...Zen, non-duality, and ways-of-life rather than thought-centered lives, I experienced a period of extreme angst and existential meaninglessness. Not realizing that I had gradually become an intense intellectual who spent all of my time thinking about the nature of reality, my world had grown quite dark. I spent all of my free time reading existentialist writers who regarded life as "absurd," and because I spent all of my time thinking about things like "the meaning of meaning" (LOL), I grew cynical and vaguely depressed. I got to where I couldn't enjoy any of life's ordinary activities because everything seemed pointless without a frame of understanding. I would go to parties and rather than enjoyably talking with people and having fun, I would be standing psychologically aloof and thinking, "Everyone here is unconscious because they don't realize the absurdity of existence." Ha ha! I was not a happy camper.
Inertia carried me into graduate school, but I became so bored, world-weary, and cynical that I lost all interest in my science experiments and decided to join the military (this was during the Vietnam War years). I stayed in a sucky mood until I got to basic training. As soon as I got there, however, I NO LONGER HAD ANY FREE TIME FOR REFLECTION. The Air Force had every second of my day planned, and I stayed on a dead run learning all of the crazy stuff you have to learn as a new recruit. When I wasn't learning how to make up a bed so tightly that a dropped quarter would bounce off the covers, or how to spit-polish shoes and boots, or learning to march, or spending hours doing intense exercises, and going to classes, etc. I was sleeping in order to recuperate enough to make it through another day.
Here's what's funny (that I didn't appreciate until years later): when I stopped reflecting about the meaning of life, all my existential angst, cynicism, negativity, and sulkiness completely disappeared! I was forced to become a person of action (rather than reflection) by the military basic-training environment. In the process I grew quite happy and optimistic again.
It would be almost thirty years later, after spending a lot of time in silence and searching for the truth, before I finally understood what had happened during that miliary experience. During that time period I had no time to think about myself or reflect about existential issues. Of course, this was an artificial situation imposed on me by outside forces, and it would be many more years before I saw-through my many misconceptions about reality and returned to a life lived in the moment without reflection.
My story points to something important--a non-reflective immersion in life. My story never involved any effort at self-improvement (for several reasons that are not germaine to this discussion). Many years later, as I saw the value in shifting attention from thoughts to what could be seen or heard, I gradually morphed into a person of action rather than reflection. As the mind became quiescent, my long list of existential questions were sequentially penetrated, and I saw that each one had involved a major misconception. What I call "structures of thought" periodically collapsed, and as they did so, greater and greater freedom ensued. When the sense of selfhood finally collapsed, the spiritual search for truth came to an end.
The important point here is that internal silence, attentiveness to "what is," and physical action leads away from abidance in mind to the freedom of pure being. Getting free is like getting lost in an intense dance of isness. The understanding that is thereby attained is what we might call "non-conceptual understanding." It is a direct apprehension of what's going on, and it is like jumping into the river of life and never looking back.
Reading this, many people might grasp the importance of "jumping into the river of life," but fail to see the importance of "never looking back." The wise will understand.
Inertia carried me into graduate school, but I became so bored, world-weary, and cynical that I lost all interest in my science experiments and decided to join the military (this was during the Vietnam War years). I stayed in a sucky mood until I got to basic training. As soon as I got there, however, I NO LONGER HAD ANY FREE TIME FOR REFLECTION. The Air Force had every second of my day planned, and I stayed on a dead run learning all of the crazy stuff you have to learn as a new recruit. When I wasn't learning how to make up a bed so tightly that a dropped quarter would bounce off the covers, or how to spit-polish shoes and boots, or learning to march, or spending hours doing intense exercises, and going to classes, etc. I was sleeping in order to recuperate enough to make it through another day.
Here's what's funny (that I didn't appreciate until years later): when I stopped reflecting about the meaning of life, all my existential angst, cynicism, negativity, and sulkiness completely disappeared! I was forced to become a person of action (rather than reflection) by the military basic-training environment. In the process I grew quite happy and optimistic again.
It would be almost thirty years later, after spending a lot of time in silence and searching for the truth, before I finally understood what had happened during that miliary experience. During that time period I had no time to think about myself or reflect about existential issues. Of course, this was an artificial situation imposed on me by outside forces, and it would be many more years before I saw-through my many misconceptions about reality and returned to a life lived in the moment without reflection.
My story points to something important--a non-reflective immersion in life. My story never involved any effort at self-improvement (for several reasons that are not germaine to this discussion). Many years later, as I saw the value in shifting attention from thoughts to what could be seen or heard, I gradually morphed into a person of action rather than reflection. As the mind became quiescent, my long list of existential questions were sequentially penetrated, and I saw that each one had involved a major misconception. What I call "structures of thought" periodically collapsed, and as they did so, greater and greater freedom ensued. When the sense of selfhood finally collapsed, the spiritual search for truth came to an end.
The important point here is that internal silence, attentiveness to "what is," and physical action leads away from abidance in mind to the freedom of pure being. Getting free is like getting lost in an intense dance of isness. The understanding that is thereby attained is what we might call "non-conceptual understanding." It is a direct apprehension of what's going on, and it is like jumping into the river of life and never looking back.
Reading this, many people might grasp the importance of "jumping into the river of life," but fail to see the importance of "never looking back." The wise will understand.
