The Timeless Beauty of Asia E-Book

Govindha .

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 143

Beschreibung

The separation of the eye-sense from the dictation of the mental being with its permanent differentiating, separating and prejudging habits was the first highlight of his spiritual expedition. The character of this experience is first a complete stop of thinking, followed by a collapse of the dualistic division in subject and object. The illusion of subject and object is perpetuated by the habitual identification with thinking, and break to pieces when it stops. The body or the senses find back their original vision. And there is more to it than that. With the stop of thinking also the time, a mind-construct, ends and is replaced by a presence without past and future. In this eternal presence one doesn't have feelings of necessity, there is no need, no shortcoming, no wanting, no Ananke. Instead of one is full, complete, self-contented, fortunate and blissful. No words are able to express this experience, and every approach will end in speechlessness. The vision of the eyes freed from all separation is the vision of Oneness, endless, unspeakable. Whoever constantly lives in this consciousness, he is enlightened. But it is usual to fall back in the world of separation, of thinking, and so the memory becomes the guardian of the awakening and the heart the impulse for the journey to Oneness. Experiences like this are points of no return. Nobody can go back to the old ways of living, too strong is the yearning of the soul and too dull the old identity. The actual book wants to transfer the timeless beauty, the beauty without an opposite, to the heart of the readers and the same time arouse an enthusiasm for their own way of seeing and their individual journey back to Oneness.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to my Soulmate and wife Pui, incarnated in Thailand.

ONE

The mind of a man

And the mind in a stone.

But the Mind of minds

Sits bright and alone.

The life of a tree,

The life in a clod,

To the Life of all life

That men call God.

The heart of a beast

And a seraph’s heart, —

But the Heart of all hearts

Throbs ever apart.

A body beloved

And a body slain.

Yet both were the bodies

Of One in their pain.

(Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Collected works of Sri Aurobindo 2: 635-6)

Govindha

The Timeless Beauty of Asia

A Way of Seeing

© 2021 Govindha

Cover, Illustrations: Govindha

Publisher & print: tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg

Hardcover       ISBN 978-3-347-42515-6

e-Book            ISBN 978-3-347-43008-2

All rights (writings and photos) reserved

“The movement of love is not limited to human beings and it is perhaps less distorted in other worlds than in the human. Look at the flowers and trees. When the sun sets and all becomes silent, sit down for a moment and put yourself into communion with Nature: you will feel rising from the earth, from below the roots of the trees and mounting upward and coursing through their fibres up to the highest outstretching branches, the aspiration of an intense love and longing, — a longing for something that brings light and gives happiness, for the light that is gone and they wish to have back again. There is a yearning so pure and intense that if you can feel the movement in the trees, your own being too will go up in an ardent prayer for the peace and light and love that are unmanifested here.” (Collected Works of Mother 3: 72)

Contents

Preface

Introduction

A Way of Seeing

Appendix: Reference Source of the Photos

Preface

Let me first state that I’m not a professional photographer, on the contrary, the pictures you will see are made with my first camera, nothing special, and it was not my intention to make a book. The now available book emanated from some coincidences which all at once express a profound change in my life.

I started to live in India where my spirit is feeling at home for the most time of my life. But after a while I realized an imperative of changing without knowing in which direction. My inner dissatisfaction went sky-high and I decided overnight to leave India.

To name this dissatisfaction I have to use the term “Westernization” what in unison means alienation. On closer examination I found two cores of this wide-ranging phenomenon, causing my inconvenience, the first is an increasing and everywhere visible greed, and the second a simultaneously growing gulf between the Indian spirit and its reality. At this time, I didn’t see that the “Westernization” is the biggest global problem and our common challenge. We all are infected with this madly greed and hence rather more than less hit by the gulf between spirituality and reality. India held a mirror up to me, and I had to realize that the gap between my spiritual claims and my life praxis must be closed.

However, I escaped from India and took the next possible flight; it was going to Bangkok. And here in Thailand, at a first glance, I found so inexpressible joy that I feel a strong longing to express it despite knowing that there are no words to do it. To establish this gift of joy is presently my daily challenge, an up and down, and so, also as self-assurance, I composed a reading and picture-book. It wants to show the beauty of life especially the beauty of the nature and some temples of Asia. There are two methods by which the depth of beauty shall be revealed to the observer, by pictures and by text in the form of aphorism, meditations and quotes. Consequently, the pictures and the written words are directed to the Beauty of Being, whereas the perception depends on the alertness of the beholder and reader.

Currently, the way of “direct seeing” seems to be buried for us - at least it looks like sleeping. Immediate and nearly simultaneous with the sensory perception our interpretations are ascending and these mental constructs, this “mentalized perception” replaced our “direct seeing” into an indirect view. But if there is a situation when the most, we are perceiving is new and fresh a small break can arise and into this gap joy enters, the Joy of Being. The name of this gap is silence or “stop thinking”.

