Saturday, July 07, 2012

doing nothing


Days and days typing on my laptop.
I'm sick of it !
Enough !
I 've done some great work, written new stories, even some work on "Ze (damn) book".
I've been emailing and piss farting around, organizing my Hard Drive.
I have set myself the goal of going through all my key folders and tossing out the junk. A slimming course for the Hard Dive. When I do that I know I'm getting to the end of my patience.

But I am SICK of the computer.
And I didn't want to walk around town anymore.
Mind says: "listen to a podcast, something uplifting"
è "Don't want anything uplifting."
Mind: "it's good for you."
è "Well bugger that, I don't give a hoot !"
Mind sats: "there you go, wasting time, and then you wonder why you get nothing done. Oh well. I've tried."
è "Yea, you tried, now shut up!"

Mind: ".......can I suggest..... a nice walk ?"
è "Don't feel like a damn nice walk."
Mind: "..............................."
I had originally planned to go for a walk because a walk would give me some much needed exercise, but I really didn't want a walk. So what if I didn't get the right exercise right now ? Stiff. Tough titis.
Living life for medicinal reasons sucks.
It's boring.
It misses the whole point.  

With that I went to sit in the coffee shop around the corner, they have good tea, its clean, and they have solid nice tables.

I hold up one finger very prominently and say "La Payiiiih- ONE !" - one of those super strong, bitter, super sweet Myanmar teas with condensed milk at the bottom.
ONE of them.
For some reason whatever you order in Myanmar, you need to specify the number, there is no obvious default setting.
I'm on my own, no other person is near me, I stand out as the only European foreigner in town, but I still have to say "One" tea. Not two, not three, not ten, just ONE tea please.
Ordering dinner, as a single guy, I still have to say "ONE" steak with chips, as opposed to three or ten.
I mean you never know, I might want to order three steaks and have them all at once. You just never know.
I'm sure if I bought a car, I'd have to say, "Yes, just ONE, car today -  might get two tomorrow, but today just ONE will do for now. "
Would I have to say "ONE" wife ? I wonder.
Ok, in all fairness, I understand, it's how the language works. Some languages just require a counter that's how it is. Anyone learning my mother tongue, German, will have a whole list of things to wonder about. Languages are just what they are, not logical.
Even so called logical languages to talk to a logic machine like a computer, there are so many different types of languages computer engineers argue about which is the 'best' all the time.

I've only been to this teashop only 3 times and already I have 'my spot'.
I sit at 'my spot' near the door, at the corner of the table, and do what ?
Nothing.
"What do you mean nothing. You gotta do something."
"You could do some MORE work, you haven't really done enough yet..." Mind says.
è "Go away, leave me alone. In fact piss off....!!!"
So I sit, doing nothing.
And I sit, doing nothing.
Doing nothing means, having no purpose, nothing to achieve,  nothing to do,  just sitting there.
No plan, not even the plan to have no plan, not even the plan to do nothing.
Just no plan.
Nothing.
BUT:
Doing nothing includes DOING things like:
  • -          Staring into space.
  • -          Watching other people.
  • -          Letting thoughts come and go.
  • -          Staring into space.
  • -          ...................................
  • -          Watching people enter and watching them leave.
  • -          ENJOYing the ambience.


  • -          Just sitting.
  • -          ...................................
  • -          Fiddling with my camera, taking a few pictures, reviewing them, erasing some.
  • -          Fiddling with the mobile phone,
  • -          Watching people.
  • -          Staring into space.
  • -          ........................................
  • -          And so on, and so on, and so on....

I'm not doing nothing because I'm following some wanker's advice on 'How to do nothing', in some erudite book on how to attain inner peace and enlightenment and leave this shithole of a human world and move to the much nicer and cleaner and better, and happier  world of nirvanic enlightenment  
I'm not doing any of that. Though I should perhaps write that book about doing nothing... before someone else does...  - oh they've already written it ?
Does not matter, write another one.

I'm just doing nothing.
There is no method and no recipe, no technique in this.
I'm sure if I attained enlightenment suddenly the learned pundits would writes tons of books about ' just HOW to do nothing' and thus attain enlightenment. And the 'no method' would become a method,  'a path'.

