Home Again

I have been home for nearly a month now, but have been rather slow to get this last post out. Actually, a couple of people have suggested that I should continue this blog to write about the experiences of coming home and what has happened/is happening. I’m not sure if that will happen or not – in keeping with learning from the temple I guess I will just say that “everything is uncertain”. This is something that is important to keep in mind I think, as our minds trained in the Western ways tend to want to lock things down into prediction and planning and to think of ourselves as being in control of our world and our directions. The illusion of control is certainly there, but it is really only an illusion.

In any case, I have been home for several weeks now and letting myself re-enter this lifestyle slowly. In many ways it has been wonderful to be home, and in many ways it has been, and continues to be, quite difficult. The wonderful part is to be able to see people again, renew friendships and be in closer touch with family and friends. It’s also rather nice to be able to eat pretty much whatever I want and whenever I want, and have familiar food back again. I had a lot of good food at the temple, but there wasn’t  a lot in the way of choosing and I didn’t have any way to store or cook food so meals generally depended on someone else. Having a refrigerator and a stove and cupboards to put things in is rather nice.

Actually, there are lots of physical things that it is really great to have again – a bathroom with dry floors, hot and cold running water, a house with insulation that modifies the outside environment (more than just keeping the rain off), enough electricity to use things like electric kettles and stoves, washing machines and dryers, and even a plug in so I don’t have to use my computer on a battery all the time and then plug it in to charge periodically. Driving my own vehicle is nice, being able to choose when I want to go somewhere and then do it, being able to understand what people are saying and talk to whoever I want to whenever I want to, without worrying about an interpreter or trying to use my extremely limited Thai abilities…

These things are all great and a relief, but there are other things that are proving to be a bit difficult.

When I came back from Thailand last time, I had a very difficult period of several months during which time I felt frightened of life in general and almost incapacitated at times. I didn’t understand this at all – and it was actually part of the impetus for going back this time. I wanted to understand what had happened.

Coming back home again this time has been much easier than the first time, thankfully, but it has included some similar experiences as well.

One of the things that is difficult is explaining what I was doing over there, why I went, or what it’s like to be back. I find that the words really aren’t sufficient to explain what it is like to live immersed in a completely different value system than our own for nearly eight months, and to be marinated in a Zen philosophy and lifestyle during this time. How can I describe what it feels like to sit under the moon surrounded by the darkness and the insect sounds of the jungle, at the tiny home of a friendly monk and feel not only the impact of words but also the essence of peacefulness that he exudes? How can I explain the inner changes, and the challenges to reality that come from traveling for two weeks with a group of monks, who are also friends, and seeing and feeling the way in which they relate with the world? It can sound crazy to talk about the experience of being with people who think nothing of talking to angels now and then, or communicating with a variety of beings from other dimensions, or of feeling the gentle flow of energy from the teacher that wafts like a breeze through the people gathered for prayer, clearing the mind and calming the emotions. These are not things that are easily spoken of here.

I can talk about things like “letting go” or “relaxing the mind”, “releasing the idea of a permanent self”, “not fixing things”, “not trying”… but they are only words, and in this culture they are kind of strange words really. Much of what I experienced during my time at the temple would be considered as quite esoteric at best, and downright strange at worst, when seen from the viewpoint of Western thought, and so it is really difficult to explain or say anything that really seems to communicate in a satisfactory way what the experience was like.

This quote from Hamlet seems to be a fitting one, though, when I think of this issue in communication:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 
- Hamlet (1.5.166-7), Hamlet to Horatio

This, I believe, is true to an extent that is literally unimaginable, and perhaps it is a good place to start. This world and this life that we think we are living is both so much simpler and so much more complex and vast than we generally can even conceive of. I think of myself as only having touched the edges of the vastness, and yet I have the sense of so much that is there. In an infinite universe, such as this one, everything is possible, and there is room for everything to exist – including other dimensions and all that may live and exist in these dimensions.

In one sense, none of this vastness matters. We are here in these human bodies living human lives and there is more than enough wonder, depth, and potential in this. There is no need to search out other worlds or dimensions or experiences beyond the five senses. However, in another sense, it can be helpful to realize just how small and confining our way of perceiving the world can be, and how tightly we cling to the beliefs and perceptions that literally shape and create our experience of what is real.

