What follows is an edited version of a notebook that I filled in 2019 with random thoughts and quotes I didn’t want to forget, along my journey in search of happiness and truth.

 

***

Am I afraid I’m not able to express myself anymore…?

Through neither words nor art…?

 

If I’m not satisfied with the work I’ve done during the day, I feel guilty and don’t go to bed because it feels like a waste of time.

 

I feel like I’ve got all the pieces, but I don’t know how to put them together…

 

It’s okay to be tired and to feel shitty sometimes. It’s okay… I’m trying to do something that’s very difficult… and important.

Something most people wouldn’t be able to do…

I’m trying to find the Truth.

I’m trying to express myself and communicate that Truth to others.

I’m trying to meditate, to draw, to read, to live well, to be happy(..?)

I’m trying.

And it’s hard.

It’s so easy to get distracted…

It’s so easy to give up…

 

“The moment you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked… exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside… showing too much of yourself… that’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”

– Neil Gaiman

 

I need to find balance between what I can be and what I can’t help being.

I need to find balance between the Absolute and the Contingent, the Relative.

I need to find balance between Emptiness and Experience, between Truth and Illusion, between Shunyata and Maya.

I need to find a way to not dwell on the Non-conditioned.

 

Willpower is not enough… meditating is not enough… you can’t live “in” the world, and not being “of” the world, not from the get go, at least.

 

Emptiness is a habit the mind has to cultivate.

 

Allow yourself to happen.

Watch yourself happen.

 

***

 

“Nausea” – by Jean-Paul Sartre

 

Nausea is a kind of existential anguish that burdens the philosopher when reality, when Existence is revealed to him as contingent, gratuitous, redundant, thus losing meaning.

 

“Why are these people here? Why do they eat?

“It’s true they don’t know they exist.

“But I know it. I pretend like I don’t, but I know I exist and that they exist. And if I knew the art of persuading, I would sit beside that white-haired gentleman and explain to him what existence is.”

 

“This is Nausea, then: this blinding evidence?

“… And now I know: I exist – the world exists – and I know the world exists.

“I place my hand on the seat and I quickly pull it back: it exists. This thing where I sit, where my hand was, is called a seat.”

 

“Things got rid of their names.

“And all of a sudden, in a single moment, the veil rips open, I understand, I see.

“[Nausea] is not an illness anymore, nor a temporary fit: it’s my very self.

“Words disappeared, and, with them, the meaning of things, the custom of their use, the tenuous defining marks that men traced on their surface.

“Existence was finally unveiled…

“The identity of things and the distinction between them were but a facade, a coat of paint. This paint had dissolved, what remained were soft and monstrous masses in disarray – naked.”

 

“Redundant: the only relation I could find between myself and those trees, those railings, those cobblestones.

“Each and every one of them escaped the relations that I tried to confine them in. Of these relations (that I persisted to keep so as to delay the crumbling of the human world, the world of measures, of quantities, of directions) I could feel their arbitrariness.”

 

“The word Absurdity is now born under my pen. And without clearly defining anything, I knew that I found the key to Existence, the key to my Nausea, to my very life.

“Absurdity… in the little and colourful world of men, an event can only be absurd relative to something else: depending on the surrounding situation.

“But just a moment ago, I experienced the absolute: the absolute or the absurd.

“Oh! How could I convey this with words? Absurd, irreducible; unexplainable… the world of explanations and reasons is not that of existence.”

 

“This moment was extraordinary, I understood the Nausea, now, I owned it. What’s essential is the contingent. I mean that, by definition, existence is not the necessary.

“Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city, myself. And when you happen to realize this, your stomach turns and everything starts floating… that is Nausea.”

 

“…it’s always the same thing, a paste that stretches and stretches… and it’s so uniform that you wonder how people could think of inventing names, of making distinctions.”

 

Every human work is an arrangement of Reality according to a concept.

Art is the projection of the mind upon Reality.

When we pour ourselves into a work of art, that self-image, that self-image that we [think we] are, becomes independent from the event, the phenomenon, the existence it was (erroneously) linked with, and deceptively painted on.

At that point the self-image, the concept we [think we] truly are, doesn’t exist anymore [because it never existed], but it only “exists” in the equally deceptive thoughts of those who’ll enjoy our work.

