Motif de se Retirer pt.1 : For Nothing
Since returning to Kathmandu in October, I’ve been asked the same question again and again, so I figured I should maybe answer it in writing, for my own clarity as well.
The other night I was having dinner at a restaurant associated with one of the more prestigious monasteries—catering very much to foreigners, on the fancier side for Nepal. As I was leaving a tall young busboy approached me with the sketchiest energy, getting a bit too close with a look in his eyes I couldn’t quite read. I said “what’s up?”. He asked about my “kāloṭikā”, a black khajal mark worn on my forehead—similar to that of Michéle Lamy, except very small.
“I thought you were a black magician” he said. Despite being slightly offended momentarily, I resisted the urge to divulge the esoteric function and symbolism in self-defense. “I was taught to wear it for protection when I was an Aghori, and now it’s just a habit,” I said—which isn’t untrue. He seemed very unsettled by this to say the least. “Why are you doing these things? Aghori?” he asked in a frustrated tone. I assumed he was referring to the life path I’ve chosen, given he must have noticed me a few times over the months in my unchanging cotton wrap skirt and wool shawl—a typical yogin’s attire—juxtaposed with my old leather biker vest which gives away the fact that I’m not from here, but still I said I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant. I recall he said something like “to me I think you look very handsome like you could be a model or an actor, so why do you come here for these things like Aghori and Buddhadharma?” in somewhat broken English.
The influence of Korean pop culture is very strong here, and my status as a moderately handsome Korean guy is significantly inflated. Young Nepali girls ask to take photos with me on the street and so on. I’ve been casually proposed to three times in two months. Apparently not many good looking foreigners come to Nepal seeking enlightenment, as I imagine they’re occupied with enjoying the pleasures which beauty affords, or just stressing out trying to maximize capital on however much of it they have perhaps. It’s true, I’ve noticed—there aren’t many cute Buddhist pilgrims, or Buddhists in general—not that it matters to me. In any case—of course—for the locals here, possessing the qualities of a first-world culture’s conventional beauty is like a key to the world, and many are utterly perplexed by my life here as if they mean to say “if I were in your place, I would be out there doing something real.”
I asked him if he knew what was going to happen to him after he died. He said for him, we get this one life, enjoy, and when it’s finished he’s “done”. I said “yes, that’s what you believe, but you don’t know that.”
“Do you know?” he replied. I said “of course I don’t. Neither of us do, but are you okay with not knowing?” He replied immediately with confidence, “yea, I’m okay.”
“I’m not,” I said. “Also, I don’t believe you. I think you just haven’t really thought it through.” The language barrier made it difficult to progress much further. “The question is whether one would take the opportunity of this life to find out for certain or leave it to be discovered when it happens I guess,” I said. “Because whatever it is, it’s going to happen, and when it does you might not like it, nor would you have any ability to change it necessarily.” Seeing that it didn’t really register for him, I left it at “anyway it doesn’t matter, enjoy your life.” It’s no one’s place to convince anyone of something like this, obviously. Yet I seem to get dragged into this sort of conversation often.
Anyhow, I sincerely question the accuracy of the stance “whatever’s to come, I’m ready.” Just based on common sense, I really can’t imagine anyone truly being ready for an infinite range of possibilities. When one goes to sleep one could enter the most pleasant dream or the most horrific nightmare, and it isn’t really dependent on whether one had a great day or a bad one. The pleasant dream could turn into a nightmare, the nightmare could turn into a pleasant dream, and so on; birth, life, death, and rebirth are like this, but unlike dreams, we can’t expect to just “wake up” from infinite lives. It seems terribly presumptuous to believe that one is ready for all of that. I imagine most people aren’t even ready to lose a limb, let alone whatever else I need not mention, because again it’s not about accepting the notion of perpetual rebirth necessarily. It’s the simple fact that the unknown equals infinite possibility for a potentially infinite duration as a concrete reality that’s sure to arrive as with tomorrow, next week, next year, and so on; except with no promise that our present inner coping mechanisms—which are dependent on this particular body-mind and its retained memories—will remain at our disposal. It’s not about what one believes, it’s about what one doesn’t know—and what that actually implies.
