Jim's Andy, Doubt and Direct Experience

I doubt a lot. I doubt myself, my work, my path, my environment, my ideas, my contradictory thoughts, actions and just a whole bunch of stuff. I doubt people. All that I doubt in myself, I project doubt onto them about these things too. I doubt my projections. I doubt life itself, and I had for a moment a thought during meditation that maybe this doubt isn't so bad 'after all.' I doubt this too, a little.

I've found that certain things become more credible for me as tools to navigate life with as I use them and understand what their place is for me within the universal impersonal changes in life. Some of the things for me right now are practices. One is art (drawing and painting), one is dance (Mandala Movement), one is Qi-Gong and one is Vipassana Meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka. Another one is writing this weekly blog post and making a monthly Youtube video. And of course the last one, but not the least, is working on my story, (secret title.)

Richard Feymann had commented once that doubt is a key component of his personality and who he is. Science requires doubt, so that we can test our theories, know whether we're right or wrong and then start again. Without doubt, we could stop any scientific exploration and live as we are. That is the feeling I had during meditation, that doubt is the other side of the coin of exploration and creative invention. Doubt is the yin to consistent curiosity and exploration as yang. Of course, I doubt this when I state it as an intellectual point. I don't doubt it in the experience I have of it. The 'intuition' of it, one might say, but I'd actually rather not say anything like that either.

What my practices do for 'me' is bring me into the direct experience of something that has no doubt whatsoever. In hindsight, in my intellectual activity, I may look at it and doubt it. I may not understand it fully in words and theories. These full living experiences are not always result oriented and cannot 'always' have the 1+1=2 literacy. In a day to day existence, I can't say what does what in terms of cause and effect. I can have guesses, but it won't be one hundred percent accurate. When I'm practicing Vipassana meditation, I can experience this shifting take place without a measurement. It is undeniable, direct, choice-less awareness of reality. It's hard to put words here, because I feel when I say 'reality,' someone can say that that is a subjective 'idea.' It is NOT when you are experiencing it directly, which may be a bit paradoxical, or simply unable to be proven right or wrong, true or false.

It is unable to be truly calculated and one might call that insanity, but too much calculation is actual insanity. This analysis mindset breaks spontaneity, poetry, intuition, faith and experience. Attention is caring and the action required to live objectively. It is attention that we can rely on first, because otherwise any new discoveries will be based on old thought. Doubt can be a deep, fulfilling component to realizations and their explanations. Doubt gives us the courage to go into uncharted territory and come back with something to share, when we understand that doubt is our tool for growth. Too much doubt, on one hand, can be just like too much calculation. We think we know and therefore we get the results we've 'set in stone.' For example, my recent arm injury has become very clearly a direct representation of my mindset for approaching my artwork. A mindset that is detrimental and short-sighted. See the picture below. These examples may shine all around us when we know how to see them. We are also free to doubt them, but sometimes they deserve the credit for being so blatantly obvious, in hindsight.

~This says, "I have to get better" (at art - mental) on one side, changing into "I have to get better" (with my arm injury - physical). A direct translation, just a different context showed up because I needed to learn the lesson all the same and change my thoughts about myself. The thing didn't matter, just the application of it and thankfully I had the context change enough to show me what I wasn't noticing. 'Enjoying my pain,' because it helped me see.~

I was thinking about food and how someone might be a good chef. Their food is good, so we want them to cook and we want to eat their food. This is how we think, yet at another level, gratitude can change the quality of the experience of any food so drastically that we don't need to get someone good to cook, in a way. As I write this, I'm bouncing around my memories of Jim and Andy, a movie with Jim Carrey going into how he acted as Andy Kaufman in 'Man on the Moon.' He experienced something surreal with this performance and permeated it into the cast and the process of making the film. He doesn't fully understand it in all its levels, but it came together none the less and the movie was well made within that chaotic, emotional state of transformation and questioning. All context can be tools for this transforming and our transforming can give all context validity. Seeing representations of things can help us to put our observations in perspective, and help us observe more.

Other examples coming to mind are when the first picture of Earth was taken from the space station. The observation of the wholeness of Earth and how that's our home changed the perspectives of many people. The picture represented that and helped us see it. The other day I had not done something that I felt would have been fun. I reacted, thought too much about it and fell into a fearful stasis. Right after, my jacket strings got tangled in a mess and were tangled around my neck and head as I put the jacket on. I was like, "What's going on?!" The strings were choking me, as I had choked. I had to take my jacket off and work to untie the knot. Being a bit frustrated as I untied it, I stopped. I took a breath and thought, "this is a representation of the fear I just experienced. When I untie this knot, I'm untying that fearful patterning I just experienced." After that thought, the untying was easy, as if I was just aligning with what the truth of the situation was. The energy of that activity was no longer about finishing it, but about knowing what it represented. Here's some tangled headphones, which I can untie using that same mentality of processing, contrary to frustration.

