26th March (2020)

 

26th March

Today is a bit up and down.

I awoke, gradually, at 6am, for no good reason except for a brain alarm, I guess. 

The day itself was struggling to get light, with branch and leaf shadows dancing Lakhaon Nang Sbek (Khmer shadow play) silhouettes on my room curtains. Although the room here on the third floor of Colors of Cambodia does have a window, there is a whole other room, and another (balcony) window between it and the outside world. It is if I am in Plato’s ‘Cave’ (Republic) with its representations of things.

It is quiet here at Common Grounds. With my cornflakes finished yesterday, I have had to seek breakfast outside. Social distancing is made easier here due to the lack of customers. Four people, myself included, have occupied tables each in one corner of the room. I don’t think that this is conscious, more like a natural reticence, at least mine is.

Intermittently, my mind drifts to Spain, to Catalonia and dear friends, some departed, whom I have not seen for a long time. I also recall the Spanish Civil War (Jul 17, 1936 – Apr 1, 1939), Orwell and Hemingway writing under fire. Okay, so I’m not a famous international journalist, not a journalist at all really, just a humble writer. Blogger perhaps. No, it’s this pandemic virus that has us thinking this way or, should I say, its constant promotion over the social media making us all believe that we are all heroes in this contagion war. We most assuredly are not. Just humble humanity waiting for difficult days to pass, as they assuredly will. Many believe that patience is “the most beautiful but most difficult garment that one can wear.” There is the thought of impermanence, called Anicca (in Pāli) or Anitya (in Sanskrit), that nothing is forever. George Harrison (1970) sang....

‘All things must pass

All things must pass away

All things must pass

None of life's strings can last

So I must be on my way

And face another day’

China too, in Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (verse 5), reminds us that nothing is forever....

‘Heaven and Earth have no permanence

A man may choose one over another but to Heaven and Earth all are the same The high, the low, the great, the small – all are given light all get a place to rest.’

If nothing is permanent, then why do we hold onto things (materialism, consumerism, people) in the hope of personal salvation, possibly out of not being able to let go, through a perceived psychological need (John Bowlby, Attachment Theory, also the Object Relations theory of Melanie Klein). Letting go is quite possibly the most difficult of things to do, but also the most necessary in this ever changing multiverse. Forever Shiva destroys only to constantly recreate.

The stress of my situation is beginning to show. You know, there is a point in every holiday when the realisation comes that you would rather be at home. Frank Sinatra hit the nail on the head when he sang....

‘It's very nice to go trav'ling

To Paris London and Rome

It's oh so nice to go trav'ling

But it's so much nicer, 

yes it's so much nicer 

to come home’

(Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, 1958)

As nice as Cambodia, Siem Reap, the twins and Colors of Cambodia are, it’s just not home. Yes, I do appreciate that many others have it much, much worse, and that I am well off in comparison to a lot of people, but all my understanding of Dhamma, Kamma and Annica is all very cerebral, obviously not internalised otherwise I would simply shrug and sing ‘all things must pass’, and mean it. 

It took me years to settle in Malaysia. I battled frequent bouts of homesickness and the yearn simply to return to England and all things familiar. That was even though there were many familiar things that I just wanted to get away from. The weather being one. But I stuck it out because the gains were so much more in Malaysia, than the losses. That was my choice. 

This current situation has been thrust upon me, and I am beginning to flounder. To some degree I know that I am experiencing, albeit in a mild form, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s ‘Five stages of grief’ (DABDA or Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance). The stages are not consistent, but jump around all over the place and vary in their power to disrupt. Buddhists might talk about ‘Dukkha’, or ‘suffering’, ‘anxiety’ ‘stress’, or ‘unsatisfactoriness’.

I took the following from the online encyclopaediaofbuddhism.org

Dukkha is commonly explained according to three different categories:

‘The obvious physical and mental suffering associated with birth, growing old, illness and dying.

The anxiety or stress of trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing.

A basic unsatisfactoriness pervading all forms of existence, because all forms of life are changing, impermanent and without any inner core or substance.

The Buddhist tradition emphasises the importance of developing insight into the nature of dukkha, the conditions that cause it, and how it can be overcome. This process is formulated in the teachings on the Four Noble Truths.’

From suffering, eventually, comes salvation so, okay universe, I’m done with the suffering part, can I just skip onto salvation, pretty please with knobs on. Meanwhile it’s watermelon for dinner ($1), as I don’t have enough cash left (out of the daily $20) after a too expensive breakfast ($8.50) and a lunch which cost more than I had anticipated ($5.50) because I was too lazy to walk further afield for something cheaper. I really cannot over spend again, today.