I’ve been getting exactly what I’ve wished for for some time now. maybe I always have, it’s just that in the last couple of years I’m starting to recognise how my dreams are coming true. There is a saying, something about ‘be careful what you wish for’ – good advice, for what we wish for will come to be.

This may sound astonishing and to some incredibly naive – new-agey in the extreme, but I am coming to know it as true. I think what has happened is that in the last couple of years I am paying more attention to what it is I am actually seeking.

I spent years, over a decade I’m sure, writing notes, plans, lists of goals, objectives, dreams and desires. Maybe this was an important stage, I don’t know, but in the last few years there have been very few lists and plans. instead I guess there has been quiet contemplation, a non-hurried processional approach to realising what it I want. Within this contemplative process there has been a combination of meditation and praxis, reflection and action.

As I have pondered, I have acted, so that what I want has come into greater focus and has become more real simultaneously. Another saying comes to mind – ‘it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen’. Lately it has often seemed like just when I am about to act in a way that will lead me away from my dreams something happens that makes me realise that I have been moving towards them for some time already.

don’t lose faith

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

The freedom that is gained through realising that life is not a stage. There is no audience, there are no parts. Life is a one-man show played to an empty room.

The freedom that is gained when we no longer wait for the applause. Life is not a performance, it is a self-indulgent dream.

The freedom that comes with the knowing that life is no more, or less precious that death. What is only exists, because of what isn’t.

The freedom that awakens when we no longer care about what others think or say, or feel. When we understand that no one can hurt us more that we can hurt ourselves.

The freedom that is found through the abandonment of being, and the dissolution of self.

The freedom that comes from knowing that we no longer wish to be what we were, or what we aren’t.

The freedom that appears once we disappear.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

‘There is a saying in …  in my country’.  He hesitated to describe ‘his’ country in this way; as his, as ‘mine’, as if he owned it, possessed it. It was so commonplace he knew to use such words; no one thought twice about it, or so it seemed. It seemed like he was the only one who choked on these little words. Nevertheless he continued.

‘What is important? It is the people, only the people, always the people.’ He looked around, as if sad, as if elsewhere. ‘I never really understood what it meant until now. Now I know.  All that is important, all that remains, all that makes something what it is; whatever it is, are the people. There is nothing else.’

‘Your country? Adam jumped in excitedly, thinking that there was a chance to find out more about this stranger. ‘Where exactly is your country?’

He looked at Adam squarely, the ubiquitous half-smile on his face. ‘I don’t have a country. There is no place that belongs to me, there is no land, no place that is mine.  So there is no ‘my country’. Its a possessive adjective, that’s what it is. It denotes how something belongs to someone’.

Oh no, not another English lesson!

No, just a personal idiosyncracy. There are a bunch of English words that I don’t particularly like using. Well, most actually, but there are some in particular that stick in my throat. ‘Have’ and ‘have got’, and ‘have to’ for that matter.

‘And should’ I added helpfully.

‘And ‘but’, although I do seem to be using that one a bit more lately. Not too sure why that is.

Because you have been away from us my friend.

This is true. I have, and now I’m back. We are back together.

‘But…’ I paused to make sure he was aware of the word, ‘for how long?’

The half-smile remained on his face as he answered, ‘I don’t know. I never know’.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Death. Why is it that we are so afraid of death, not just death, but the thought of death. I don’t understand anymore, if I ever did. I think I have some recollection of being afraid of this notion of dying. Maybe frightened of not knowing what was to come next, if anything. Now, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happens when I wake up after I have gone to sleep. The next day is the next day, what it brings is what it brings, and what I bring to it.

Death, is sleep. Death is rest. Death is slowing down and stopping. Death is nothing to fear unless you are afraid of these things. There is no need to go on. There is no need for anything more. If there is something beyond death then so there is. We will be there when we get there. If there is a hell as some believe, then it will be no worse or better that this I imagine.

We all suffer, this is the first noble truth of Buddhism. This is a wonderful noble truth, this is a wonderful belief to embrace as what it means is that you can always see in another their suffering. Everyone suffers, no one is exempt. So although it may not appear so on the outside, every single person is the same as you, inside they suffer. They doubt, they fear, they worry, they are uncertain. This is the human condition: to suffer.

Being ready to die is not the same as wanting to die. Being ready to die simply means that perhaps I have acknowledged that we all suffer, I have acknowledged and accepted that I suffer, and perhaps that I can do without that, that I am ready to be still and stop, and if needs be, if the reincarnationists are right, I’m ready to start again. To try again.

I have done so much it seems. I have seen so much. and now I worry, like a dog with a bone, about the same things over and over and over. I will keep worrying this same bone until I die, and then perhaps I will start worrying it all over again. I’m happy doing this, although it is tiring at times, and there is a sense of impotence and frustration attached to it. I know that maybe I would be happier not worrying, but there you go.

Ready to die. Something we could think about a little more. Death. Our own mortality. It could happen tomorrow, or the next day, or perhaps in a month, or a year. We don’t have to be old to die, we don’t have to know we are dying to die. Death can come all of sudden, in a rush, unexpected.

Although it does not need to be unexpected. Rather it can be expected, as it is the one certainty in this life. We all die. So being ready for death is in one way just about acknowledging and accepting the inevitable. I have no fear of leaving – I’m not sure whether this is something that people worry about, whether this is a part of death that people have fear of. For me I am not afraid of leaving. In many ways I feel tired, weary of this continued existence, this struggle to make sense of it all.

I no longer have an attachment to the ideological imperatives of capitalism. Thankfully I seem to have spewed these from my body, I have detoxed myself and no longer struggle with ‘making it’ in this capitalist world. I do not get much satisfaction from the trappings, from acquiring things, things that reflect back at me, and tell others who I am. Thankfully I seem less and less entrapped in this way. No, this is not what I struggle with, I am happy with my place in the world. My life is one largely uncluttered and unaffected by the sway of capitalist enterprise. I buy little, own less and desire even less. This is not what I struggle with.

My struggle is with myself and my need to understand. A fish out of water is increasingly how I seem, and in that …. My pain and my suffering stem from my attachment to knowing and to finding something or someone who will confirm for me what it means to breath. I kind of know there is no one out there who can do this, and so my search and my desire and my despair is futile. So I am ready. To give up? I guess so. To end the search and rest.

I want to leave a message for my sons Tobias and Max. This is not a suicide note. This is simply a message to my sons. I know I could die tomorrow, or the next day, so in knowing that I want you to know that you have been the brightest lights in my world. You are a light that has never dimmed, from the moments you were born to now, you have remained all there is, and all there ever will be, to me. It has been the greatest blessing to know and experience a feeling of love so strong, so consistent, so deep, that it never wavers, never falters, never diminshes.

Thank you for letting me love you. Thank you for being so so wonderful, for being perfect, for gifting me with the experience of unconditional love.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x