nadaism: August 2006

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Disappointed guru

For a number of reasons I've stayed in Shimla for nearly 2 weeks. It's a city closed to the Himalayas but not yet there, altitude 2000m. There's lots of tourists that pass by for a couple of days on their way to the deeper valleys. They come, chat a bit, and leave in a hurry even if there's so much rain and landslides - the tourist agents call it "adventure".

But there's also people that stay, some days ago I met a german girl, quite young, who told me she had found a very spiritual person who was helping her a lot, who was exactly what she was looking for, the reason she came to India. She looked really happy.

Then yesterday I met an israeli girl at a coffeeshop and it was raining so much and she was bored and wanted to do something and we ended up going together to one of the sights in the city. At a certain point we talked about nadaism, of course, and she said in a way she wanted to leave everything and go travelling for a while, but on the other hand she was happy with her life in Jerusalem and with her job and she did not want to risk all that. She was in a big doubt for the short term as well, not sure about what to do for her 2 weeks left in India.

The israeli girl had some pain in her back and wanted to get a massage, but a good masseur was not so easy to find. There was a guy, male, that somebody told us about, and we went to visit him together. This guy did not look so interested in the massage itself, and starting talking "spiritually". He said he was a very intuitive person and wanted to prove it, he made some amazing guesses, at least with me, he told me I'm afraid of water, (which is more or less true, I was very much when I was a child, now I can swim but still feel it is not my element), he said I look at everything with the stomach, as soon as there is tension or worries it goes there, (just true), and finally that I have had a lot of problems with women, (well this one was not so difficult, just looking at my face I'd say, and also it is quite a common issue). Anyhow, he tried some guesses with the israeli girl and I don't know how right he got but she was all the time asking for more. The guy was repeating here and there that he would be able to help her, that she was doubting a lot about her life, not sure which way to take, and she needed some balance in her mind.

I honestly don't know how genuine was the guy, but I really think that he's been able to help to a lot of people, the ones that believe in him. The german girl that I met a couple of weeks ago was still visiting him, and she was so happy.

Anyway I don't know what people are looking for when they come to India.

The day after, i.e. today, the israeli girl left Shimla and headed to Rishikesh - one of her friends was sick but feeling better this morning. By chance I met the guru again and I was having a coffee and he joined me. The conversation was quite disordered, discontinuous, he was looking at people, observing them, (potential clients?), smiling to anything I'd say, but not really interested on more guesses or deeper conversation with me, (maybe he saw using his intuition that I had no intention on hiring his services, but only a lot of curiosity). From time to time he was talking about the israeli girl and saying that he knew she was going to leave but he would have liked to help her. Finally I asked him if he was disappointed because she was gone.

- No!, he said, how can I be disappointed, I'm the happiest person in the world!.

- Well, I said, maybe it was a bad choice of words, but it looks to me you really wanted to help her.

I did not tell him to look for the meaning of the word in the dictionary. The guy left after a while, I had to insist a bit so that he would let me pay his coffee. I didn't change my mind about him, I'm sure he helps people. He lives a good life as well, thanks to the "donations". Any good tout has a reasonable good life.

Only I don't see why a teacher should not be disappointed sometimes.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

They call us pinkus

The deeper I get into the Himalayas the more difficult is going to be to get access to the Internet - good excuse for eventual lack of updates.

Now I'm in Shimla, a very popular hill station, lots of indian tourists but also some whites, (we're are just everywhere). I was hanging around lost and I found some locals getting drunk in a kind of picnic place, it was a good-bye party. They invited me to join and in the heat of the conversation they told me they call us pinkus, "the pink foreigners".

One of them in particular was amazing. Doing nothing for a living (he has some land), a drunkard, in favor of the Palestine cause in such an extreme way that you could say that he's a neo-nazi, but also very very spiritual.

At sunset there was a beautiful view and the birds were singing. He told me if I could feel god in that beauty. I answered that I saw it was beautiful but there is beauty in a way in my hometown as well and I never felt god there, so why here. He agreed, that's exactly the problem with all the western people, he said, looking for something which actually they will not find in India but only on "their perception".

For me this guy could be the archetype of indian spirituality, (maybe not the one of the enlightened, but of the common folk).

the second language

The second language refers to a quite interesting proposal by Peter Sloterdijk: to try to translate more acuratelly some important words, e.g. enligtenment, in a way everybody (religious or not) could agree with.

There are new needs in the west, where everything has become so rationalistic, but there is an obvious source of misunderstanding when two people think about the same word in different ways. I'll try to find a writter or a phylosopher or a thinker that could have made a clarifying interpretation of 4 concepts: enlightenment, redemption, liberation and devotion.

differences

Is there any essential difference between a man and a woman?

Ok, there's obvious and visible differences. But let's look at it from another point of view.

