What follows is an edited version of a notebook that I filled in the summer of 2018 with random thoughts and quotes I didn’t want to forget, along my journey in search of happiness and truth.
***
What is happiness’s last shore?
Anātman. The existential relief.
The dissolving of the burden of Self.
I want to master my mind.
I need to learn how to think.
Constantly bombarded with weapons for mass distraction.
Philosophy?
“I” doesn’t exist. This body is “I” as much as anything else.
All phenomena are utterly devoid of any intrinsic characteristics or nature of their own.
Phenomena lack a permanent and independent identity.
Every plurality/definition is conventional.
“Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond,
Enlightenment, welcome!”
I’m conventional.
SUNYATA – emptiness
Nothing has ontological essence and all things are merely conceptual, without substance.
From the point of view of the Universe, humans and their precious consciousness are just events, interactions of particles, like any other.
All concepts lose meaning…
All definitions empty out…
Everything is so self-referential!
It’s not easy to recognize contradictions within reasonings.
I need to learn how to think!
I conceive thoughts that I’m not able to express…
***
“Ultimate Questions” by Bryan Magee
“The world of experience, the world investigated by science, is a field of interaction between two inexplicables: experiencing subjects and things as they are in themselves.”
“How come everything exists?” looks to me like a question to which nothing could possibly be an answer.
There is nothing else to which everything could be related, nothing else in terms of which it could be expressed.”
“My first concern was always with my own existential situation, not with what others have written; I was always trying to make sense of my own understanding, not that of others.”
‘We can experience and understand only in the contingent and limited forms and modes of understanding that are available to us.’
No matter anyone’s (or anything’s) modes of understanding, Reality as it is in itself is free of conceptual construction. What precedes experience cannot be experienced, let alone conceptualized.
“Knowing itself is contingent on our contingent apparatus for doing it, and can take only such forms as the apparatus makes possible.”
“To my mind the most important single truth in philosophy is that most of reality is unknowable to us, and – because beyond all possibility of apprehension – unconceptualizable.”
“Existence is the unbelievable thing. The fact of there being anything at all, is terminally inexplicable.”
“After existence, consciousness is the most marvelous thing. In so far as I am aware of the pure experience of being alive, it is this inexpressible awareness.”
“I know that I exist, but I do not know what I am. Or rather, I do not know what “I” is.”
Existence, awareness and identity. The first problems.
“Permanently facing the fact that we do not know what we are, is something few of us seem able to do. Most, I believe, avoid thinking about it. The way one thinks and lives is, then, shallow, without justification or integrity. One is living “as if”.
“One is playing a game, though like many games it can be played with intense seriousness. If one lives like that all the time, one goes to one’s grave without ever having lived seriously or intensely. One has only played, to get through the time while avoiding facing the reality of the situation.”
“Some of us feel compelled by something that Socrates put into words as “the unexamined life is not worth living”.
***
What is happening..?
Me.
Can’t you escape this illusion?
Contradiction between reality in itself and conscious experience.
What if reality in itself was experience? Not the content of experience, but experience itself, presence.
I don’t want to experience reality…
I want to BE reality.
Why should the mind conjure up this illusion?
I need to be able to represent reality.
Starting from the contingent and aiming for the Absolute.
I feel paralysed.
Within the breadth of my thoughts and movements.
Like the piece of a game…
I feel like I’m drowning in doubt,
Like I’m gasping for the Absolute…
All we are
And the idea we have of ourselves
Is contingent.
This kind of experience, which we cannot escape from, is contingent.
I feel unsuited for living.
I don’t want to learn how to live…
To learn how to get distracted…
If everything is impersonal, thoughts and experience, just as a storm or a galaxy, what’s this? Why do I perceive that I perceive? Aren’t sensibility and consciousness physical and material interactions just like any other?
Are we an illusion? Maybe an illusion that’s useful for survival?
Why survival then? Why the self-sustainment of this physical system?
Maybe it’s just inertia…
We are but those few systems that happen to sustain themselves over time.
Maybe experience is more fundamental than we think…
Life is but a constant tension to maintain an unstable balance, survival, the functioning of the individual.
Language comes from the illusion of plurality and fuels it.
I’ve always suffered from my lack of creativity…
The world needs REAL stories.
REAL people.
I need to know how to tell my self.
Why haven’t I ever been able to let go..?
Do I fear others’ opinions?
Do I fear losing control of myself and the situation?
Do I fear lowering my guard?