As for the question of consciousness after death, we already know the brain is not the basis of consciousness; and the notion that consciousness somehow magically arises out of nothing at birth and then vanishes back into nothingness at death poses a number of metaphysical problems. No substance ever actually arises nor ceases in this universe. There is only constant transformation within a fixed set of infinity. You can take a cup of water and pour it into the soil where it’ll become nutriment for plant life, or boil it turning it into vapor that’ll disperse and be carried away by the wind; no matter what, whether you spill it, drink it, or burn it, you can’t actually erase that substance that was water from existence. It’ll always just become something else and continue. Likewise you can’t just produce water out of nothing. Water condenses from vapor. It’s a cycle. Everything emerges as a transformation of one or more pre-existing things, so that implies that the substance which becomes anything was always existing [as something] and will continue to exist eternally. Time itself likewise has no beginning nor end. It makes no sense to suddenly propose that our mind is an exception to this rule. In this sense, believing that the mental continuum terminates at death is no different from believing that one will be greeted by winged adolescents at the gates of heaven having confessed to a priest on one’s deathbed—a convenient fantasy.
It’s more than likely that we’'ll always have to deal with being somehow, and we can expect our experience of being to be subject to a full range of highs and lows in accordance with an incomprehensibly complex matrix of cause and effect composed of the imprints of previous actions and experiences which condition each moment. This is karma precisely, and the unceasing cyclical experience modulated by this law of karma is saṃsāra. Discovering, stabilizing, integrating, and effortlessly transmitting the recognition of saṃsāric experience as illusory, enabling one to enjoy its contents without clinging to them as real, and thus resolving the exhausting issue of involuntary perpetual being is Buddhahood. In other words, one exempts oneself from the cycle of apparent existence by merely realizing its illusory nature [which is another subject for another time].
Returning to the main point, the title of this entry “Motif de se Retirer" is a French phrase loosely meaning “reason for withdrawing” with a characteristically French vagueness that the literal English doesn’t accommodate. I don’t speak French, I just assumed that French would have such a phrase available and it turns out it does.
Why am I withdrawing from the world into a life of secluded contemplation? Is it out of my own weariness of being and its conditions? My fear of being thrown into another countless births with my memory lost each time, having to face the ripening effects of my countless past lives’ actions in this universe with its rare ecstatic beauty and prolific traumatic ugliness, loneliness and boredom; equipped with nothing but a potentially defective body on repeat? Then there just happened to appear a claim that there’s a way out that intuitively seemed trustworthy and endures the utmost logical scrutiny. Perhaps this was what sparked the initial flame.
I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that my father was killed when I was 8 months old. My first taste of tragic loss being before I could even properly cognize what had happened and experiencing the effect it must have had on my mother; the imprint of death I’m sure was a major formative factor. I remember as a small child I would constantly misbehave and my mom out of desperation would threaten me with “if you don’t listen, mommy’s gonna disappear!” I was hopelessly attached to my mom. I would cry and scream every time she dropped me off at daycare, and multiple adults would have to hold me back as I squirmed violently, reaching for her, begging her not to leave me. Maybe because I knew she was all I had, and that I had already lost my father—something I wasn’t conscious of at the time [I didn’t know what a father was until I noticed one day men and women coming to pick up their children in pairs and other kids calling out to their “dad”]. Whenever she brought up that threat of disappearing, I would have the most vivid vision of my mom’s corpse washed up on a beach, blue-black and dark brown in color. I don’t remember the sensation so clearly, but I know I would have no words to describe that terrible feeling. The visual element was actually far from the worst component, though it’s a mystery where such imagery even came from, as surely I had never seen a corpse before at that age.
So considering all of this, trauma and the resultant fear of reliving one’s most painful memories is likely an elementary cause for inclination towards some transcendent escape from conventional delusory existence, but to remain with such ego-reific motivation is a fatal flaw blatantly contradictory to the ultimate realization of the Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrine [of self as illusory].
Often, referring to one’s own condition alone isn’t even necessarily sufficient to produce substantial revulsion towards this deluded mode of being by which all are afflicted; such as in the case where one’s life is really quite good, and the gross sufferings of the world are still abstract, only briefly perceived in passing through social media which can easily be experienced as barely different from a movie. Even for those with naturally heightened empathy, observing from a distance and being directly subject to such grim realities are clearly not the same in effect.
If we were to sharpen our mental faculties through meditative training however—as various spiritual traditions prescribe as a foundation for contemplation—then consider the lived realities of all sentient beings from the most abysmal trenches of misery to the pinnacles of bliss with extraordinary and deliberate concentration to the point of conjuring the equivalent of personal experience, holding in mind the profound interconnection between all beings as if having been one another’s parents, children, lovers, and siblings countless times; as well as the ultimate truth of all such entities and narratives as being ultimately illusory, a simultaneous sense of equanimity and urgency arises.