The path that is a path,
is not the path,
The name that can be named,
is not the name.
- Tao Te Ching


Fortunately I don't attain enlightenment and the world is spared all that clever B**S***.

There's something I really love about these places:
It's the  unwritten rule that the customer ASKS if he wants something.
Waiters don't pester or ask, or pressure anyone to leave, or order more.
No funny bugger games.
No bright sweet smile saying "would you like another drink, sire ?" which really means: "you're not spending enough,  order something or piss off".

Waves  of sadness come over me.
Ok, whatever.
I'm lonely.
Ok, whatever.
I can't be bothered fighting it.
I'm thinking of the "Gyro" story, I've been writing for quite some time. For years in fact. Will it ever get done ?
A warm feeling goes through me.
It really excites me, I want to write more about that story.
I feel it and I see it.  
This excitement is deep slow and real. It's not the frantic monkey mind talking now. It's my deeper core. The really deep part of me.
"You can write that once you've  finished, the other stuff you are supposed to do", mind says.
I don't even bother answering, I know that if I do that, the excitement to write the next bit of "Gyro" will be long dead and gone and it'll be just one more chore, one more damn thing 'TODO'.
Lots of ideas about what to write in "Gyro", flow through my mind.

All this time I'm staring into space,  watching others.

"Jumble dooon, makelemat, blahhh blahh blahh..." one of my neighbours asks me.
"Australia."
He smiles, yep that was what he asked me.
How did I know ?
I didn't.
Lucky guess, -  I guess.
He has a white skull cap and an orange beard. One day I'm gonna figure out what orange coloured hair means.
But not today.

The call to prayer sounds next door, slowly the guys with white caps get up and go into the mosque.
I'm now the only guy sitting.
Time to do some more nothing.

Sit and let the thoughts come and let the thoughts go.
Now that I think of it, I guess this is a kind of meditation, 'teashop meditation' without any rules. Nothing formal.
But give it a few years and there'll be books on it.
And the Poobaah's will argue about the correct way to do 'teashop meditation' a la Sayargyi Haiko, who attained enlightenment in a teashop in Dawei.

"Oh. You never did attain enlightenment in the teashop. "
That's right.
Lucky  
:-)

Friday, July 06, 2012

the lessons of life seen in each country

A friend  sent me this picture, about the health debate in the US 
 

























My reply was:
the entrenched lobby groups are very strong, they like their profits....

was thinking about the situation in the US the other day: it makes sense if one
sees it as a wild west, first come, take best seats, make sure the others who come later dont take them gooddies from ya... that mentality is still very strong....

frontier, fort, defend... is the underlying motto.


h




Hi,
      yes its the frontier mentality "look after yourself"  and "if you fall behind it's your fault", so we see people with mental problems living in cardboard boxes because the state wont help them.

To misquote Spok  from Star Trek " It's civilization Jim but not as we know it."


  regards  P



I thought about all this this morning, as the rain pissed bucketed poured down in this little country town of Dawei. ....
and it came to me like this: if we are all part of the greater collective sub/un/higher consciousness then each country and group of humans take a different part of the lessons of life and go to the very limits....
Yankee land has taken one set of lessons,
Aussie land another,
Myanmar yet another set of lessons. 
etc...

we can learn from each other, but each group takes one aspect and explores it,
exploring means - seeing the light and dark, seeing where it works and where things f*** up...and how and why....

thinking like this helps me make some kind of sense of the crazy, amazing human world we live in... and helps me be kinder to myself too.
link below to a nice experience in this country town.
http://heikorudolph.blogspot.com/2012/07/kind-heart-story-human-first.html

Sunday, June 24, 2012

I know all the answers but my life is going nowhere (fast)



I know a lot of clever wise s**** but my life is not improving.... why ? 

wellllll........
Logic and mind, take me to the right and wrong's of things. But what about the DOING something about them ?
Mind can't do that, it can understand, sort, comprehend, analyze, but then what ?
Then I have to DO things,....act, move,
I think of mind like the code in a software program, the written words. (sorry this will only make sense to computer geeks)
For everyone else: Mind, I think of like a cooking recipe. The recipe, sits there,................ and sits there in a book, so what? I have to DO stuff to make the cake....
And the same way I think of a situation where the tensions are high, airline delay, large queues, "will I make the flight ? or will I lose the ticket because of 'no show' ?" etc...
Not a drama for others, but a high tension 'issue' for me.