We also tend, in our culture, to want things to be definitely one way or another. We don’t tend to be comfortable with the idea that something can be both one way, and the opposite way, and both can be true. How can something both matter and not matter? How can the answer to “do we live more than one life?” be both “yes” and “no”? What about this notion of a “self”? How can we both have one and not have one and what on earth is this about anyway? We want things to be definite, but the one thing that can be said with complete certainty is that everything is uncertain. This is true in quantum science, as well as philosophy by the way. (This little two minute trailer for Amit Goswami’s Quantum Activist documentary talks briefly about the way in which we have been trained to see everything as material, and the quantum perspective in which every object is actually a field of possibility).

So, the experience of coming home has been both good, and anticlimactic. Good, as I have described before, and anticlimactic in that I stepped out for eight months and then stepped back in to the same set of beliefs and ideas. My idea of who I am has been changing, but the images left behind have been static. Coming back has created some internal conflict between the new images inside and the old images as seen in my connections with others.

There has also been a return of some of the feelings that I experienced on my first return. An image I have is of a piece of hardened foam that has been compressed. At the temple, whatever is present in the lifestyle and belief system there seems to allow the pressure to be released and the foam starts to decompress and expand and as it does this it begins to “feel” more space inside. It is a good feeling, and if we connect the metaphor, awareness of the person who is the “foam” also begins to expand and have more space. It delves more deeply both inwardly and outwardly and begins to experience the flows of energy in the body more clearly. All of this helps in being able to take in and digest the experience of a larger and more expanded sense of reality as well, and to release old belief systems that limit this sense.

Coming back however, I have experienced a reverse of this process again. This is still inexplicable to me – I don’t why it happens this way, if it is just my own experience and someone else would find something completely different, or if it is a property of place and culture. In any case, my experience has been one of compression again, in which the “foam” pushes back in on itself, old feelings of tension or anxiety return, and the spacious awareness recedes somewhat. This is rather disappointing, to say the least, and quite physically uncomfortable at times. However, much of the emphasis of the teaching that I received is that it is not about what the body experiences and it is not about what the mind thinks. What and who we truly are is something that is beyond what the mind can comprehend and so there is not much point in giving attention to the mind’s thoughts about who it is. One needs to go more deeply than this, to ask the question “Who or what am I” and let it settle into the depths of being like a stone sinking into the depths of a great ocean. Let the question make its own path and be ready for answers to arrive in unexpected ways… Be ready to accept the possibility that "I" may not exist at all...

So, if I seem a bit distracted at times, it is probably because I am. Integrating what happened in another world of experience with this present Canadian time and place will take some time, and I am struggling at times with some of the uncomfortable bits of this.

However, life moves ahead and I am getting set to go back to work in September. I had hoped to be building a house this summer, but was not prepared for the paperwork and planning needed before anything can happen on a lot in town (I had hoped to just build a little cabin to stay in, initially at least, but this plan proved incompatible with the land that I have). My parents have very kindly offered their basement as a place where I can stay while I am getting the plans and permits and things together, and so that is where I am at the moment.

In conclusion, if there can be such a thing as a conclusion, I feel a need to reiterate what I said in a previous post about the nature of enlightenment. The word “enlightenment” is rather charged and full of connotations and erroneous understandings, so perhaps “awakening” would be a better choice. In any case, I have found my way of perceiving these ideas changing. From the viewpoint of “enlightenment” as a distant and basically unattainable state of being that must be worked for with incredible diligence and determination, I have now come to the viewpoint that it is actually something which is not only attainable but constantly and eternally present as the basic state of being of all things. It is not something far away in the future, but present in this moment – if only we have the eyes to see…  

I also believed that people who experienced this reality were limited to beings such as the Buddha, or Jesus, or the great teachers of the past. Now I am finding that there are many many people who are experiencing awakenings all over the world, in all religions and even without religion. There are many teachers, from different religions and traditions, teaching the same basic truth and teaching. It is not complex, although I am finding it more difficult to remember the simplicity as I step back into this way of living – but still, it is not complex.

That is the hopeful thing, I think, and the thought that I would like to end with at this point. No matter how hopeless or strange or violent the world situation appears to be, there is also a reality of awakening in this time. Multitudes of people are awakening, in greater and lesser degrees, to a wider viewpoint of who and what we are, what life is about, what is possible, and in doing so they are also seeing that it is all much simpler than they believed before. Millions of people are learning to let go of old images of self, of beliefs, of desires, of needs, of conditions or expectations that they place on themselves and others, and with each release there is greater space and more possibility for peace.

There is most definitely more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy. Even just that, if accepted with openness, is a step into greater freedom…

Thank you for being with me on this journey - much love to you all,

Todd