nadaism: June 2010

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Obsession for calm

That's the tittle of my new novel, "La obesión por la calma".

("of my new novel", sounds as if I had published already a couple of them and this new one was on its way... but I'm sure you don't get me wrong)

After 2 years and a half, I'm happy about the results, even if I see problems and I would be quite different if I started it over now.

The three posts "Other way" were actually a kind of synopsis (some of you might have guessed it), were a trial I was making, since these days I'm figuring out how to approach the editors. And then, I've realised there's a few people at the other side of this blog, who somehow were waiting for me to post something -awesome! I'm not going to say that I feel guilty (I do!) but I do tell myself I should never stop writing in this place.

My dream: my dream is to get the novel published, and then somebody I don't know goes to the bookshops, buys it, reads it, enjoys, and of course I don't get to know...

However, now I realize that dream becomes true with the blog! Maybe my dream is not so allegoric as it seems, and the "buying" part is important to me. Well, it's true I'd like to make a living out of it, since in my dreams I've figured I'll enjoy more when I spend my days writing, compared to going to the office.

Please everybody please don't wake me up!

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Other way (cont'd 2)

... the words of a sage, yes, but he was in South India, very closed to some tropical beaches, and felt like visiting.

He stays in Mysore for 10 days, doing nothing, not visiting even any of the touristic attractions of the city. He meets the recepcionist of his hotel, a humble and consistent Muslim who had studied with some sufi guru in the past, and recommends him to go to visit his master in a village in the middle of nowhere. The place is old and miserable, there's quite a few people waiting, most of them must be neibourghs, but he is not patient enough and leaves.

In a train trip to Bangalore, he meets a PhD on Economics who invites him to his place for lunch; his mum is nosy and offers herself to find a wife for him, also she encourages him to visit her guru. My friend is quite reluctant, but at the end he decides to give it a try; the doctor goes with him and shows him an ashram that glows with devotion and goodness, however the guru is not at the place.

On his way back to Europe, staying at a friend's appartment in London, he shares the couch with a masseur from Australia, who somewhat convinces him to visit his guru. He finally puts his question, he's not very convinced with the answer, anyhow heconcludes he has to find his own way.

A while afterwards, he goes back to his native Switzerland, takes a proper job, and pushes himself to figure out what his direction should be...

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Other way (cont'd)

My friend found this guy while he was getting drunk in a picnic area for a farewell party, in India.

"Do you believe in astronomy?" the guy asked.

"Do you mean astrology, or astronomy?" my friend wondered.

"I mean astronomy, of course!" the guy said. "You know, planets, stars, the Milky Way... Our world is nothing, you and me we mean nothing, we could disappear at any moment! And it would not matter at all! Let's get drunk!"

...

"I like you European!" the guy kept shouting. "I don't know why you come to India, what are you exactly looking for, but you're alright. Except Germans, Germans and Jews, I would kill them all!"As my friend started complaining, he added "remember, it would not mean anything, life and death mean nothing, your life and my life worth nothing!"

And later, "What are you looking for? You must be looking for something. What's your objective? Mine is to kill myself! Rock and roll!"

This guy brought my friend to one of the biggest pilgrimage centers in India, it took them I don't know how many days to reach that place, after 2 days in a train they climbed I don't know many steps to the top of a mountain, followed a queue for 5 hours to reach the image of the god for a few seconds, and then, my friend realised he had not understood or felt anything.

And then, he decided he would look for the wise words of a sage...

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