exist, as if I were not
there, or even a ghost of the presence I once was. I don’t have that sense of no-being
as I sit here now. My mind is not blank now. But the similarity is that I am
out of time and place; that I am in a place that does not exist. But I am aware
that I still somehow exist, for I am noting my thoughts and reflections,
though, if I am out of time and space, that doesn’t make sense.
One thing I like about being out of time and space is
that it puts me out of the world at large; out of its ebb and flow, out of its
history, its interactivity. When I am in the world I feel defiant towards it
and its inhabitants, its expectations, even its necessities. I have the thought
that “I must survive” which means that I must consider what I must do to find
water, food, fire, warmth, comfort, safety. But I also have the thought that it
may be that I do not have to have the thought, that I may not even exist. What
has come to my mind and my experience for some time is the Cartesian notion
that “I think, therefore I am” in reverse: “I do not think, therefore I am
not.” The truth of this thought has been borne out for me time and time again
when, particularly in meditation, I had no thought of “I, myself.” When that
happened, “I” did actually cease to exist. So, as I sit here, I do wonder if I
have been overtaken by this “not selfness.” Still, I appear to see the waves
rolling in and feel the warmth of the sun upon my skin. I realize that there
are people in psychiatric institutions who are still alive in their bodies but
have left themselves, have gone blank. Perhaps I am one of them who has simply
“gone blank” and found myself here on this log in this place. What happens when
one no longer lives in one’s memories or in the normal tensions of being in the
world? We are led around in our bodies until life finally leaves them.
I used to walk back to my “perch” atop a redwood trunk
far back in the Forest of Nisene Marks and sit there contented as if I could
literally sit there forever; that this was “my spot.” I would only get up after
a long time because the world called me with its social and existential responsibilities
and practicalities; “everyone knows one cannot sit upon a tree trunk in the
forest lost in nowhereness and everywhereness forever.” But sitting here on
this beach is different; I didn’t walk here but, rather, just appeared here.
Does that make any difference at all? And this “defiance” of the world, of
being in the world, that I have; where did that come from? From my simple
experience of being in the world and not liking it? From having to be born too
early? For having to be born in the first place? Born into a physical body?
After being free of such or being in another more preferable form? From having
to live in fear of the pain of beatings? Or simply from the rejection felt from
them? Does sitting here on this log then present me with some kind of a test in
which I choose or reject life in the world for all the future? If it is such a
test, I do not yet choose to make a choice. Perhaps I can just sit here for an
eternity. My life has already felt as if I were sitting here for an eternity, waiting
for a directive from On High; an On High that remained silent because perhaps
it too did not exist. Is my test, then, to decide whether or not it does exist?
Or to even realize for myself that it does or it doesn’t? If that’s the case, I
still wait for such a realization—which may never come. And if it did, I just
might not realize it; I might not even notice it.
Where I am right now may be like the holodeck on the
Enterprise, a make-believe, manufactured reality of my own making. The sun may
not set; it may stay just as it is. If it did get dark, I would probably be
convinced that it had enough reality that I should begin at least to insure my
own survival. That’s the natural response anyway.
Usually I just give up when nothing is there to say or realize.
I am not interested in “wasting my time.” Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree,
refusing to leave until he had clarity. Now clarity is not necessarily
understanding; in fact it could be the very opposite of understanding. Buddha
became one who lives for others without self-concern: a bodhisattva. Or so tis
said. And I know that when I cease to think about myself, I no longer identify
myself to myself, and the whole thing of me being “I” just vanishes: “I” no
longer exist. In American culture, this is the opposite of what we see as
“normal”; we no longer “assert ourselves” because we realize there is nothing
to assert.
In the same vein, I see that nothing in itself has any
meaning; it is as it is and that’s it. I may fit into the scheme of things,
into the “great chain of being,” and be defined by its location primarily, but
it “means” nothing at all. And even locating something as here rather than
there, which defines to a certain extent, does not give it meaning. Now, just
because it’s a fire does indicates that it will function according to its
“nature,” which is to be hot and therefore possibly dangerous if one puts a
hand too close to the flames. (Though the narrative stops here, it is not over.)
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