A Prelude to Birth: Joy

I had been seeking pleasure out of despair, because if this is the only life that I have, why should I not take the path of pleasure? I drank and smoked and sought sexual pleasures in all its variations and with different women and tried to rip apart the skin of my selfhood—so to know myself better, through philosophical knowledge and “limit experiences” of sex and pleasure, alcohol and drugs, and stepping out of boundaries, to see where it takes me, maybe to freedom, maybe to becoming something completely “other”, in the zone before “image”, out of the precession of image and knowledge, and out of precession of religious images and hence I was about to step out of the procession of holy spirit, that God held me.

I had to look to the other side, to the path of joy. How can I find joy, peace, and satisfaction, if I am a mortal with no meaning of life, no reason for existence, just with my little “modernism” and “postmodernism”, just with my little “humanism” and “secularism”, just with my little “hedonism” and making the most of the pleasures of world? Why should I not indulge in pleasures, wealth, honor, and fame? What other goal and meaning life has? Aesthetic beauty and pleasures of the mind? Sure, enjoy beauty and art, enjoy knowledge and sciences and philosophy, but only for its pleasures, curiosity, or power, being sure life is a subclass of dead, at most striving for enlarged mentality to enjoy more and deeper this one life, this very world. In Nietzsche’s Eternal Return of the Same, even if I have to live this one life repeatedly and recurrently, I will live it in pleasures of body and mind or for the will to power. Then something happened and changed my direction altogether. Nietzsche’s Eternal Return of the Same is an endorsement of this worldly life and existence as is. Strangely enough, when I learned how to step out of this desperate perception, I still believe the path of divine joy makes the eternal return of this very life worth living.

Surely the soul that seeks and knocks the door, even in desperation and disbelief, will find its way. Today in my walk, I was thinking how can I explain this joy?

I don’t know I am true if I say “I don’t want the joy of immortality”, it is the last thing comes to my mind. I learned to silent all cravings for immortality through philosophical reflections, I convinced myself the dove, who wishes to have no pressure of the air beneath its wings in order to fly higher, is deluded, not knowing the very barrier (air) is the condition of its flying: death is the condition of our flight and understanding.

How can I explain my joy? This joy is not for obtaining immortality and I take all those who call a mortal being as God, from Krishna to Canonization of Jesus as God, deluded. How can I explain this joy? How can I say I feel God all around now? And it is not for a desire for immortality. I am ready to disappear forever with this abiding and dwelling in God now and for this short time of living. I want nothing else. How can I explain this joy? How can I explain the sweet sorrow tears that roll down from my eyes in this joy? Because I now know that “life is not a subclass of dead”. Even if my death is the condition of my understanding and joy, still I can’t agree with Nietzsche and modern nihilism that life in my body and thoughts, this experience of being and nothingness, this joy and pain of life, all an all are accidental, contingent, and arbitrary. Because I have experienced the grace of God, the ineffable, the sweet unknowing. How can I explain this joy?

And I experienced it through a wondering and wandering soul, a homeless soul, seeking and knocking on the door of heaven, and then it dawned on me, how to clear the mirror, how to do the right, how to find the right course of action, what is the relation between this finding and spirituality, how ethics and spirituality are internally connected; why all ancient spiritual practices call for action, for erasing the dust from the mirror, to dropping the mask of self, to move to the abode of love, the eternal love. It dawned on me, with the grace of God, that I have a soul stretching itself and longing for the divine joy and a body that strives to attain pleasure. It dawned on me how to balance these two together, and let the seemingly opposites coincide. It dawned on me that I had been falling, and through tears of sorrow begging God and love in each breach of breathlessness to guide me. It dawned on me through years of searching, studying, suffering, and longing.

How can I explain this joy? It is not for wealth, as I have nothing, it is not for fame, as no one knows me, it is not for honor, that I have lived too long on my knees in prisons and blue collar jobs, it is not for a position, as I have no position and status, it is because my soul is released from the agony of despair, with the grace of God. Because I see everything is coming to surface, that I have to love everything, all beings, all species, I am released from the talisman of fear of survival and desire for immortality, because I have found the beloved, and I can’t thank God more for this light and guidance. In my walking path I save lost earthworms as I feel the same as them, lost and my soul in the path of annihilation and God saved me. I am grateful to God for my family, as I am sure God guided me to Marianne. I can’t explain the joy that I experience now, and I tell Marianne I am ready to live now, and I am ready to die now. And I know now that I am immortal.

Three thousand years ago, Nachiketas seeks wisdom of life from the King of Death (Yama), narrated in Katha Upanishads.

Death says: Take horses and gold and cattle and elephants; choose sons and grandsons that shall live a hundred years. Have vast expanses of land, and live as many years as you desire. Or choose another gift that you think equal to this, and enjoy it with wealth and long life. Be a ruler of this vast earth. I will grant you all your desires. Ask for any wishes in the world of mortals, however hard to obtain. To attend on you I will give you fair maidens with chariots and musical instruments. But ask me not, Nachiketas, the secrets of death.

Nachiketas: All these pleasures pass away, O End of all! They weaken the power of life. And indeed how short is all life! Keep thy horses and dancing and singing. Human cannot be satisfied with wealth. Shall we enjoy wealth with you in sight? Shall we live whilst you are in power? I can only ask for boon I have asked. When a mortal here on earth has felt one’s immortality, could he wish for a long life of pleasures, for the lust of deceitful beauty? Solve then the doubt as to the great beyond. Grant me the gift that unveils the mystery. This is the only gift Nachiketas can ask….

Death: There is the path of joy, and there is the path of pleasure. Both attract the soul. Who follows the first comes to good; who follows pleasure reaches not the End… There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and ends to different ends. You are, Nachiketas, a follower of the path of wisdom: many pleasures tempt you not. Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither, like blind led by the blind…. Not even through deep knowledge can the Atman be reached, unless evil ways are abandoned, and there is rest in the senses, concentration in the mind and peace in one’s heart.”

This narration has been resonated through history from East to West, all over where death is contested and the path to overcome it is through joy. As Thomas Merton says: “The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls.”

This is the essence of all mystical traditions, from Upanishads to Buddhism, from Lao Tzu to Confucius, from Socrates to Euripides, from Jewish Kabbalah to Islamic Sufism. Two things: overcoming the false self or taking off the mask, and abandoning false ways-- concentrating on merely a life of pleasure-- hence stepping in the life of joy.

04/01/16