Gord Clements

I Am In Burma Right Now

gordclements — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:28:33 +0000

I am in the city of Mandalay and I am teaching English to children in a monastery. I will be here for a week. Iris is doing surgery in a village at a monastery. I am in the city of Mandalay and I am teaching English to children in a monastery. I will be here for a week and than I will meet up with her. We will have the last ten days to tour around and relax a bit. She has already done lots of surgery. We have been to three different hospitals in different parts of the country. She is very home at these places doiung this kind of work. It has been a wonderful trip. The Burmese people are very Buddhist and easy to get along with. It is a bit hot where I am and mosquitos are getting worse but it is considered winter here. I have had to fight off diahrea but that is to be expected.

gordclements — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:56:13 +0000

Market Colours

gordclements — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:02:38 +0000

Village in the Forest

gordclements — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:54:52 +0000

Existing in Order to Live

gordclements — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:02:45 +0000

In a discussion with a friend who was struggling with his return to Germany after over ten years of volunteer work in Africa and Asia he said to me that according to Buddhism it doesn’t matter where a person chooses to live, that what is important is that one observe.

I am not an expert on Buddhism but I have made my way in life a contemplative way. After some time reflecting on this I realized that what does not matter is not what he said. What does not matter is the ” I ” that is making decisions. By giving it importance we cause it to matter. We have come to make decisions in life in terms of what the ” I ” wants. As well a contemplative way is not as much about observing as seeing. The seeing requires that we take the time to observe. This includes observing the workings of the ” I “.

A way of conceiving the consciousness rooted in ” I ” is that it has arisen out of the belief that I am a universal man or woman only in my individuality according to my fiction of personal divinity. This is a view that seems to be profoundly rooted in the collective thinking of human.

A consequence of the ” I ” consciousness is that the world is being organized, divided and fragmented as a result of this individual perception rooted in the personal fictions that arise out of this way of seeing. The reality is that existence is beyond this perception. One can only perceive the real sense of the truth of existence by considering the organism in its real place which is in its interconnectedness with the rest of life and the universe.

In Buddhism as in other contemplative ways one experiences a shift in perceiving from the consideration of a particular man in so far as I am different than all other men to a place of perceiving that I am more alike other men.

In experiencing a shift in this way we as well find ourselves coming to a place of existing in order to live instead of living in order to exist. By giving the ” I ” importance we are living in order to exist and much of our living becomes about a search for meaning that is part of the assumed fiction and we in turn experience the anxiety, fear and doubt that are part of the limitations of this perception.

In seeing from a more holistic consciousness we see that life life is a gift and as we attend to this gift and this truth in full awareness it unfolds and we unfold and evolve along with it as an inseparable part of it.

gordclements — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:38:55 +0000

Baltic Beach

gordclements — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 07:19:14 +0000

Something Missing or Not

gordclements — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:24:40 +0000

I have realised that in becoming awake to the present moment there is a sense that there is something missing. In awareness I can see that this is an aspect of developing consciousness. There is as well an instinctive response is to react in a way that involves action aimed at alleviating this sense. This results in endless efforts and in the end in the sense of something missing is always with us if not consciously than unconsciously. It is however an aspect that we can transcend through awareness. In remaining with, observing and seeing the compulsion to react in a way to remove or alter this sense of something missing we remain in presence. In seeing and being attentive to this reality we can enter into a deeper seeing of existence and our connection to it.

To See Is to Empty

gordclements — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:47:50 +0000

This expression of emptiness is from Thanissaru Bhihkku. Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to, and takes nothing away from, the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there’s anything lying behind them. This mode is called emptiness because it is empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience in order to make sense of it: the stories and worldviews we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that the questions they raise—of our true identity and the reality of the world outside—pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. Thus they get in the way when we try to understand and solve the problem of suffering.

Krishnamurti describes the moment of human evolution into consciousness. He says that when we first became aware we realized the vast immensity of our experience in the universe and the vulnerability that was inseparable from that and the realization of how much that we didnt know about our existence. From that instant duality was created. Humans quickly began to organize themselves in a way that they thought would help them to overcome these feelings. We began to accumulate and to understand through the subjective perception of patterns and through memory. This is the creation of the I and our attempts were to immortalize it as way of coping with impermanence. This involves changing the environment to suit the individual perception. When we experience suffering it has to do with this conflict . This arises from efforts to immortalize and the resistance from our environment that we experience in doing that.

In this process of becoming conscious and our response to it we have become separated from that first experience of awareness which was the wonderful sense of being and connection to all, the gift of life. We became busy trying to alter this experience , which included this sense of being vulnerable, through this described duality.

Vulnerable Again

gordclements — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:50:34 +0000

I feel that have changed so very much in the last few years. Meditation has helped me to come to know myself better. The vulnerability that I once felt, at times consciously and mostly unconsciously in past years, I still feel. I mistook this vulnerability for a weakness at that time and perceived it to be something that could and needed to be corrected. Now I know that this perception was an illussion. Meditation has helped me to spend the time to look more closely at these sensations as opposed to pushing them away and denying it, as we do when we dislike something. It is a conventional and conditioned response to want to fix or move away from such a thing. We often habitually take a direction and create an agenda of self improvement in such a way that never seems to deliver what we hope it to. Vulnerability can also be mistaken for other feelings such as fear. In perceiving it as fear it is also seen as something that needs to be corrected of eliminated. It is also at the foundation of how we economically function as well. The market is always offering promises of self improvement or that it can provide the product that will eliminate the undesirable that is a part of us. The fields of self help and psychology also offer their expertise in correcting this but the reality that underlies these feelings that we all have known are seldom addressed in these examinations. We seem to not want to remember the truth of the matter that we are so very vulnerable and that everything about life is impermanent. Death is dangling in front of our nose but in most cultures we increasingly insulate ourselves from it. We have always turned to the way of building up our egos to protect us which they never really do.

I have now come to realize that is in accepting and in understanding that the vulnerability is at the essence of what we are. Only in functioning from this place of awareness that we we can authentically unfold in living our lives.We move past the ilussion that we have learned to habitually try to correct. It is at the foundation of our being and the essence of life that impermanence is inseperable the human form that we find ourselves as. It is not something to be repaired or eliminated. The quality of life that we seek and the improvement and change that we envision will occur are aloof images created by our mistaken thinking. We must first experience this as an authentic realization before we can grow in an organic way. Assuming that something is broken and pursuing repair of it is missing the truth and building over a faulty foundation. But it is the human conditioning that leads us in the direction that keeps us stuck and that leads us astray.