The Disillusionment of the Illusory Self

I'm happy that the madness of the two large festivals, Christmas and Chinese New Year is past. The malls are deserted once more; it's that lull between festive seasons. Vendors are preparing for their next assault--the coming Ramadan month culminating in Aidil Fitri celebrations. 

I'm here at a cafe in the mall, enjoying the relative peace and quiet. The weather has been rainy for the past few days, causing massive flooding, especially in Johor. My apartment roof is leaking and I had to spent the day catching the dripping rainwater in plastic pails and trays. 

All material things fall apart and our everyday lives is simply an endless series of maintenance tasks: making sure our frail human bodies, our cars and shelters are properly functioning. But we should not be too daunted by that. Drawing on my gymnasium metaphor of the world, such obstacles are there to give us a good workout. You don't complain about about the heaviness of the barbell and weights if your intention of going to the gym is to build muscle strength.

We always end up stronger with every challenge we face in life. But we also have to be aware of how much weight we are able to reasonably lift or risk injuring ourselves. We want to stretch ourselves so that the muscles are stimulated to grow but at the same time, we must not over-do it or we'll tear some muscles. The right technique is also essential.

In life, we must also learn the technique of handling any difficult situation so that we do not see them as unwelcome.  Acknowledge the challenge; tackle it with the right approach and mentality and it too shall pass.

Mortal life can be tough. We are thrust into a course, not of our own choosing. We do not get to pick our parents, nor the place or circumstance into which we are born. Yet we have to embrace them. 'You' are actually defined by your circumstance. It is your unique upbringing and environment that defines your Self. 

The Self, as the Buddhist like to say, is an illusion, because it is not something tangible. It is merely the eye of the hurricane and for a brief moment in earth time, you manifest into existence, only to disappear again into that ocean of energy.

Ephemeral though it may be, the hurricane has enormous strength and can wreck everything in its path. It is this clash between air and earth that dissipates the hurricane's energy. Though energetically, the existence of a human on earth is similar to the lifecycle of a hurricane, there are differences. 

Humans, for example create and procreate. We build things like skyscrapers but destroy the environment in the process, and we also spawn off more human beings to preserve our precious lineage. We invest a lot of our energy in the perpetuation of an illusory ideal.

What is this illusory ideal? It is our concept of the Self. It is like a hurricane which suddenly thinks that it has a soul and it wants its identity to last forever. The monuments we build for the future is a  chunk of our time and energy, preserved, only to be mowed down, inevitably by Time. Even the mightiest empire collapses one day because entropy has to increase.

But let's not be disillusioned by such a bleak view of the future. Ironically, this disillusionment is only of concern to the illusory Self. Perhaps when the Self sees that absurdity of it all, then everything becomes clear. The hurricane subsides, revealing the vastness of the sky and the radiance of the ever-present sun.