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Here in Koln Germany
Travelling through various countries and within various languages (here in Koln Germany, we are in our 5th country on this tour) it is clear the extent to which we see things through our own perspective. Being an outsider, one sees a culture, a community, the faces of the people, the architecture and neighbor-hood street corners in such different light than an ³insider² living within the place. Too, one hears the cadence of the police sirens, the clang of church bells, the volley of children¹s voices from the local school, the sound of the urban trains in commute, with different ears than for those who live and hear and absorb these sounds daily. On this trip I reflect on the sensory education that Eno receives‹not only sounds, sights and smells, but the felt sense of being in living spaces‹climbing the long stair well to our 6th floor apt. in Helsinki, on the balcony overlooking the tightly pressed apartment blocks over Istanbul, in the first class coach car on the train from Brussels to London, and in the compact flat here in Koln, with the kitchen and table and chairs the size of the tea party in Alice¹s journey down the rabbit hole.
By extension, not only do we perceive and filter the world in our own private ways when travelling, but all of experience, is filtered by our perspective. That is, all is “mind” made. Not only all that we experience in the outside environment, but all thoughts, perceptions and dreams that surface in the inner environment of the mind. In the yogic training, we must continually reflect on how we conjure up our experiences. When we are alone and inhabit the familiar landscape of our thoughts, it seems that our time to our selves is “real”, apart from the flux of circumstances that fills our days. Yet we must see our internal monologues as illusory. There is nothing solid or “real” about our time in private thoughts. This time in private seems to be the time when we can really be true to ourselves. Yet in the yogic study, as we perceive that all is ³mind-made², then we see that all thoughts within our inner dialogues are fabrications. The more I practice and reflect on the heart of the yogic path, that is, seeing the individual self as empty and insubstantial, the more I see the vision of the path as totally radical. That there is no solid I or me, that all is but bits and pieces of personal viewpoints, perspectives and interpretations is a radical and frightening realization. At times I feel like Arjuna on the battle-field when Krishna reveals his true being and Arjuna is overwhelmed by the vision. Upon seeing that the “private” is not real, but that thoughts are but projections of various attitudes and view-points conditioned by times and circumstances we find ourselves in, the pervasiveness the totality of the vision is mind-blowing. We realize the extent to which we have invested in our own drama, as the narrator of our own story. When we realize the narrator is a fabrication what is left?
It is critical in “practice” to see again and again the limits of the narrator’s point of view. In as many ways as possible, and through out as much of our experience as possible, it is necessary that we expose our self-centered perspective to be, in the words of the Buddha, “like phantoms, hallucinations and like a dream”.
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