Or: art is a way to share our experience (not our self-image), the experience that we are, that we truly are, and when other experiences (other people) will entertain that work of art, we will become the same for a moment, and we will be closer to knowing we are the same, always. 

DOES THIS JUSTIFY OUR EXISTENCE?

Do you think that living on as ideas is better than “being” deceptive names painted on an arbitrary part of existence? Do you think that the contingent nature of our existence is something to be ashamed of, something that we need to justify? Quite the opposite. What’s contingent and absurd is not our existence, it’s trying to arbitrarily tear and carve reality to confine it into those deceptive names, and our self-images are no different. Don’t make the mistake of taking refuge in ideas, when running from ideas. Experience without distinction and without identity is viscerally exhilarating and intimately fulfilling.

 

***

FORM IS EMPTINESS, EMPTINESS IS FORM.

DO NOT DWELL ON THE NON-CONDITIONED.

EXISTENTIAL WEIGHT AND LONGING FOR THE ABSOLUTE.

 

MEDITATE ON EMPTINESS, BUT DO NOT ABANDON GREAT COMPASSION.

 

EXISTENTIAL EMPTINESS

 

My greatest fear is to be sure I’ve Understood, and to not realize there’s something I’m missing….

 

If I were to ever reach the experience of Ultimate Reality through meditation, how can I be sure it won’t be a subjective experience, dictated, just like Maya, by my human cognitive apparata?

Dual experience is not “human”, why should pure experience be?

 

ALL PHENOMENA ARE UTTERLY DEVOID OF ANY INTRINSIC NATURE OF THEIR OWN.

 

I’d like to lock myself in a tower and read and meditate…

I’m not ready to help anyone.

 

Experience is the blurry edge between the body and the world, through which the world experiences the body as much as the body experiences the world.

We are but this experience. And the world is our outside as much as the body is our inside.

 

Maybe I needed someone to tell me about Reality.

Maybe we has seen enough ideal worlds, with ideal characters, ideal dangers, ideal wars, ideal feelings, enough books that lack the slightest will to question the fact that all these ideal concepts have inherent existence, that all these feelings, these sorrows and pleasures, are but a blurry product of our minds.

We need to think about Reality.

We can’t behave like all of this was normal.

Because people who think they are an inherently existing entity, separate from the rest of the world, won’t help but spend their own life distracted, so as to avoid being overwhelmed by the existential weight, anguish and dread that such a conviction entails.

 

***

 

“Walk with me” – Thich Nhat Hanh

 

One must grow beyond youthful uncertainties to survive. 

 

At first it seemed like a passing cloud, but after several hours I began to feel my body turning to smoke and floating away. I became a faint wisp of a cloud. I’d always thought of myself as a solid entity, and suddenly I saw that I’m not solid at all. I saw that the entity that I had taken to be me was really a fabrication. My true nature, I realized, was much more real. Both uglier and more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.

 

Friends want you to appear in the familiar form they know, but that is impossible. How could we continue to live if we were changeless? To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again in the storms that make life possible.

 

I experienced destruction upon destruction and felt a tremendous longing for the presence of those I love. Even though I knew that if they were present, I would have to chase them away, or run away myself.

 

No one would recognize me in my new manifestation. No one close to me would know it was I.

 

I knew early on that finding truth is not the same as finding happiness. You aspire to see the truth, but once you’ve seen it, you cannot avoid suffering. Otherwise you have seen nothing at all.

 

All that remained was a deeply rooted peace. I sat like a mountain… and I smiled.

 

– from “Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962-1966”, by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

***

 

Shankara’s “CREST-JEWEL OF DISCRIMINATION” (VIVEKA-CHUDAMANI)

 

“Brahman — the absolute existence, knowledge and bliss [satchitananda] — is real. The universe is not real. Brahman and Atman (man’s inner Self) are one.”

 

The Reality behind all our experiences is the deep consciousness, the only thing that never leaves us.

Brahman is partly apparent to our normal consciousness also. Brahman is Existence, and we all know that we exist.

 

The claim to individuality for ourselves implies individuality elsewhere.

 

Even a little effort in meditation and discrimination will reward us with insight and conviction that Reality is available.

