An inquiry into illness, impermanence, and awareness
Is our growth really confined to the physical condition?
I got stuck with a lifestyle disease, and it changed my perspective on life completely.
Hospital visits, tests, and online counselling sessions suddenly became an integral part of my life.
I gained weight, all the blood tests were off the chart, and I was gasping for breath every time I stood up to use the loo.
Some medication and regular exercise got things under control.
But there was something unusual about this recovery.
I lost 15 kgs of weight in a month and got my cholesterol within the boundaries.
I was surprised, and so was the doctor.
What would have taken two years to accomplish was achieved in merely a month.
I am set to be healthy in a month or two after losing some more weight.
This month, I have been watching the changes in the body closely.
It is a keen insight into the impermanent nature of our physical being.
This physical state can be altered by medication.
But I was served with questions on life that only a sick man has the remorse and stillness to inspect.
Will I live? Will I live healthily? Is it cancer like my uncle, or is it liver cirrhosis like my father?
If I live with a physical disease, what would be my state of mind?
Is the mind and body connected? If yes, where is the mind?
***
I wanted an absolute answer to this not-so-absolute nature of our being.
A certainty to survive in these unprecedented times.
That is how we look at our world and life, it seems — as a threat, a danger.
That is our primal instinct.
But it is the use of rational thinking and intellectual analysis that changes the world — the world outside and the world within.
Yet, it has also got us overly invested in the world.
In the ancient era, philosophical thinking and psychological reasoning were used to explore ways of living a happy life.
***
Today, we use them mostly for career progression, productivity, and financial advancement.
This takes our attention further toward the extensions of existence, but not toward the core of what we are.
Then the question persists: what are we without the physical and material things we think we are?
To find answers to this question, we will have to take a deep dive into what our fathers and mothers had to say.
They lived in a time with fewer choices, fewer distractions, and less external complexity. Hence, they had time to investigate inner complexities.
It is a world we are inexperienced with, and yet we can draw something intriguing from it.
To build ideas upon ideas, and then ideas upon them.
Or maybe take the route of the mystic — to know everything in the pretence of not knowing anything.
Perhaps, regardless of the path we choose, or whether we decide to walk on a pathless path, this inquiry is important.
At least as long as we are in the body.
***
Plato used to say that humans are more than just biological components of the physical body.
Moreover, he believed that human beings are born with complete knowledge within our eternal souls.
Many ancient Eastern traditions had concluded the empty nature of materialistic things long before the West did.
This is why we put so much emphasis on philosophy and psychology. It is a luxury deer that donkeys cannot afford.
This nature of exploration and discovery is expansive.
It encourages the seeker to look beyond the realm of physicality.
To gaze at the state of being with the yardstick of appearances is to confine existence to the limitations of what is known, seen, and expressed — it would be to live life in a box.
Humans might have limited their physical activities to what can be called adventure.
But they have embarked on a quest that questions our very own existence.
Our place in the world and the universe.
And for doing so, they use the mind. Now what on earth is the mind?
***
A disciple came to the master and said,
“Master, my mind is not at peace. Please pacify it.”
The master replied,
“Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it for you.”
The disciple searched his mind for a long time.
Finally, he said,
“I have searched everywhere, but I cannot find it.”
The master said,
“There. I have pacified your mind.”
Stoic moral philosophy, especially that of Plato, has concluded that the mind is not an organ in the brain.
This changes the perspective of our investigation completely.
The psychological cognitive thought converts into a more spiritual nature.
The mind is what we focus our attention on.
When you run, your mind is on the run.
When you sleep, the mind is sleep.
And when you dance, the mind is the dance.
The very goal of the dancer is to become the dance.
To escape the analytical reasoning of why and what about the act, and become the act itself.
Does that mean I am the sickness of my body?
In a way, yes. And this acknowledgement and acceptance reduced it to what it is right now.
Further viewing it as a temporary state, and not reacting to it, will diminish it.
***
When you stop feeding things with your focus and energy, those things disappear.
Might it be illness, might it be thoughts?
Now, does it mean you should suppress your thoughts?
Living a good life is not about ignoring problems.
It is not about trying to forget what we have thought.
In fact, the very goal is to look them in the eyes, face them — but not react.
Trust me, you will not lose your mind.
But the mind will lose its grip on you.
Let it go.
This is what everybody actually wants.
Maybe the illness did not only weaken me; maybe it opened a thin door.
A quiet space to notice how quickly the body changes, and how something within me remains unchanged while observing it.
If the body is this impermanent, then perhaps the real inquiry begins not with the flesh, but with the one who is watching it change.
We have the potential to be so much more in life than what we currently are, personally and collectively.
The problem is, we think what we think we are.
If we cease active and deliberate thinking, we become everything and everyone.
Don’t think of what you are and what will become of you.
You have many faces for the many roles you play throughout the day.
***
For me, it is eye-opening.
Because, despite a spiritual awakening ten years ago, I was romanticising it.
I wasn’t realising the true potential of what it means to be enlightened.
I am simply carrying the weight of my own becoming.
The goal of information is to become wisdom.
And to do so, it has to be digested.
Conceiving an idea is an emotional endeavour; we passionately consume information.
But then we have to rationalise it and break down its complexity.
Thus, the information becomes simple.
Might it be spiritual awakening or intellectual enlightenment, it is the way — a path, not a destination.
The destination is reaching simplicity expressed in simple words.
No one used to read my blogs. No one understood what I wrote.
That was the disease.
Once you find a rational way of understanding things, concepts are simplified.
So simple that God becomes nothing.