How do I handle that ? Mind tells me to be calm to trust etc... that is like the instructions in a cooking recipe, or computer code. I have to actually DO stuff. How DO I DO this trusting thing ?
How do I "DO" this thing that changes the tension ?
For years, no, for decades, I have got stuck at this point, the point of: I've got the code! Yeharraa!! I got the code, how wonderful.
But then I realized: nothing was happening. No cake appeared, no program ran on the computer screen. 
I rechecked the code.
All correct,
I made the code better, added especial instructions, made it brilliant,
I gave the code to others, let them copy it and they produced great cakes.
But nothing appeared in my oven, no cakes.
Very strange.
Why?
I KNEW IT ALL, I was clear what the path was, I was clear on what to DO. But nothing happened.
I was still tense, even though I had the code to show me how NOT be BE tense/upset/unconscious etc.....
Slowly now it is coming to me: I might have to ACT, DO, get ingredients and bake that cake, mix the dough, buy the flour, carry the ingredients etc....
Sounds so obvious, but took me 52 years to see it like this.
I've been scared all my life to really 'try' and 'do' in case i failed. There is only one failure: failure to try.
"Low aim, not failure's the crime" a friend once told me - very true, 
the only crime is "failure to try" screwing up is better than not even trying ... (always ? not always) 

MmeP: So, what does Doing look like Heiko ? What do you DO these days ?

HR: Breath, awareness, aware of my breath, even in the midst of the tension situation, in the midst of the "will I catch my plane on time ??? "

Without the awareness of breath, of that still something inside me, I'm likely to treat it like a life and death situation.... (lots of great American movies show people in life and death races, so it would become like that for me, - inside. On the feeling level) .
So I know to use breath, to put me back into my body - breath and the breathing in white light.... moment by moment.....
MmeP: Sounds good grasshopper.
HR: Eckhart Tolle talks about always keeping a little bit of your awareness separate, keeping that kernel of awareness of self, and other reality.... breathing in white light
summary of it here





AND 
THE
 KEY: 


Tuesday, April 03, 2012

being a "good dog"
this bit below is a real key step for me
the light comes on ! duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I get it.
now I see why i've been so rebellious all my life.
why I've sabottaged myself in different ways....

QUESTION::: I want so much to be more loving, yet I can't seem to will it to be so. I want to not have all of the anger, nasty thoughts that pass through my mind, yet I can't seem to will it to be so. What shall I do ?

ANSWER:: What you shall do is to cease the willing and embrace the anger. To be loving must mean to be loving to self. It can never mean to be loving to others, until you are loving to self. To say to yourself 'you MUST not be angry', you MUST not be unloving', how can you then love ?
It is commanding the heart to be open.
Hearts do not open on command. It is instructing the child to 'behave' and the child is attempting to behave. But when one says to the child 'be loving !' that is impossible. One can say to the child 'act loving' and all of you know how to do that. And that is where the difference is and that it why it is so difficult for you. You are saying 'be loving !'.
You cannot.
Not until you say to yourself, with all the love that you possess, 'it's all right for me not to be loving', 'I will love myself in my unlovingness'. To say that and to truly mean it, will open your heart. But to DEMAND that you be, or become that is not a loving thing to do to yourself.
Can you not see that these feelings of unlovingness stand upon your history, stand upon your pain. These feelings of unlovingness are your protectors, or so it has seemed to the child. The child says, "NO I WILL NOT BE LOVING, I WILL NOT LOVE !"
Good for the child.
If the child believes it must love on command, much is lost. The child's integrity is lost, The child's capacity to know itself is lost. There is nothing but a puppet and that is not a human being, that is not a god.
Love yourself in your unwillingness to love, and go back in your history to find the very young you, and sit with that young you, and hold dialogue.
And ask that young you, 'why do you not want to be loving ?' and allow the answer to come.
You will find deep respect for yourself, and the moment that that takes place, you will be loving.
- From: Emmanuel.

Alan Watts says the same thing, how one cannot command a state of Being e.g. love.