Do I fear being betrayed?
Do I fear being hurt?
Has my trust in people worn out?
Where am I at?
I’m at the point where the most plausible thing is that the “I” doesn’t exist. But what’s this conscious experience, then?
Why should conscious experience need an “I”?
I’m at the point where I need to learn how to be present through meditation and mindfulness, how to think through studying philosophy and how to express myself through studying animation.
Why the self-sustained balance of life?
What am I waiting for?
An insight?
An epiphany?
Concepts, and by extension language, fuel the illusion of permanence and plurality (and thus essence).
When did we start naming things?
Self-referential stories / Existential stories
How can you avert your eyes in front of the absurdity of existence?
Today is one of those days
That I feel like nothing
Is worth doing…
I’m constantly exhausted
Because the weight of existence weighs
Incessantly upon my consciousness.
Sometimes I feel like I’m living by inertia…
Nothing has meaning, if I can’t find a reason to live…
Life isn’t intrinsically sacred.
No amount of reasoning will put an end to this illusion.
Distractions. Distractions. Distractions.
Anything to not witness the absurdity of existence.
Anything to not recognise the illusory nature of reality.
Anything to not acknowledge our ignorance.
We take everything for granted…
Do I enjoy being sad?
Do I enjoy playing the victim?
No… you just feel like you don’t deserve to be happy.
The danger is to prefer being sad rather than taking responsibility over your happiness, while blaming others for your condition.
Am I doing something wrong?
I don’t know…
You’re looking for an idea to hold on to.
I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get it.
We are made for surviving, consuming energy, reproducing and dying… who am I kidding here…?
We aren’t “made for” anything. Every label is conventional. Life is conventional. Do what you feel like doing, help those who suffer and seek the Truth.
The experiencer is an experience.
The thinker is a thought.
The thinker is a thought.
Reality escapes all concepts.
It’s too much…
I am nothing…
No one exists…
Why am I this particular point of view?
It’s this particular point of view that is “me”…
Why am I me..??
I can’t stand it anymore…
I feel like I’m choking…
Nothing makes sense… there’s no reason…
Why does everyone take THIS for granted??
I’m so scared…
I don’t know what to do…
I know nothing…
What do I do?
What’s wrong with me?
And I don’t even know how to explain what’s happening to me…
I don’t know how to explain why I feel bad…
I don’t know how to explain what I’m thinking…
It’s too messy…
And then I feel like I can’t talk about it with anyone…
I’m tired of living without a reason…
I’m really tired…
“It sounds terrible that everything is going to die and pass away and here you are, thinking that happiness, sanity and security consist in clinging to things which can’t be clung to and then, in any case, there isn’t anybody to cling to them.
The whole thing is a weaving of smoke.
But, as soon as you really discover this and you stop clinging to change, you see, finally, that there is no duality, if you keep identifying yourself with some sort of stable entity, you don’t acknowledge your union, your inseparability from everything else that there is.”
– Alan Watts
Maybe the only thing that’s left to do is to tell everyone about it…
What if intelligent life-forms reach a point where they realize the survival of the species is not worth it and stop reproducing?
I feel bad…
…and I realize I’ve never felt better…
We project our concepts upon the reality we are questioning. Contaminating it.
If you keep doing this, you are never going to find uncontaminated answers.
I always fear there’s something I’m not getting…
I don’t feel a sense of belonging toward the human kind…
I’m convinced I’ve got no merit in being me.
I want to learn how to think.
I want to learn how to question the biggest number of concepts in the most effective and thorough way.
I want to learn how to consider all possibilities and recognize all possible consequences.
Nagarjuna (200AD)
All concepts will always prove to be inadequate in conceiving reality.
Do you want to be somebody or anybody?
You are somebody if you face reality and do what you think is important.
What troubles me is: why this subjective experience?
I don’t know what I’m supposed to think…
I’m so confused… regarding both the nature of reality and my future…
My head spins,
Such is my ignorance.
What am I looking for?
Before I just wanted to be happy… and now?
Do I want to understand?
I realize I know nothing, I’m awe-stuck at reality, my existence is a source of wonder.
Yes, I just want to understand. Happiness doesn’t interest me.
But where should I begin?
What’s the easiest and most natural way to reach enlightenment?
***
“Living with the Himalayan Masters” by Swami Rama
I don’t know what to believe in anymore…
“This is all Brahman,
Being offered by Brahman
And taken by Brahman.”