 

Among all means of liberation, DEVOTION is supreme. 

To seek earnestly to know one’s real nature.

 

The wise must personally exert all their powers to get liberation from the bondage of the world, just as they would personally take remedies against physical ailments.

 

Caste, creed, family and lineage do not exist in Brahman. Brahman has neither name nor form; it transcends merit and demerit;

Meditate upon this truth.

 

Learn the truth from the scriptures, reason upon it, and then know, by your own direct experience, that the Atman within you is the Atman in all. Strive thus to destroy this illusion, even to its last traces.

 

Meditate on the truth “THAT ART THOU”

 

Lose all sense of separation and enter into silence.

Realize that you are one with the ground of existence.

 

Cease to identify yourself with race, clan, name, form and walk of life.

 

Discern the reality and realize “I AM THAT” (SOHAM)

 

Under all circumstances, always, everywhere, and in all respects, you must look upon everything as Brahman, and Brahman alone.

 

If a man is learned, capable of discriminating between real and unreal, desirous of liberation, how can he cling like a child to what is unreal?

 

It is impossible even for the wise to destroy the ego at a single blow.

 

Fasten the mind upon Brahman.

 

This is the final declaration of Vedanta:

Brahman is all — this universe and every creature.

 

I am Reality.

I dwell within all beings as the Atman,

the ground of all phenomena.

I am beyond the grasp of thought, 

the essence of all things.

I am the Truth.

 

There is neither birth nor death, neither bound nor aspiring soul, neither liberated soul nor seeker after liberation — this is the ultimate and absolute truth.

 

The rarest qualities in this world are: speaking sweet words with compassion; being learned without pride; being heroic and also forgiving; being rich without attachment to riches.

 

***

 

A fantasy without wars?

 

Virtue and behavioural norms aren’t constraints we need to impose on ourselves, they’re natural consequences of knowing Reality, they’re coherent with its practical implementation. 

 

It’s hard to lose a habit.

It’s hard to get used to emptiness.

And to feel compassion at the same time.

 

I want to talk about the human condition.

I want humanity to realize it exists.

I want to talk about existence and emptiness.

 

I don’t know how to be normal anymore…

 

ALL I NEED TO SEE IS BRAHMAN

AND DELUDED EXPERIENCES.

 

The only way to understand the Truth is to make a habit of living it.

 

I’m not this body.

I’m not this experience.

I’m not this.

I’m not.

“I” is not.

 

It’s always about people

And their stories

And what you have in common

It’s always about the human condition

And the absurdity of it all.

 

It’s all more complex,

And at the same time more simple,

Than we could possibly imagine.

 

What’s wrong?

Why do you find drawing so exhausting?

Is it the fear of failure?

Or is it just laziness?

 

Do I fear I’m not capable enough?

 

I don’t even know what it is that makes me feel so bad…

 

I fear meeting people that I know, because I don’t feel like playing the part of the normal person. Maybe I fear their judgment… but I can’t live like this…

I need to find a way to be myself spontaneously without fearing to be judged…

 

I’m tired of balancing my genetic and cultural side with the knowledge of emptiness.

I don’t know who I am anymore, I don’t know what I need to do nor how to do it…

 

I keep dreaming about people I don’t want to meet…

I wish I could be recognized only by those I want to…

I don’t want to be recognized.

 

I dream about what I’m programmed to want.

Relationships that give me a feeling of belonging and safety…

 

I changed so much… it’s absurd to me that people may think they know me only by recognizing my face…

 

I feel bad because I’m going against everything I’m made for, knowing this will make me feel better. These poor cognitive apparata are rejecting themselves.

 

The self-rejection of consciousness.

The painful process of rejecting your belief in the inherent existence (permanence and independence, identity and distinction) of concepts by using those same concepts, and also while having to use them to function in your life and society.

 

On the platform of a remote station

I feel like I’m in a limbo

One train after the other

Ever new and different people

A place of passage

Strangers that will never meet again

I’ve been here for an hour

And no one’s got any reason to think that I let more than one train pass

No one could recognize me

I’m nothing but an extra inside their life

Inside the story where they’re the main character

I can be the audience for a while, instead of an actor

I can escape judgement for a while

What would it be like if I knew them all?