If you try to live with somebody, and share most of your time, and be completely intimate, and shop furniture together, and even raise children...

do you expect it to be easy to understand and accept the human being you are sharing everything with?

are you not using the fact that your partner is a man or a women as an excuse because you don't understand anything about him/her?

These below are the differences I will accept. For the rest, I'd like to try to prove that men and women think the same way.

Body shapes. Some internal organs. Hormones. "Those days of the month". And only women get pregnant. There are some phisological differences everybody could agree with.

There's cultural differences: men and women are not educated the same way, i.e. they are repressed in different ways. For instance, men should not cry, women should always look beautiful.

There's the common vague understanding that men are somewhat more rational, (in their behaviour and decisions), while women are somehow more connected to their emotions, (i.e. women manage their emotions in a better way, and use them).

And there's the mysterious way in which women know exactly how much more they feel like eating or drinking, and in consecuense at the end of the meal they just sip your glass or cut a portion of a precise weight from your plate - it's exactly the piece they're missing.

The nadaist contract

Do you want to know if a person who passes all the time doing nothing would be able to live a normal and happy life?

The principles

- We humans continually pursue our minor objectives; when achieved, we only realise that they were not satisfactory, and then we look for a new target. A nadaist breaks the circle by not having any objective at all.

- The mind needs to be occupied, the process of thought is endless: either it may be killed (e.g. tv, music, a novel, alcohol, drugs), or given a focus (sometimes the same tv, music, a novel, also studying, investigating, playing an instrument, or other activities that require discipline). Both mechanisms are the same in essence. A perfect nadaist despises any objective, and would rather stop thinking. However thought is difficult to stop and also is sometimes useful (only sometimes; most of the time our thoughts wander aimlessly). A human nadaist is simply aware of how pointless it is either to kill or to focus thought, but uses all methods at hand when thought cannot be stopped.

- A perfect nadaist would kill thought and spend all the time alone and doing nothing. A human nadaist would amaze him/herself choicelessly with many things, would cultivate friendship, and even have a family, why not. Any nadaist knows that thought cannot kill itself by thinking, just tries to listen to his/her thinking, with no resistance.

- Nadaism requires discipline, so that there is no discipline. A nadaist is very careful with randomness, since a perfect chaos would become a pattern, which is the thing to fight against.

- A careless reader may associate nadaism with total uncertainty. But if uncertanty was to be total, then it would become a certainty. There's always room in a nadaist for a few safe places to shelter when thought is pressing up.

- The nadaist is not looking for unhappiness or misery. A nadaist just wants to live in the present, with no concerns about the past or the future, and with no patterns.

Exercises

These are practices that may help to budding nadaists, but they cannot be taken literally since they would become patterns.

- Go to bed and wake up as irregularly as possible. Go for naps at unexpected moments.

- Join courses in different subjects that you may or may not be interested in, and never finish them.

- Hire somebody to go to your home and rearrange your stuff, so that you don't know anymore where anything is.

All hobbies are allowed (reading, sports, games, whatever), but only as a pastime, carefully handled, so that there is no sense of achievement. e.g. a nadaist may go to the cinema, but will remember the least technical details, just the ones to select other movies that are not too boring, and pursuing no targets like following up a full career or a cinema current. A nadaist may also go travelling, just for the amusement. He/she will need to plan the trip to some extent, to try to get to the places that are not pointless, to avoid those in which there is not really much to do. Anyway the nadaist will for sure feel pretty much at ease wherever, will be an independent traveller, flexible, and will move around according to moods.

The contract

I'm committing to follow the nadaist principles. I will not work, I will not engage into any activity at all in the long term, not even in the medium term. I will amaze myself with methods that only try to kill or focus thought in the moment, in a short sight. In order to become a nadaist, I need YOUR MONEY for MY LIVING. If not, I would not be able to follow the principles.

- I will use the money strictly for living and for selfish purposes.

- I will carefully track all the money of each of the contributors.

- If I ever refute nadaism, I will pay 50% of any future income to the nadaist fund, which will give the money back to the contributors proportionally, adding a 100% interest plus inflation. When the total amount has been repayed, I, the failed nadaist, will go back to live a normal life.

- In case of death, my belongings will go 100% to the nadaist fund.

- I will log my daily activity, and if anything is considered to be against the principles, any contributor may issue a complaint. I'll have the right to defend myself, to prove that I was pursuing no objectives. At the end there will be a weighted votation for all the contributors. If I'm declared a failed nadaist, I will give 50% of any future income to the nadaist fund, which will return the money to the contributors, adding 10% interest plus inflation.

- The contributors decide when and what amounts, when to stop paying, but they cannot disengage. They can only expect their money back, with interest, in the cases above.

nadaism

Nadaism is not dead