The equanimity of realizing the folly of it all, like observing a bunch of children emotionally absorbed in a meaningless game: some are crying, some are laughing, some are violent, others are timid or aloof; in the end it’s all just a game and basically ridiculous.
Yet the urgency of running to protect the crying child and pacifying the violent one who hurt him, befriending the timid one, and resolving the aloof one’s boredom by sparking her interest. The two are not contradictory but necessarily inseparable as the principal essence of enlightened thought: the inseparability of gnosis and compassion, remaining in the tranquil recognition of existence as illusory play while regarding the emotions of beings who still cling to the illusion as real with genuine care and skillfulness.
Gnosis without compassion is cold and detached, with the limited benefit of merely numbing oneself to the phenomenal world and thus does not qualify true gnosis. Compassion without gnosis causes one to become entangled in emotions tied to clinging to relative narratives as real and one ends up as just another player caught up in the game, and since the basis of such compassion is a reification of identities such as self and other, good and bad as innately independent, it is a false compassion.
One must remember that the ultimate antidote to the heinous tendencies of beings is not merely thwarting the violent child’s strikes—which is only a topical remedy—but to thoroughly remind him that it’s just a game, and that he need not become so attached to winning to the point of feeling the impulse to harm his friend. Misapprehension of the nature of reality is the single root of all suffering, and it is this root that must be severed.
However, this root is usually really fucking thick—and hard. Severing it for all begins with severing one’s own, and one can spend years if not lifetimes sawing away at it. For this reason we first need to acquire the most powerful tool available, such as one of the higher classes of tantric deities—which you could say—in this context—is like a sort of divine chainsaw. Then even with such technology, one must enter strict retreat for say a month, 3 months, 3 years, 12 years, etc. depending on how much of the root one sets out to cut at a time. The duration and intensity of practice required to complete the project of severing delusion differs between each individual depending on their capacity—which is determined by their karma.
Personally, I just can’t stand the idea that such a pernicious thing is alive in my being. Sort of like how one might not be able to sleep knowing there’s a giant cockroach under one’s bed. Every time you hear some faint scurrying, “there it is”. Likewise every time I catch myself being…my deluded self—fuck, there it is again. I need to kill it. I have an overwhelming magnitude of reasons why I should; and my delusion is so dense, for me to attempt to simultaneously manage an ordinary life while expecting to finish the job in time—I think is unrealistic; and it’s at least partially for this reason I believe I’ve failed to follow through with any of my mundane passions to a point of substantial fruition, whether it’s architecture school, music, visual arts, romantic partnership, etc.
While this could seem slightly neurotic, we have to always return again and again to the recognition of the relationship between our personal delusion and the delusion of “the world” as the basis for the utmost atrocities. It’s no small thing like a cockroach. There is profound meaning and virtue in the slaying of this wicked beast, it’s really for the sake of all beings—this couldn’t be emphasized enough.
Moreover, many people are naturally endowed with qualities that enable them to pass as perfectly good humans. I am not one of those people. Whether it’s trauma-induced or innate or whatever it doesn’t matter, I just have too many rough spots and jagged edges that makes navigating worldly life harmoniously as an ordinary man impractical. I was somehow always popular in school despite being an Asian hopelessly eccentric skater in a waspy North Jersey town [I certainly had enemies], but I was also voted most likely to shoot up the school—a title made up for me by my friends—just to paint a picture for the reader. Perhaps it’s due to such aspects of myself being concealed behind what the people of Kathmandu perceive as being above average looks and a nearly deified class of being [Korean ethnicity] is the reason why they can’t understand my life choices, but I must testify that however smooth I’ve managed to sand down the harshness of my temperament so far is the effect of formal practice entirely, and the capacity to truly serve others towards any form of liberation is still far away.
It isn’t uncommon for one to dedicate oneself to a cause which one believes to be somehow key to benefitting others at large, obviously. In my case however, I just happened to identify that key as something metaphysical and must deal with the challenges of defending such an esoteric agenda to those who may not be immediately receptive but—in my opinion—deserve to hear it nonetheless. At this point, I firmly believe that a conclusive means of resolving the darkness of this world doesn’t exist within the mundane sphere. There is no natural default state of common goodness amongst creatures of such varying propensities such as humans which is independent of a robust transcendent cause for effortless compassion—that being gnosis solely. I see the near-impossible mission of skillfully bringing such ineffable truth hidden beneath the veil of mysticism into the light of common sense as a necessity for such resolution. I wish it wasn’t necessarily so, but it is what it is and so I’m just doing what’s to be done. Of course, there is no doer, no doing, and nothing to do for really.