Is the desire to reach enlightenment egoistic?
On the contrary: enlightenment is the extinction of the ego.
The highest first.
“A human being does not actually own or possess anything, it is not necessary to renounce anything, but the sense of possessiveness.“
Integral non-dualism
Absolute reality in its essence is non-dual, non-conceptual, and logically indefinable.
According to non-dualism (advaita), reality is beyond materialism, causality, structure, and number. This same conviction is expressed in the philosophy of Nirguna Brahman in Vedanta, in the concept of Shunyata in Buddhist philosophy, in the concept of Tao in Chinese philosophy, and in the philosophy of Tattvatita in Tantra.
It is not necessary for the modern man to realize the goal of non-dualistic ascetism through renunciation. Meditation in action with non-attachment also prepares the sadhaka for awakening.
Non-attachment and constant awareness of absolute Reality.
Being alone happily means enjoying the constant company – the constant awareness – of the Reality.
***
Derive Truth from the naked human condition.
I need to bring order to my ideas…
I feel so much like an outsider…
I’m completely at loss.
Should I accept the illusion? Should I live “as if”?
It will all be fine.
When we don’t take for granted that which exists, it is absurd that it does.
I can’t take upon myself the burden of imposing existence.
I don’t feel like I have the right to impose existence on a human being.
When we don’t take it for granted, Existence becomes absurd.
In the very moment we stop taking it for granted, Existence reveals its own Absurdity.
No one has the right to force someone else to exist…
Why am I running away…?
Why don’t I know what’s right anymore?
What am I running from?
It all seems so normal…
Our own
Condition
Is absurd.
What’s information?
What’s awareness?
Is it a basic property of Reality or an emergent one?
Is life precious? Are “we” privileged?
Life is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. But, given that we are alive, being grateful is just smarter than focusing only on the negative.
Should we be grateful for being human beings?
Self-referential… (to feel gratitude is relative to being human)
We are human beings, though.
We couldn’t be anything else.
Being human is contingent.
Gratitude is contingent.
We are animals. If we are to raise above our nature, we need to look for the Absolute beyond our conventional experience.
Why don’t I trust?
Because I fear being hurt??
Do I fear getting attached?
Why should this mind conjure up the illusion that is “me”…?
We climb onto ideals and concepts.
We try in every way to get distracted and to ignore that we are limited by our own nature. And we are so good at it that we forget we live in this constant tension, the illusion that we are special.
Who could have hoped that the rules would question the game?
If “this is all Brahman, being offered by Brahman and taken by Brahman”, then what’s the fucking point?? What’s this all about?
For a split second I feared the volume of my thoughts might bother someone…
“To stand in the midst of this […] whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, […] that is what I feel to be contemptible.”
-Nietzsche
I feel so stupid…
Is there an insight… that could bring me peace?
“Now” exists.
The ultimate test is always that of the blank page.
The meaning of life mustn’t depend on any condition other than life itself.
There is no way things ‘should’ go, artistically. Invent your own expression.
Everything seems like a distraction to me.
What isn’t??
I’m not satisfied with living “as if”.
I fear I won’t reach anything conclusive anytime soon…
And I’ll need to learn how to express myself anyway.
I’m restless…
‘Cause I’m filled
With impressions…
Existential anguish: The unbridgeable divide between Reality and my everyday perception of it.
I fear becoming happy… and for my happiness to be illusory…
Life is Distraction.
To impose life because you love it, and to take it because you hate it, is an act of arrogance. It means thinking you know life and reality with such accuracy and depth, that you claim the right to consciously impose it or take it, you choose to exist or to cease existing on behalf of someone else (including your future self).
I haven’t got Certainty.
And I’m afraid I’ll never reach it.
I’m so afraid.
The more you’re distracted and “happy”, the more you get excited for projects that’s not worth achieving.
The more you’re present, the more you prioritise what’s really important, and more and more things, that would have interested you before, will seem like a waste of time.
I’m tired…
I feel crushed by the weight of truth… a truth that I can only glimpse and that I have no idea how to reconcile with my everyday experience, with my life…
Spiritual Depression Reasons – Victor Oddo
- You change faster on the “inside” than you can keep up with on the “outside”;
- You are faced with your repressed issues very quickly;
- Your body struggles to keep up with all of the “rewiring” you are going through;
- The constant feeling of instability and uncertainty;
- It’s a bit of a process integrating the implications of your constantly expanding perception of things.
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