Will I ever be able to live as spontaneously as these people appear spontaneous to me?

 

It’s hard to overcome the approximation of my cognitive apparata and the blurriness of my senses, my programming and to derive from reality a conceptual model so as to project it onto reality itself… but it’s all part of being made for maintaining the arrangement of reality that is this organism, that is me…

Why does reality spontaneously give rise to this kind of self-sustained phenomenon?

It’s hard to maintain awareness of unity.

 

I’ve reached a different point of view from that of most people…

How can I have a normal relationship?

My perspective is too distant now…

Happiness, friendship, beauty, passion, love… they don’t have the same meaning anymore…

 

The absurdity of existence lies solely on the shoulders of self.

 

WE ARE THE SAME THING.

 

An idea is like a virus… but, in order to take root, the idea must be taught… it must be disguised so that it feels like your own. Not essays, but art. Existential weight.

 

THIS IS THE ONLY TIME IT’S REALLY POSSIBLE. FOR ALL.

 

We’re the same thing.

We’re all blurry phenomena,

Edgeless waves of Reality.

 

Whoever you are.

We are part of the same thing.

And I want you to know it.

I want you to be happy.

 

How much does it take to change the world?

 

***

ESSENCE OF THE HEART SUTRA

The Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings

 

The source of our suffering lies in a deeply embedded tendency to grasp at enduring realities where there are none, particularly at an enduring sense of self.

 

We must make every effort to utilize what little time we have as well as we possibly can.

 

All things are by nature interdependent.

 

The very fact that something is dependently originated means that it is necessarily devoid of an essential, or independent, reality.

Thus it is said that anything that is dependently originated must also be, in actual fact, empty.

 

We first grasp at a sense of self, and then we extend that grasping onto others.

Not recognizing the emptiness of self and other, we mistakenly grasp at both as autonomous, objectively real, and independently existent.

There is a very intimate causal connection between our grasping at a sense of self and the arising of destructive emotions within us. As long as we remain under the dominion of this erroneous belief, we have no room for lasting joy — this is what it means to be imprisoned in the cycle of existence.

 

Suffering is nothing but existence enslaved to ignorance.

 

Only the self that is being grasped as intrinsically real needs to be negated. The self as a conventional phenomenon is not rejected.

 

We must develop a deep aspiration to give up, to gain freedom from our conditioned existence, which is characterized by mental and physical aggregates under the control of karma (the consequence of our actions) and afflictions (ignorance, repulsion, attraction).

This is true renunciation.

We need to renounce the inherent existence of attractive phenomena as much as repulsive ones.

 

The most direct method for overcoming the mental afflictions is to cultivate insight into emptiness.

 

Central axioms that characterize the Buddhist understanding of existence

• All composite phenomena are impermanent

All the things and events that we experience go through a perpetual process of coming into being, change and cessation that occurs continuously, moment by moment. This “momentariness”, then, is the Buddhist definition of impermanence.

• All contaminated phenomena are unsatisfactory

This kind of suffering is of the third level, the pervasive suffering that is the very nature of our conditioned existence. It is pervasive since all our actions are currently performed in ignorance of the true nature of phenomena, and therefore the result of these actions, our experiences, are all caused by, and remain under the domination of, karma and mental afflictions.

• All phenomena are empty and devoid of self-existence

All phenomena, including the self, lack intrinsic existence; however, because of our fundamental ignorance, we ascribe intrinsic existence to them. The more one uncovers the truth about the nature of reality, the weaker the force of this ignorance becomes.

• Nirvana is true peace

Once we deeply ascertain the distorted reality of our mistaken perspective within meditation, its dominion over us will begin to diminish gradually and naturally. Such freedom — complete liberation from the ignorance that grasps onto the self-existence of things — is the only true, lasting state of happiness and spiritual freedom, the only true peace, the only true liberation.

 

All phenomena are mere name and designation.

 

Any daily practices we engage in will by themselves be unable to counter this fundamental ignorance. We must thoroughly clarify our understanding of the nature of emptiness. Without this clear understanding, visualizing deities and reciting mantras could even reinforce our deluded grasping at the objective reality of world and self.

 

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not other than form, form too is not other than emptiness.”