Our modern life is habitually guided by “the mind” and we do not only use our mental abilities we are convinced “we are the thinker”. This is surely a very occidental way of Self-being, a way we learned either by the tradition of a Western education or as a consequence of the globalization.

In the West it was René Descartes who wrote “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am). All following academic philosophy was and is a result of this big misunderstanding, by which one of the human skills, thinking, became first dominant and finally “the human itself”. This phenomenon must be called alienation because without any doubts we are more than the “small thinker” although we seem to be locked in this doubtful and sometimes terrible identification.

But also in the East, the home of all kinds of spirituality, we find a deep confusion in the midst of the spiritual domain. It concerns the Buddhist word “mindfulness”, a term rooted in Sanskrit (smrti) and Pali (sati). It does not point to a mental ability; it is a spiritual capacity. To avoid the misunderstanding, one’s mind should be full of something the better translation for “sati” is awareness. Awareness is not a quality of the mind; it is a quality of Consciousness. The reality of our mental world is a virtual world of duality, of differences under the conditions of time and space, of action and reaction, of causes and consequences. Hinduism indicates it as “Maya”, whereas the stuff of silence, Consciousness, is the “space” we are in Oneness or the “time” of an eternal Presence.

Learning to behold the pictures with our regained awareness, the Door of Joy may open up for all of us.

Thailand, 2021

Govindha

Introduction

In all religions we find the same esoteric core which can be expressed as “love” or “compassion” and being in love is nothing else than being in Oneness. Love is a side effect of awakening, therefore, we can say: All the differences the thinking creates amplify - mostly unconscious - our yearning for love, for wholeness, for finding “home”. Even if people possess in the outside life and world all they need to feel comfortable, there are more than a few who carry in themselves deep inside feelings of unpleasantness and dissatisfaction. Why? Concentrating on the outside life we forgot our true home, Consciousness, we lost ourselves in thinking and now we are misinterpreting the thinker-ego as our identity and true self.

At the Taos Pueblo, C.G. Jung spoke to a Hopi elder named Antonio Mirabal who explained that whites were always uneasy and restless. Mirabal said he would not understand the whites, they would say to think with their heads. Indicating his heart, he claimed that the red men are thinking with their heart. This moment Jung became conscious of this significant truth.

But to realize this knowing by heart we should overcome all romantic ideas about love because love is not a feeling, not a concept and not a doing, nothing to want or to make, no romanticism or sentimentality; it is our embracing gesture to all that is. Its base is acceptance. When our heart is open we can embrace all and response with the adequate action. This attitude cannot be overtaken from the mind because the mind is the “separator” and “resister” and not a tool which could simply or unbiased accept or embrace what it perceives. Its main task is the difference or the judgement, therefore, to listen to the heart implies to silence the mind.

Acceptance does not mean to suffer under unpleasant or dangerous circumstances nor to become a helpless victim, on the contrary, it means to see how the world or a situation is and to accept what is. The change will come because all is in change, other ways, if we withstand, we stop the power of change. The general helper in the most desperate situations is the power of acceptance which opens the door for changing.

The knowledge of the heart is coming from beyond the rational world, sometimes experienceable as a kind of “silent voice” or “inner voice” also as intuition in “thoughtform” or as “immediate knowledge” but we should never change it with the voice of the social conscience or the multiple voices of wanting. The latter are the sum of our internalized value education and a pure social and universal factor. The voice of the heart is the truth of our real being beyond the outer form. We find the greatest danger for the inexperienced beginner in the widespread confusion about the voice of the heart and the desire-body. An example: Normally addicted people are dominated by their craving and greed for the addictive substance or behaviour. Is this helpful? No way! To change the problem needs not only the yearning and the will of the addicted, a complicated psychological process starts to build a new pattern of behaviour. Our whole education and socialization are rooted in an excessive emphasis of thinking which obstructs the access to the emotional being, makes the ego impermeable for the light and creates countless confusions. We can see this consternation especially when we fall in love and “think” the loved one must be ours and it would be our heart who wants it. The voice of the heart is gentle and let the things go, there is no attachment in the heart, nothing “to want or to have” only loving presence, so to say “to be” with an all-encompassing gesture of releasing. In other words: The nature of our true heart, hidden deep behind the emotional body, wants to be the servant of the Divine while all what is called “the gut or instincts and the emotions” are the expression of the egosense.

Our heart is especially the sphere of giving and unconditioned love whereas our mind is the “business-soul”, a dealer and bargainer. The “busy or thinking mind” is a dualistic instrument, it “loves” only under conditions, all has its plus and minus and like a book-keeper it organizes what is called “love” or a “healthy relationship”. The consequence of its dualistic restrictions is the inability to love or to be all-embracing. What thinking calls “love” is the result of the old habits of judging. All his giving is accompanied by expectations of receiving. It wants to have benefit or at least to be in balance. It needs a sincere self-examination with deep introspection and insight to take away the mask of our self-image. The thinker or the ego hates nothing more than to be shattered.

