The Humble Pebble, The Lofty Hermit

So there was this hermit on a hilltop. He had been sitting still for so long that anthills grew around him, on him and in him. Trees had dropped their branches and with every wisp of air, the leaves tickled his nostrils. Vines crept mirthfully around him, entangling his thumb with his forefinger. The rain fell as on a pillar, the sun beat down its uv’s, the winds blasted his hair off their sockets and the cold froze his shoulders. Seasons passed, ants crawled, bees buzzed, spiders spun, and he sat on, seemingly oblivious. No water entered those lips, no food touched that belly.

He has attained Nirvana, everyone said, staring at him in awe. They filed past him in reverence which he never saw. They brought him food that he never ate. They adorned his seat with flowers that he never smelled. They chanted his praise that he never heard. They sought his blessings that he never gave. Years passed. He sat still.

He has attained Nirvana, everyone said. He is beyond hunger, thirst and greed, they said. No sorrow, no joy, no emotion could move him, they claimed. He is in the ultimate state, they said, that for which one needs to do penance for years, endure hunger and thirst for eons before they fade away. Forget family, forgo love, shun hate and ignore greed, until one feels that inner peace.

It takes a great deal of introspection, everyone said. Scouring hundreds of religions, thousands of gods, dealing with the mirth of agnostics and philosophical thoughts. It takes grit, they said. And a burning desire to find the truth.

He has attained Nirvana, everyone said, it takes devotion and deep thinking. He’s one that has gone beyond the need for food, for water, for love, for plain laughter. He has attained the state of nirvana, they said, he is now so still, so unmoved, so without desires and needs, much like the pebble at his foot, no one said.

The pebble at his foot.

The pebble at his foot had been lying there for years, no one said. They didn’t file past it in reverence. They never brought it food. They never adorned it with flowers. They never chanted it’s praise. They never sought it’s blessings. Years passed. Vines grew on it, ants danced on it. Spiders crawled, spiders spun. The pebble lay still.

It is beyond hunger, thirst and greed, no one said. No sorrow, no joy, no emotion could move it, no one claimed. The pebble must have done penance for years to reach this state, no one said. It is in the ultimate state, that for which one needs to be a seeker for years, endure hunger and thirst for eons before they fade away, no one said.

The pebble is the state of Nirvana, no one said.

The hermit and the pebble are but in the same state, no one said.

TIME

Time exists because of the intrinsic dynamism of matter. Electrons revolve around the nucleus. Planets revolve around the sun. Movement and time are intertwined. Remove motion, time stands still. But still exists as matter exists. Remove matter and time is erased. Matter is but energy personified. Electron protons neutrons, all oscillating between their elemental energy and physical forms. Pulsating between being and non being. When matter bursts forth from energy as an entity with mass, time is created. Time is but an entity, a manifestation.

Time is what makes this life seem like what it is. This perception of our minds that sees life as a passage through time.

Is time an illusion? Is time exclusive to this span between birth and death?

The past, present and the future are all singular at an instant. It is just our perception that stretches them out on a timeline, into the known and the yet unknown. Imagine consciousness as the pull of a zipper. As it runs along the two strands, experiences are locked into consciousness and the point of the zipper’s tag is perceived as the present moment, the zipped or intertwined part, the past and the free strands, the unknown future.

After all, the conscious brain started developing only a few million years ago and is evolutionarily still young, compared to other life functions. Consciousness seems to be limited to animals with brains. Are plants conscious? Or is their subconscious blissfully taking care of all the functions of living. Is consciousness even necessary to live? After all, all of our most important life sustaining functions are done unconsciously – breathing, blood flow, immunity..

Just like our perception of color and texture makes things seem so different than they really are, our perception of time is also an illusion Our conscious brain which is dependent on our senses is probably only capable of awareness at specific points and comes into awareness much as the zipper going through the teeth on the strands, the awareness and perception of present is defined as awareness of the conscious mind. The past present and future are always there like the teeth of the zipper. Its our awareness of those that moves, not our lives.

The Knowing Brain

To be is to know. We know what we are, why we are and how we are. We may not know that we know, but know, we do.

We limit ‘knowing’ to the senses we sense. To sight, smell, sound, taste or touch. These are the modes by which we ‘learn’ or gain knowledge. Once we perceive, it becomes a thought. We feel something, or see something …such as the feel of the wind or color of the sky and this leads to formulation of thoughts, say “oh, the sky is blue” or “the wind is gentle”. We then relegate these thoughts to the memory bank in our brain and this becomes part of the ‘conscious knowledge’ that it carries.

But there is a knowing that is beyond the realm of our senses that we need to try and bring to the forefront of our senses. We are so attuned to sensory perceptions that we ignore the non sensory perceptions of intuition or internal knowledge. The non-sensory perceptions have to be brought to the sensory bandwidth in order to be recognized and integrated into ‘knowledge’.

We ask questions because we perceive an anomaly. However, to perceive an anomaly we need some knowledge of normalcy. For how can we perceive discordance if we have no idea of harmony? When we see a jigsaw puzzle with a wrong piece, or a missing one, our brain knows it does not fit there because it has an idea of what would fit there. It is just a matter of finding that piece.

So it is with life.

Life is a jigsaw we try to comprehend. We seem to know some pieces, some seem obscure. But we sense what does not fit. Theories and philosophies try to fill in the gaps. The mind questions, parses, broods. We question paradigms that do not seem to fit or seem to have missing links. This is because our subconscious has an idea or knowledge of what should be there. It is just not in our conscious knowledge bank as of yet. So we try to bring the subconscious into the realm of thought, to decode if you will. This entire effort is just to be conscious of all that we already know. To find those missing jigsaw pieces. So the conscious brain continuously tugs at the subconscious, trying to open it out into the conscious.

Therefore, it is not that there are questions that we will never know or that the world is so complex that we do not have the capacity to decode it, it is just a matter of reaching deep into our subconscious and bringing the submerged knowledge onto the surface, of merging our conscious into our subconscious until there is no more need of perceived knowledge. The subconscious and conscious become one.