When thinking about the value of meditation and the free mind that acts without pretense and with a freshness of creative insight sometimes beyond logical, comprehensive calculation, I found that it is in certain practices that I experience this knowing. With Qi-Gong, Vipassana, Mandala Movement, I am more 'with' the experiencing of it than anything else. "How can I even be anywhere else?" One imagines. It is with thought that I can identify with things that are projections and therefore feel elsewhere. I am not aligned with what I'm doing at the intimate feeling level and the total understanding of it through a direct, objective, universal awareness. I know the difference when I'm with that or living in ideas and projections. When I'm not IN it, or WITH it, then I am in a division between an idea or image of myself, other labelled things, and the perception of what is here and now. Basically, process V.S. result, but being totally with something can still lead to tremendous results, such as in Andy Kaufman's (or Jim Carrey's?) 'Man on the Moon,' and also in life itself. This doesn't just happen in the movies folks.

We come to think that we are finished human beings, that we won't change any more. There's a study that talks about how people think they would still like to see their current favorite band ten years from now, and pay more money to see them.  Yet, most of them wouldn't care to see the band that was their favorite ten years ago, today. This is our choosing to find that perfect chef, because he's what we think we want. When I'm truly present, I don't need anything. It's just like Jim Carrey says at the end of Jim and Andy, "I have no ambition." I am living life, when I'm living it, so what else could I possibly ask for? MORE than everything that my experience is? How can that be reached? This is the kind of 'new' common sense that I integrate into my psyche with every moment that I'm in creative process mode and not in quick, efficient result mode. I am understanding the balance and the connection of these two modes (as I doubt if they are separate) more and more.

What I get from my weekly, daily, monthly practices is a sense that what I'm doing all the time, no matter what the thing is, is more like a practice of moving energy, such as Qi-Gong, or watching my energy move, such as Vipassana. In typing this, I can write it as if I'm doing a Mandala Movement 'dance' and move in a natural, flowing way. I can feel as though there is a lightness in my work because I'm just playing with waves, trees and movements in the body. I can experience an effortless witnessing of these things that require a focus to come into fruition and yet not lose a clarity of boundless attention that it is aware of all passing, changing movements in freedom. Of course, I doubt my clearly stated words when I know in my experience I bounce around in my thoughts like a lunatic sometimes, but so did Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman. I may sometimes be doubting or losing the battle against myself, or battling myself (and therefore losing), or just simply not too sure about what it is I should do, until I sit and get so engaged with reality that I don't miss a thing. Therefore, I continue to rest, return and continue, on all levels of my experience with what is.

Thanks for reading,
If you like this, please share and continue coming back every Sunday for a new post.

Living Every Moment

Every moment is an opportunity for enlightenment. We graze the grass, hug the trees and see that in every single beat of the heart, inhale or exhale of the breath and sensory exchange, we are able to see a little clearer, with a little more joy.

I don’t know the truth for myself, let alone anyone else. I do have moments where it seems clear as to what is helpful to abide to the universal laws of nature and to deepen my connectivity with life, in contrary to increasing my disconnect or divisiveness with it. It happens through the breath, it happens through the body, it happens through perception. My scars are silhouetted into elements of a harmonious whole and what is realized is unity. Things that are causes of my misery vanquish when I’m in tune with what is wholesome. Then, I feel better than I did. I feel whole and unique in this wholeness, like a child playing in a bathtub in a world huddled to itself, free of the chaos and confusion on the other side of the curtain. We’ve unraveled the veil here, just a little bit, to see that it is really all “rainbows, smashed to smithereens,” and we are happy.

To express this authentic joy is to be it, to feel it and to live it. We don’t need someone else outside of us to attain it, but inspiration comes from those who are examples in their own action and perception on how they have peaked through their own ignorance. I am grateful for these people, and many are my friends, each having his or her own unique moments of unveiling day by day. I’ll admit that I’m a learning, wandering, lost-at-times being sharing the same questions we all have. Yet we all have the moments of clarity where we see beyond the veil into our selves of purity. It’s wonderful to witness the changes. Life is constantly changing, so to be alive, so are we. It’s a process. Observation is taking place. The moment ceases to have meaning when we contain it rigidly. Selectivity in one manner can help us define the things we carry with us on our path. However, too much and we are like a comic strip, trapped to the panels on one page, when it is every page that accounts for the context that gives us meaning and the framework from which to begin our discovering. One page is enough, when we know how to read it - how to see beyond the expression into the expressing and into the source of joy that inspires true freedom and authenticity.