 

Avoid the misapprehension that emptiness is an absolute reality or an independent truth.

Emptiness is a characteristic of form; emptiness is form’s mode of being. They are not two independent realities.

 

Transcending all ignorance one naturally becomes free of fear.

 

A deep understanding of emptiness can lead to powerful renunciation, which is the aspiration to free oneself from the suffering of cyclic existence, and it can serve also as the basis for cultivating strong compassion toward all beings.

 

***

“On the path of meditation one should abide in equipoise on the single taste of suchness.”

 

I need to understand my spiritual journey.

I need to know why I started questioning reality.

This is why I need to re-read and type out my notebooks.

 

I need to talk about the human condition and the Absolute with existential weight. So as to move people.

To achieve that I need to start from my own story.

How did I get to where I am now?

How do I infect other minds with the same spark?

How do I inspire an existential and Absolute perspective?

If I don’t remember what convinced me, how can I hope to convince others?

A need for meaning.

Dissatisfaction.

I need to convince people these things are important.

 

Everyone’s broken.

Until they realize they’re not.

 

What kind of artist am I?

 

I CANNOT REALIZE THE ABSOLUTE THROUGH CONVENTIONAL EXPERIENCES.

 

What’s the spark that lights the fire of the Quest?

To realize that you exist

And that you don’t know what it means.

 

The absurdity of Existence consists in realizing the arbitrariness of definitions.

 

The problem with enlightened people is that they’re not relatable, and their teachings are too obscure. The Truth needs to be explained clearly, without too many metaphors nor ambiguous words.

If the need for Truth is not yet conscious, it has to be created, inspired.

 

We are part of the same phenomenon.

 

There’s no absolute distinction between anything.

 

Explain Shunyata to children.

 

Maybe you don’t have to understand what kind of artist you are. There are no rules.

Do what you feel like doing.

Create your own culture.

“Artist”, “writer”, these are just labels, conventional boxes.

 

I feel my mood fluctuate in real time, following the trail of my thoughts…

 

Seven billion stories.

 

“Once we see the world from the standpoint of emptiness of inherent existence, the history of any conventionally designated entity is but an arbitrary stage carved out of a vast continuum of interdependent phenomena.”

– The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

 

THE SAME PHENOMENON

We’re the same phenomenon.

We’re all part of the same phenomenon.

 

As there is no identity in an ever-changing person, there’s no identity in the ever-changing Reality.

 

My goal is to create a different kind of story from what we’re used to. A story that is about reality and the human condition, but not self-referentially, not relative to conflicts contained within reality itself (violence, illness, relationships). I want to try and explore both the human being and these conflicts, relative to existence itself, to the nature of reality: the mystery that is the fundamental conflict of our experience.

 

DRAW THE UNDRAWABLE.

The perfume of skin.

The loss for words.

The arbitrariness of forms.

 

“I really just want to share where I am, at this stage of my life, as honestly and as vulnerably as I can.”

– Nathaniel Drew

 

When you don’t feel like doing something, meditate, read, draw, go out for a walk, don’t overload your mind with stimula and inputs.

 

I don’t know how to talk about what I care for the most…

 

“Look how brilliant you are. Your mind has created the perfect metaphor. You’re high above us all, alone in the sky, and you understand everything except how to land. Now, I’m just an idiot, but I’m on the ground. I can bring you home.”

– Sherlock, S04E03 “The Final Problem”

 

The point is not about trying to get to the ground…

It’s about trying to bring people high above in the sky.

 

There’s a reason behind your action → free will doesn’t exist.

There’s no reason behind your action → free will doesn’t exist.

 

It’s a weird kind of intelligence that of movie-geniuses… memory and ability to solve problems, but utter disinterest in the problem of Reality, utter blindness to the Quest for the Ultimate Truth.

How can someone be really intelligent, and yet not be concerned with finding Truth nor with matters of existential weight..?

 

I’M HAPPY

 

I get up late…

I don’t feel like doing anything…

I feel tired…

 

It’s hard enough to glimpse the true nature of Reality, but the truly difficult part is to live accordingly.

 

You think you’re an entity, separate from the rest of the world, when you’re actually a part, arbitrarily and approximately defined, of the world itself.

 

All will be well.