Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Of smoking, drinking et al

Transcendence is what we all seek. It is the need of every individual - to go to a higher plane and observe things unfolding around him without his own self getting affected by any of it. Smoking, drinking et al carry a promise - a promise to dissolve the world around. To give u a kick which would make you float high enough to forget worldly troubles - even if for just that one instant. The need, I re-state, is to transcend.

There are two ways "perceived" to attain the transcendental state - one is to get unaware of whats happening around you, assuming that you have transcended the world. If you are unaware of everything around you, you have transcended the world, is it not? This is like closing your eyes and saying the world doesnt exist. Drinking takes you to a world where your consciousness is not conscious enough to distinguish between reality and illusion. Hence, the roads which seem to be dancing when you dance around! And you seem to lose connect with the world. You seem to have transcended all the problems of the world even if for just some time. Poor ostrich with its face buried in the sand!

The second way is to get deeper and deeper into awareness about yourself and nature. The deeper your awareness within yourself, the more you are cut from the world finally transcending the world! This is real transcendence when the mind shuts itself down and no longer perceives anything! You actually dissolve!

So, we have two "perceived" ways to achieve transcendence - to get unaware of the existence of the world and believe that the world doesnt exist and has been transcended. This is called deluding yourself! And the other way is to get fully aware of yourself, thus bringing about a natural transcendence, which is real - the attainment of a blank mind. So, we can either get unaware of the world or get aware of our own self - that is just the difference there is.

We all want to dissolve into nothing - for nothing is the end of all misery and the hope of all liberation. We can either choose to run away from the problems and roll the garbage under the carpet believing that the problems dont exist anymore, later leading to a stinking room or we can clean the garbage daily. Drinking, smoking just give a temporary dose of relief but actually make the whole carpet stink later in form of a diseased body and a consequently troubled mind. Smoking starts stressing rather than de-stressing. At this point, most people admit that they wish to kick the butt.

The other way is to realize that smoking or drinking does nothing but triggers some chemicals within the body and it is these chemicals, and not the habit of drinking/smoking per se which causes the transcendence. When we realize these body chemicals cause the feeling of transcendence, we can look out for techniques which bring about transcendence by releasing these chemicals without your consuming smoke or alcohol.

And when we realize that there exist possibilities of real transcendence, much beyond running away from the world, within oneself, a smoker or drinker would automatically quit for he has found a better alternative which further improves even physical health! Welcome meditation!