Let us not be caught up in the mundane, trimming branches, when the root remains rotten. For anyone seeking freedom, dive into the way you see the world and yourself. Dive into the things you take for granted, positive or negative, these are the things you don’t usually notice. Each thing unnoticed is one passing piece of life that may offer some tools, context and enhancement of what can be reflected on. This is also not something to search for, because your attention is full already. What is it full of? We can offer our energy to fruitful, wholesome qualities, or demonic, destructive, unwholesome qualities. We are all containment of both. Human beings are examples of both and what we create and live in either state is our example to ourselves and the world. It is our framework to see whether it’s benefiting us or others. So each moment stands at the precipice of seeing or ignorance, reverence or concealment, light or darkness. As map, compass or flashlight, the tools are ours right now.

Here is something I wrote on a typewriter recently:

You are a master of limitation.
To think that you of knowledge and of time are bound to this creed.
Where bountiful freedom abides, there rests all unlimited being.
Bewitch the be-witcher, a guise of misery and complexity.
Stand where freshness begins and all form is in communion with this direct observation.
This seeing is truth without reaction. It is life unencumbered.
"It sees the false in the false and sees the truth in the truth."

“Even now, the world is bleeding. But feeling just fine, all numb in our castle, where we’re
always free to choose, never free enough to find, I wish something would break, cause we’re
running out of time.” - Overcome by Live

Find your freedom. Don’t choose it.

Joy to you all,
- Anthony

Anicca... anicca... anicca...

Every once in a while we might come across some juicy bit of wisdom that we had known and lived, but forgotten, or seemed to have forgotten. I have a downloaded program from the old student Vipassana website on my computer that quotes a Vipassana teacher or a Dhamma scripture to inspire my daily practice. Every hour a quote comes up, along with the sound of a gong, if you set it to do so. I had the gong for a while, but it can be startling. Still, I get a quote every hour, and the one the other day struck me at the core.

"Anicca when properly developed will solve almost all your problems. It might not even be necessary for you to ask questions for answers. As the appreciation of anicca grows, so will the veil of ignorance fade away."

These words are by Sayagyi U Ba Khin, who shared the teaching of Vipassana with S. N. Goenka, who in turn taught it to me through video discourses at many a 10 day course. Anicca ("Ah-Nee-Cha") is a Pali word that is best defined as (the quality of) the arising and passing away. In English, our best translation is the word impermanence, though that carries a slightly different meaning.

In the courses’ instructions, Goenkaji will continuously say, “Anicca... anicca... anicca...” There is a book called The Meditator’s Handbook that has a part explaining the reason for this repetition. When something is repeated again and again in a school setting, it is likely going to be on the test or exam. Therefore, it should be remembered. Anicca is this cornerstone, key point that is on the final exam of Vipassana, right through to Nibbana. And I forgot the vitality of it til I was reminded by this digitized quote from U Ba Khin.

(Sayagyi U Ba Khin)

Why is it so vitally important? It is the basic, rooted observation of anicca within the framework of your own body that liberates you from your bondage of suffering. As one meditates, this is not so much ‘remembered’ as it is ‘felt or experienced.’ It’s not intellectual, though it is useful to understand intellectually what it is you’re observing, or beginning to understand at a direct, non-intellectual level. To return to the quote which says, “almost all of your problems will be solved with this developed,” is not an overstatement. To truly realize, with an understanding in spoken language, but also as a developed, inner knowing-ness that is as true as knowing that you have hair, or hands, or anything like this that is indescribably taken as a ‘usual thing,’ is to have an imperturbability to all of that which is phenomenal.

What does that mean? It means all things that come and go are no longer problems as they were before. To take some of the great, exaggerated examples from Neil Gaimen’s ‘Make Good Art Speech,’ I can say that if your “husband runs off with a politician, your leg gets crushed and then
eaten by a mutated boa constrictor, IRS is on your trail, or your cat exploded,” you will remain more
balanced with a innate understanding that both the bad things and the good things are ever-arising and passing away. As Neil says in the speech, when these things happen, you can return to the salvation of “Making Good Art.” I don’t disagree with that advice, knowing that it can help, but that doesn’t help you actually see these things as lesser problems, but rather is a coping mechanism once the problem has problemed you. Obviously these are examples of negative things, but even the positive or wanted things do not last forever. It is easier to intellectually understand that a painful, unwanted circumstance will pass away. It is harder to full-heartedly be aware of the fact that the most pleasurable circumstances will do the same. When we cling to these, we are creating problems with as much ignorance as we would if we were to worry about the bad thing that has or could happen.

