The Little Purple Notebook On How To Escape From This Universe
Copyleft � 1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.
Subscription Information: Maria Loren
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Website:
http://transmillennium.net/pnohteftu/
The Nice, The Shitty, And The Neither-Nice-Nor-Shitty
There can be nice feelings about something, and there can be bad feelings
about the same thing. At another time, one may be indifferent about something
one had been excited about just a short while ago.
If a person's focus is rigidly rigged to the moment, unable to widen or
narrow in time and/or space, the perspective is lost, literally, and the
mind may firmly 'decide' that something would be entirely 'bad', or really
'good', or that it is completely 'irrelevant'.
Like a flag adjusts its alignment as the wind turns from East to South, the
focus and (with it a person's perception window) gets driven now into one
direction, and the next moment into another.
Then some very smart people conclude the following 'indisputable fact':
since, over time, a flag will be pointing in ALL directions, it will sooner
or later point to South. That means for them (and everybody who is so
crazy to listen to them) that 'EVERYTHING IS SOUTH'.
Some other people, equally bright and clever, will determine that the flag
shows, over time, every once a while towards North. This then becomes, for
them, the infallible and undeniable proof that, in the end, 'EVERYTHING HAS
THE DEEPER PURPOSE TO POINT TO NORTH'.
So, if someone get sick at the tender age of 85, like one of our neighbor's
some years ago who had led a long, healthy, and mostly happy and fulfilled
life until then, it means to the 'Southern' fraction that, of course, 'ALL
LIFE IS SUFFERING' - there you have it!
Meanwhile, the 'Northern' fraction is just waiting for the 50 year-old
cancer-and-asthma-stricken former coal-miner to find the love of his life
with the nurse who took care of him after his last stroke: In his deep and
mysterious ways, the Lord has provided happiness for him after all, and all
the rest of his dreadful life was just a 'lesson' for him - also, provided,
free and without obligations of course, by the Lord himself!
Gotamo Siddharto posited that the direction to which the flag shows is a
result of going through life, no matter to WHERE the flag is showing at any
given moment.
A Being transcending this Universe can observe the change of destiny
without being touched.
To reach a state of mind that facilitates this viewpoint, he proposed the
following very basic exercise (which, in
some aspects may well be the most basic exercise of all):
" - Whenever there is a pleasant feeling, the person notices: 'there is now
a pleasant feeling'.
Whenever there is an UN-pleasant feeling, the person notices: 'there is now
an UN-pleasant feeling'.
Whenever there is a neither pleasant nor UN-pleasant feeling, the person
notices: 'there is now a neither pleasant nor UN-pleasant feeling'."
This must be far too simple for most sophisticated minds because, sure
enough, there are many self-acclaimed 'Buddhists' who are quick to find
reasons to never engage in this exercise or to supersede it with other
'more valuable' practices, such as punishing one's body by not giving it
food or to whine about everything that ever happened to anybody in this
Universe.
Yet, this process, as simple as it may appear at first glance, is
profoundly effective (and tough, at times!).
People skilled in mind-bending exercises, will have recognized immediately
that this practice can be used as a 'scanning process' to cover past events
(feelings) as well. The even more 'advanced' amongst the readers, may want
to use it to cover the 'future(s)' as well and (for the real tough ones!)
'scanning' may be abbreviated by 'holding the pleasant, un-pleasant, and
neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant aspects of a subject at the same time in
one's mind' (until it cracks up, hmmm).
In any case, the state of mind reached by this exercise has been called
'upekkha' in Gotamo's time. There is no English equivalent for this word,
so people translate it often as 'equanimity'.
For the superficial observer who never engaged in this exercise, this state
can (and is) easily be confused with
'indifference'. But 'indifference' is, if we look at the process again,
just an aspect of the third step of the exercise
itself and not its result.
This mistaking of 'upekkha' as 'indifference' prompts the view that this
way of seeing things would be 'cruel'
or 'heartless'.
Quite the opposite is true, however!
(Which the reader, if s/he doesn't know it already, would find out very
soon if s/he would decide to give it a try!)
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Copyleft � 1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.
