AFTER NIRVANA, THE LAUNDRY

Before taking the overnight bus south for a new visa, I spent several hours with my philosopher friend Eric in Mérida. As usual, from his library Eric had gathered special books in which he thought I'd be interested and, as usual, thoughts in those books helped crystallize insights that lately I've been groping toward.

This time the books dealt largely with scientific studies finding more and more proofs of the existence of phenomena that are, perhaps, unbelievable. The field of quantum mechanics seems to be providing scientific underpinning for entire fields of inquiry and belief that I've always regarded as silly.

Maybe, after all, something can be in more than one place at the same time. Maybe, in certain instances, the future can be known, or, even more unthinkable, maybe the future, the past and the present are all the same thing. In a Universe with such attributes, the books asked, how can we simply dismiss the growing body of seemingly properly documented instances of mental telepathy, of reincarnation, and ESP? You might be stunned by what you read if you do an Internet search using keywords such as "scientific evidence ESP."

That night, waiting for the bus south to near the Guatemalan border, I felt a sense of returning home. For, I was born in a state of profound ignorance, then over the years I came to feel knowledgeable about some things, but when I began seriously to examine what knowledge I was really certain about, my sense of ignorance began returning. Now that I'm no longer even certain of my basic understandings of space and time, I have gone full circle and have returned home to my old awesome ignorance of certainties.

Yet, when I was born, already I was absolutely certain about a little -- the information encoded in my genes made it perfectly clear that I needed to suck milk and stay close to warm, soft flesh. Similarly, even now in my state of primal ignorance of certainties, I seem to enjoy a little innate certainty that might be analogous to certain knowledge encoded in my genes.

The thing I'm still sure about is that I have some kind of awareness, which I refer to as myself, and that something is going on beyond myself. In past Newsletters I've formulated that thought as, There's just One Thing, and "I" am a manifestation within that One Thing.

From thoughts found in Eric's books, and from my own gut feeling, I've decided that the One Thing I've gotten to know these 71 years of life can be visualized as information reacting with energy/matter. Since I am nested within the One Thing and have no say about the One Thing's manner of being, or its dealings with energy/matter, then if my existence is to make any sense at all, it must be because I have something to do with the Universe's information.

Therefore, during this trip I've decided with greater clarity than ever before that my job as a sentient being on Earth is to use my senses, mentality and feelings to recognize, think about and have feelings for my little part of the Creation. Maybe through a process possibly associated with ESP or mental telepathy -- if those things exist -- my data finds its way to One Thing headquarters. I am a nerve ending of the One Thing.

Thinking like this, our spiritual guidance from the One Thing concept blossoms when we accept that a moral code of behavior can be based on the necessity that we humans should think clearly and honestly, and always struggle to keep refining our senses. Even "commandments" can be formulated, such as "Thou shalt pay attention" and "Thou shalt think about things," and "sinfulness" can be ascribed to willful ignorance, boredom and lethargy.

But, I was saying that during this trip I returned to the near total state of ignorance of certainties with which I was born. I notice that this is the opposite of what I've always thought that nirvana would be like, which I visualized as an instantaneous glimpse of all knowledge and understanding.

But, in this Universe that's proving itself so nicely described by the surreal predictions of quantum mechanics, maybe the opposite of nirvana can be nirvana itself.

I like that idea, and think it fits cozily within my new/old frame of mind.

Also, I think that the old Buddhist masters knew about all this long ago. And in thinking that, I'm reminded of what a master once told his student who had just accomplished classical nirvana:

"After nirvana, the laundry," the master had said matter-of-factly.

Now that once again I am nearly emptied of certainties, except for the notion that I have a nerve-ending job to do for the One Thing, for me it's back to the identifying, learning about, thinking about, and telling you about the world around me.