A Note in the Cosmic Counterpoint
Today I'm taking a break from work and was running errands the whole morning. Now I'm enjoying coffee at a neighbourhood mall, reading a page or two from my book and now typing these lines into my laptop. The malls are getting busier as it is Chinese New Year--the cacophonous season of gaiety and celebrations.
CNY to me is always an unnecessary distraction. Everyone had cleared their annual leaves at year end, the Gregorian year has already started, but suddenly, everything grinds to a halt again for another week-long holiday. The retail businesses are of course not complaining. The more celebrations there are, the more that people will spend. Everyone will be happy.
Businesses deserve it though. Many have been ruined by the last 2 years of pandemic; it's time for them to pick up the pieces again. The people are also eager to go about their normal lives--the good life that they used to know--eating, drinking and consuming. We seem to be able find happiness only through consumption.
I consume a lot too, but mostly digital content. I'm a cyber-amoeba, swimming in a sea of digital nutrients, absorbing them as I grow and transform into hopefully a higher life-form. But what is the point of growth and transformation? Ah, there--we've fallen into that intellectual trap again! Forever asking for a purpose and goal! Why can't we simply see growth and decay as natural processes of the universe?
My growth is part of the evolution of the universe. It is a momentary dip in entropy in a vast churning ocean of increasing disorder. No laws of nature have been violated by the existence of seemingly complex and sophisticated lifeforms on this planet. If we zoom out, we'll see how chaotic the cosmic ocean is, and the formations of tiny whirlpools, almost purposeful from their symmetry and movement are not deliberately engineered by some divine agency. It's just the laws of fluid mechanics in action, whenever certain conditions happen to arise.
A hurricane, consumes a coastal town, as part of its insatiable appetite for 'life' as it knows it. But no hurricane lasts forever: we too like hurricanes, would soon loose energy and blend back into the air and ocean. How beautiful is that. We arise like a note played by a cosmic orchestra, realising its fullness in a finite moment of time to be engulfed by silence again.
To be spiritual is to see the music for note, the forest for the trees. Everything is part of the grand cosmic orchestration--the forest, the ocean, the planets, stars and galaxies. This cosmic consciousness is what all mystics talk about; and here I am, this insignificant consumer of gourmet coffee, sitting at a small cafe table in the middle of a busy mall, depositing bits of information into cyberspace--like caveman markings on a wall.
Will it survive after the hurricane of my existence has faded? Who knows and who cares? The 'who' who cared would have no meaning by then. I was just another note in the cosmic counterpoint. Being able to hear that divine music is all that matters.
