In this vast, seemingly, endless bleak cosmos,
As a speck of dust as I experience a profound event,
So this insignificant and tiny moment of I fade out all of sudden.
We might call it enlightenment, or spiritual recognition.
We are always and everywhere in the presence of reality.
Primordial and Pristine!
Seeing through the Mind’s Eye…
Himalayas where the living and nonliving cross over each other.
Where I see both of myself as the dominant primordial beast and Captain Ahab.
Where the experience, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living
expand to the fullest extent.
Where real meaning of life can be found.
Even in these fierce conditions of life forms are shoutning out loud.
Too loud for my autitory nerve to grasp! So crucially real!
Recalling Himalaya’s Prayer flags (Lung par, Wind pictures) of five colors,
Spiritual longings to the piercing winds,
The power of mountains are so great
And yet so subtle, without compulsion,
Tremendous inner tremor is awakening …
Which one is it? Who is shaking?
The wind? The Flags?
As I was passing by this small mountain village,
Overlooking the Mt. Churen Himal (7,371 M) and Mt. Puta Whinchuli (7,246 M),
Something splashed on my eyes like a frozen fantasmagoria films.
Overlapping 5 of I simultanaously:
As I was a 5-year-old kid ,
And as an 18-year-old young adult,
Or through 20s-50s as a grown up,
Now, as ever getting old and tired of I…
Am I ever the same person?
With All-knowing eyes and a question mark nose,
the worn stupa asks me; “Hey, there! Who are you?”
“You tell me!” I eagerly reply and ask the question
To myself; “Who am I…?”
Where this recognition of I coming from …?
All my reason and emotion, thoughts and sensation,
All my memories and will powers are from my mind.
Therefore, I Am my Mind!?
Then, what the heck is the mind?!
In short, the Mind is the brain’s response to its physical body,
to its environment, and its by-products.
Then, what is the brain? It’s a pleasure-seeking machine, isn’t it?!
Backed by tens of millions of cells,
Satisfying physical needs, pursuing ever demanding mental satisfaction,
calling them needs and desires...
In a certain sense, my mind belongs to my physical body.
That’s why we can not reproduce the past happenings.
Can you revive the happiest moments from the past?!
Can you erase off the saddest moments from the past?!
That’s why we cannot escape from the past experience and memory.
The mind is the set of faculties for all mental phenomena.
A totality of Mental State overlapping:
Sensation and perception, Experience and Memory,
Faith and Desire, Intentions and Emotions,
Thoughts and Feelings to name of a few.
Meanwhile, we have something innate called Cognition.
The ability recognize of Joy and Regret, Compassion and Pity.
Innate I that cannot be affected by the experience.
Some calls this Cognition as Buddha Nature, or Christ within,
Some calls it human mind of illusions…
But this is all I have, and I will have untill death.
Then, isn’t it the true me?!
The Nature of endless desert lands is monotheistic
Such as Yahweh of the waste land and Allah of the sandy desert.
Meanwhile, the nature of the deep, meandering valleys and rivers,
And piercingly unpredictable mountains are many faced polytheistic.
Just like the 5 colored prayer flags of Himalayas.
After several months of Hymal, back home.
Here, again, the same question!
"What is moving now?
Wind?
Flags?"
"None of them!
Only your mind!"
says the monk 慧能 at his ‘풍번문답(風幡問答)’
Wind and Flags are Illusions,
Only your Cognitive Mind is awakening, moving…!
Then, again...
Nothing happened!
I thought I'd hit the jackpot!
However...
The riddle remained unsolved
The secret spell unbroken…
Life is fading away…
My needs are overtaking even my desire...
My body is holding everything...
Maybe...
Maybe not...
푸하하하!
La grandeur, la connaissance, la notoriété,
l'amitié, de plaisir et de possessions,
Tout n'est que le vent, la fumée seulement :
Pour le dire mieux, tout n'est rien!
(Greatness, knowledge, notoriety,
friendship, pleasure and possessions,
It's all just the wind, only the smoke:
To put it better, everything means nothing!)