The path into our heart is full of traps, anyway, it is more than worthwhile to meet the challenge and dig for the treasure of its fruits. The moment we find a real understanding of what I called the “releasing embrace” we know our true heart, “Anahata”’, the fourth chakra. Then we lost the wrong identification with the mind, and we wake up from the nightmare of duality and separation created by thinking. Love takes place when we are fulfilling the step from the thinking mind to the silent mind, from separation into Oneness or - with the parable of Jesus - when the lost son (unconsciousness) comes back home (consciousness) what is not a step back or forward but upward.

Again: All knowledge of thinking is created by drawing distinctions. The botanist, for instance, makes a distinction between firs and pines. This is how all scientific knowledge is and will be found, it is created or produced by making distinctions. But does this “knower” really know the fir or the pine? Walking in the nature and being impressed from their beauty is a quite different way of gathering “knowledge”. We do not find names and terms but the Joy of Being. Words are never enough to express this kind of being touched or in contact. And often enough experiences like this are leading us to the overwhelming impression of being a part and in the last meaning of being one with the life and all that is.

When thinking stops there is no nothing, first it seems to be nothing but going on we discover that this nothing is like a gap in which the life is entering as presence, as a state in which we find all we need. With the stop of thinking awareness arises. Awareness enables us to watch the thoughts, we can so to say split the mind in two parts. While the one is in silence and only observing, the other remains busy with operations of thinking. As soon we are enabled to identify with the silence, we are the same time able to disidentify from thinking. Then we realize that we are not our thoughts and emotions, we become their witness. We lose our “identity” as “the thinker, the ego” but we gain awareness and this awareness, this inner attention leads to the experience of true Consciousness.

Awareness is a state of receptivity in which our perception is free from the mental deformations. We receive the world without attachment, without judgment and without resistance. We participate although we are not the owners, we do not grasp; we see the things as they are. When the mind stops, we are beyond the ego-identity, beyond craving, therefore there is no suffering, only the Joy of Being. Inside we are in silence, in a “timeless time” and in marvelling delight. We are intuitively realizing the difference between thinking and awareness; we “see” that thinking is a power of the brain, transitory and mortal, and we “feel” that awareness is a child of Consciousness or the eternal. The moment we are aware of the present moment, of the “Now”, we experience ourselves as parts of Consciousness similar like a drop of water is a part of the ocean, howsoever “small, unimportant, petty and dispensable” but still the same stuff, full of Ananda, full of the divine beatitude.

According to Hinduism Being, Consciousness and Bliss or Beatitude is one: Sat-chitananda. Therefore, the way to Joy will lead us the same time to Being and Consciousness. One of the ways to access the experience of the Joy of Being is the discovery of the beauty of life which can be found every moment by a shift of our inner attention, by a small step out of the identification with the mind and an easy observation of what is going on here and now.

What do we actually perceive? How is the impression of the “objects” of our senses now, at this moment? By noticing the present moment, the mind stops by itself because the presence and the mind cannot coexist. The mind is concerned with interpretations in the terms of the past and the future but the present moment can only be detected from awareness. What we may experience as “thinking” in the presence is no longer the “I’m thinking”; it is rather a kind of “seeing thoughts”. What counts is to be fully aware of the presence, of what is now. Then the process of thinking which only eclipses what we perceive with its old-used associations stops for a moment, and we discover a non-divided view in which the “object” and the observer becoming one, the beholder is absorbed from the object, the “subject” is the “object” and for this moment we are back in the Oneness. Episodes like this are really treasures, it seems as if we would lose temporarily “ourselves”, and indeed the “ego” is suspended, we are beyond the happiness-unhappiness-continuum and in Ananda, we are Ananda.

The pictures here are neither professional nor “perfect” but together with the aphorism they may become an “aha – I see”-effect, a door-closer for the thinker and a dooropener for the Joy of Being. Ananda is nothing we could strive for; it neither needs effort nor intention, but a kind of inner readiness. Sure, we can strive for happiness, but Ananda happens beyond our will in accordance to our readiness to keep quiet. Therefore, behold the pictures and don’t look for Ananda!

When we are aware of the present moment the time stops together with thinking because time is a mental construct. Our forefathers lived with the cycle of the seasons and the nature. Our definition of time shows a linearity which our ancestors did not focus because their paradigm of time was the constant return. Our paradigm of time is progressing without knowing where to, our time is running, is passing through our fingers like melting ice in our hands. Yes, there may be something like an “objective” time. We are born, we undergo the ageing process, and we will die. But there is no