(Actual cover on the left. Alternate 'anicca' version on the right.)

In difficult, pleasurable or also neutral moments, I’ve found that the clarity of knowing and feeling within myself that this is passing has sustained more vitality , joy and true happiness than any other bit of knowledge in this world. Words themselves don’t cut it. We need wisdom of the reality of it within ourselves. Otherwise we can forget and doubt this truth. Even with a daily practice of directly observing and knowing this, we can forget about anicca. In some way, the feeling we cultivate remains with us in moments throughout each day and night. The awareness develops to be used at all times, regardless of how terrible or elating a situation can be. Then, we can fully enjoy or fully experience sadness, and never cling to it, never make a story out of it that creates a boundary to our successful, aware living.

This quote hit home for me so much because of my development in experiencing this impermanence directly. It’s not just words to me, but truth of being. This truth translates into seeing all things, whether it’s writing, eating, working, drawing, playing, moving, sleeping, living - as change. I sometimes get caught up in mental stories. I create them for myself and they cause me misery. Yet it isn’t long before I bring my head above the water and cease the drowning of my ignorance. Again, I arrive at a peaceful place, treading the water of the phenomenal with a smile in my Self. There is a saying in the Vipassana courses that illuminates this truth. Goenkaji laughs when he says, “You’re on the path of Dhamma. Nothing can go wrong.” That is not an overstatement. Take one step in the right direction and keep walking. Walk on the path consistently and you’ll never want to stop. You’ll only stop out of your own ignorance, and you’ll be the first to notice.

Anicca... anicca... anicca...

- Anthony

Loving Letters of the Dragon

Reading the collections of essays and letters by Bruce Lee is fascinating and inspiring on many levels. The legend who lived only to thirty two was a contemplative, intelligent man. He starred in twenty Cantonese-language films before the age of eighteen, founded schools, taught and developed new techniques of martial arts and continued to write, philosophize and make films his whole life. Everyone knows that Bruce is someone who sought to express himself authentically through his art and life.

I am reading two books. One is Artist of Life: a collection of notes and essays by Bruce. The other is Letters of the Dragon, which is a collection of Bruce’s letters to friends and family, often sent from America or Hong Kong. To read the personal writings of someone who was adamant in expressing truth is a wonderful thing. Letters are already a medium of personal richness and for the author of them to be so full of life himself, they are truly a pleasure and insight into a caring, persistent and well-rounded person. As Bruce Lee might say, “Man! So cool.”

Yet with all his magnificence as an individual, Bruce was confined to the collective framework of human beings in his time. Thankfully, we have a collection of letters because of it, as supposed to a multitude of text messages. The care of writing a letter is something that strikes me as a more expansive way to communicate. Reading Bruce’s letters reminds me of how technology has changed our interactions to a global level. We can quickly call, email or send information across the world. We can physically travel to anywhere in a hurried pace and have the knowledge of where we’re going and what it’s going to be like before we even arrive, through our world-wide cloud of information. It is the inspiration for care that I feel through Bruce’s life as a human being who deals with common struggles of us all. Mundane elements such as financial concerns to deeper truths such as death, the art of expression and the cultivation of inner peace.

Bruce was an explorer with a respect to an inner calling that shaped his actions and perspective. It is inspiring to have those who have walked their own personal/impersonal path of authenticity and wisdom. It is with continued appreciation that I read books of the great minds that are now left like footprints in the snow. I will never know Bruce Lee the man, but as legend, expression and wisdom, his essence lives on as a guidance and inspiration. From his readings, I hope to gain a deeper appreciation for the simple gifts of each moment. To see with freshness as the situations reveal themselves. Like Lee’s own jeet kune do, there is no way to the Way.

Our paths will all intertwine, like Bruce’s to mine, yet each moment is unique for us alone. From pages of his words, we can carry the meaning of a live well lived into this unique moment, expressed as what is. The care of this sacred place in time and space will change us more than we can imagine. This can inspire others to have that same sense of freedom and feeling of the truth of being, in all our layers of exchange with this world. The words of Bruce Lee inspire me not to take any friend, foe, moment or sentence for granted. This holds true to the dearest part of my heart.

With love and care for the essence of Bruce Lee,
Yours truly,
Anthony

“I will give you my heart, please don’t give me your head only.” - Bruce Lee