The Quest for Quietude

A blinking cursor on a blank screen. This is how I began this blog post. 

I posted an article yesterday and as promised, I'm blogging again today to make up for an earlier week which I did not. I've learned to enjoy the freshness and challenge of a blank page.  It's an empty canvas that beckons a God-like moment: Let there be light.

There's a lot of information embedded in this blog of mine which I started more than 20 years ago. Now with the use of AI in the form of large language models (LLM), I could easily interrogate myself and distill the essence of my thinking and belief system.

Writing is revelatory because it comes from the depths of one's soul. I try to make the act of writing as simple as possible--friction free, so that thoughts manifest themselves, easily and un-selfconsciously onto these blank pages. 

Actually, when it comes to blogging, there are no pages--just an infinite scroll of whiteness on the screen. I could sit down, type and pour out my thoughts, and it would swallow it up without judgement.

Every word etched here is a moment in my life lived. Every choice of word came from the mysterious within. They arose spontaneously like hot lava spewed out from the turbulent core. How much of me has been captured here? 

In a way, there's not much, because I don't write a lot about the factual events of my life. You probably can't even figure out where I work and what I do for a living, nor where I live.  

My life appears to be outwardly dull these days, unlike decades ago when I used to travel a lot. But I do love the peace of mind that comes from a simple life. I truly appreciate the dullness of a drab existence. 

Let others seek peak experiences and exhilarating moments of ecstasy. These youthful pursuits are no longer my cup of tea. I revel instead in the contentment that comes with calmness. 

A sip of Earl Grey, a glimpse of greenness outside my window through the drizzle of November rain, I live each moment as they happen; How I welcome every conscious sight, and marvel at the occasion of a subconscious insight.  

That's all that one could aspire for. My quest now is that of quietude. And hopefully through these wispy words of mine captured here in this blog, scattered in the vastness of internet,  a glimpse of that magnificent beauty and happiness that I experience is being captured. 

Waves in the Ocean of Oblivion

I still have not made up for my lost week of blogging, hence I'm trying again to post two articles this weekend, since I did not manage to do so last week. It's still Friday evening and the weekend has just begun. Isn't this the best time of the week?

Last weekend was also a busy one for me, as I had to take care of a lot of family matters. Gone are the days when I could go out and not return home; sleep in the office or in my car or just hop on a train ride to nowhere. Circumstances change in life, but one thing has remained constant throughout: I've not lost my enthusiasm for knowledge and spiritual insights. All the articles in my blog over the last 20 years have borne out that fact.

I live for insights. An insight is a moment of clear-seeing--discerning a pattern from a mass of information. It's seeing the hidden connection between things, oftentimes confirming a hunch I've always had. Writing this blog is part of this quest for insights. A lot of them emerged during the act of writing, which I consider a sacred act.

To write is to commune with the gods. All inspiration is divine in origin, for it comes from that Collective Unconscious which artists and philosophers tap into. The prophets of old get their revelations from god because they have cultivated minds that are capable of peeking into this source of insight.

We create God and gods because that is the most natural thing for the human mind to do. Archetypes are mental attractors or reccurent patterns that inevitably form when human minds are allowed to self-express. All works of art are abstract representations, glimpses of this unconscious wellspring of wisdom.

The more we dwell upon the nature of things, the more we realise that the reality that we see around is quite 'unreal'. Unreal in a sense that we can never know what's out there, because what we experience is only a small slice of it, interpreted through our senses. And there is really no Self inside that looks at the Cartesian theatre screen, deciding whether to switch channels. There's only the experiencing and no experiencer. The enduring soul or spirit that you feel animating your body, heart and mind is nothing but an emergent pattern, which persists momentarily.

If we use the language of Advaita Vedanta, we can say that ultimate reality is Brahman and the mind and the world are but manifestations of it. When the ocean is perturbed, waves result and each wave-mind thinks of itself as a permanent existence, propagating across space, swelling on occasion into tsunamis,  as mortal souls like us do across time, aspiring to grandiose dreams. 

Waves go about with their petty concerns oblivious of the ocean of which they are a part of. Each wave thinks that it is unique and worth preserving. And when they do subside, they imagine themselves resurfacing elsewhere in some wave heaven, in full glory, retaining the perfection of their remembered forms.