This world doesn't last
Youth and beauty
Fade so fast
Like fireworks
that go off in the night.
Beautiful for a moment
But soon out of sight.
Forgotten
Even our memories change
Disappear.
In the long descend.

Is it all worth it, in the end?

...

The Buddha taught there are five aggregates that make up a being.

1. Physical form (the body).
2. feelings (sense impressions and the mental tone of pleasant or unpleasant that accompanies them),
3. perceptions (our memory).
4. mental formations (thoughts, ideas, personality, emotions, moods).
5. and consciousness (which arises because of and is shaped by the other four aggregates.)

These five aggregates are interwoven and affect one another, and they are what we identify with as the self. But when we slow down and compose our minds through meditative practises, enough to be able to look at the five aggregates closely, we can see that they are always changing and arise and cease due to causes and conditions.

We cling to them because we identify with them, and this attachment to the impersonal changing phenomena in ourselves and in others causes us suffering. It also leads to rebirth, and further becoming.

Why is rebirth a problem? Because of ageing, sickness, death and loss. Even the glorious devas age and die. Even if one gets a good rebirth and lives a long life in the heavenly realms, that life will one day come to an end, when the karma that brought it into being ceases. Then a being can fall from the heavens and return to the Earth, or worse can fall into the Hell realms where the suffering is intense and long lasting. And all of us if we do not uproot greed, hate, and delusion from the mind can go through this cyclic process over and over, this is Samsara. And because of change and impermanence, for the majority of the time the experience is not pleasant, our time in Samsara is mostly an experience of pain, loss, grief, sorrow and suffering. The happiness is brief compared to the unhappiness.

The thought of reincarnation and rebirth can be challenging for us modern humans with our scientific minds; but it is part of right view in the noble eightfold path. Right view isn't just looking at the life one is living now, it is also looking at the possibility of future lives, of rebirth and how that depends on the karma we generate now, i.e. the tendencies of the mind we grasp and cultivate in this life, which grow in momentum and eventually transform into another being.

Things change, we change, even space which we think of as empty is full of quantom particles in a state of flux, the void is not empty, and even then we are never in the same patch of space twice, because the Earth is spinning, and going round and round the sun, which is itself going round and round the centre of the galaxy, we never experience the same patch of space twice, each moment the space we are in is different, even space itself is change.

The mind always wants to cling to something. Perhaps because of the transient nature of things and the uncertainty this brings. But the clinging causes us suffering, it is not pleasant, because the things we cling and become attached to change, and we can't stop them changing, nothing remains the same, nothing lasts, everything is in a state of entropy and impermanent.

There may be momentary sensory gratification in this life from sense pleasures, but they don't last, and sooner or later one experiences the opposite, because one cannot experience pleasure and gain, without also experiencing pain and loss. The eight worldly winds (pain and pleasure, gain and loss, success and failure, praise and blame) blow in both directions and can change suddenly. One cannot experience one without also experiencing the other. That which arises also ceases. Which can be a comforting truth when one is in pain, but an uncomfortable truth when one is experiencing pleasure. We want the pleasant experiences to last, but alas they don't. They change, and it can be cruel, because even if you manage to get what you want, and can maintain that sensory pleasure, the mind gets bored after a time, the senses become jaded and one starts to crave for something different, everything changes.

The concept of not-self is a tricky one to grasp. Of course there is a self you may say, I mean who is sitting here and typing these words, who is it that practises the noble eightfold path, if not the self? In fact when the Buddha was asked one time if there was a self or not, he point blank refused to answer the question. I think what he was trying to teach us, is the self is not what we think it is. It is not the things that we identify with and call the self. There is no permanent fixed soul that travels through existence like a marble on a marble run. There is no marble. There is just flow with nothing substantial behind it. Just changing streams of energy, of processes that arise and cease due to causes and conditions.

But it is also not true to say that nothing exists. Because there is energy, energy is real, in physics, we are taught that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only converted from one form of energy to another. So where did that energy come from originally and what happens to it at death?

The Buddha said no matter how far back in time he looked, he could not find a beginning to this mysterious flow of energy we call life. And when someone asked him what happens to a fully enlightened being (an arahant) after death, he didn't give an answer, he said such questions are unknowables, at least to those of us who are not arahants. He taught that pondering such things can be a waste of time, and can't be put in words satisfactorily. These unknowables can get in the way of practising what is important. Which is what is in front of us in the here and now. Our lives are brief, and the only really important question is am I suffering or not? The goal of the Buddhist path is to realise complete lasting freedom from suffering. The third noble truth. This is the greatest supernormal power, the greatest knowledge of all.

Still, in an attempt to satisfy my curiosity. I tend to think of it like this. Imagine the energy we call self is like a glass of water. And nibanna, the deathless, the unconditioned element, is like a peaceful ocean that is not affected by weather, currents, change or any other phenomena. What happens to the water in the glass when it is poured into that ocean? Where does it go and what does it become?

Peace and light 

Didn't want to get up today. Felt very fatigued. I lay there, persevering with the desire to make effort to move. Then remembered I had to be up in time for a video call with a friend, which helped me reach for that extra bit of energy tipping the balance in favour of wading through the waves of treacle-like resistance in the mind, to once again awaken to another day of life as a human being.

Made and drank some coffee.

Then sat and meditated for an hour, had a peaceful meditation, first time in a while where I was actually very content to just sit there and watch the breath without wanting to be any place else. Felt awareness naturally want to be centred there, and the composure and stillness grew into a peaceful happy sense of the inner body. The physical outer body like the walls of a cave, weathering the worldly winds and myriad sense impressions like rain on a rock shelter; but the inner body felt safe, warm, comfortable and at ease, like being in a bath of warm contented energy.

Knock on the door.
I reluctantly leave my inner cave.
And serenely collect the post.

Then make effort to generate the desire to eat. Some days it feels like a chore to eat food. I try to eat one meal a day, not for special religous reasons, but because I have noticed that eating just one meal a day (between 11am - 3pm) seems to be better for my health. I don't always succeed at this though.

Still not done anything on this assignment. I just can't find the will or inclination to work right now. Decided to go for an epic walk in the chill December evening. The pavements frosted with the fractal patterns of ice flakes. The half moon was bright, shone right into my heart. The sea was still and quiet. One house I walked past had so many Christmas lights up in their garden and they had made like a huge hammock-like string of lightbulbs between one palm tree and another.

These old Victorian houses look magical at this time of year. I feel the spirits of the ancestors coming from them, greeting me with a lovely energy that is hard to put into words, but you can feel it, sense it in the body, in the heart mostly I think, although also everywhere else, even my toes (if that last sentence even makes sense). 

It was very quiet, not another person in sight, just lit windows, and I imagined all the different people living their lives and wished them well. Some energy feels really old, serene and wise, and others young like the Spring. Yet there is something that connects us all, whoever we are, an energy I cannot for the life of me find adequate words for. But I imagine you have also felt it too dear reader, and may well be nodding in agreement, because we have all felt it I believe. Something larger than ourselves, something sublime that when you try to pin it down makes it disappear, although it is still there. Perhaps it is the way the mind likes to separate and dissect things, but actually the truth is we are all one, all beings, all matter, we are all a part of it. 

This freaky mind-blowing experience of being.

Been listening to a lot of 'In our time' podcasts about religion. They have been educational about the origins and beliefs of many of the religions in the world today. I am not a religous person myself, I do not know if there is such a thing as God or creator. I tend to be more atheistic in my belief, but not completely. I am open to changes in perception, I try not to keep my brain stuck in a filter bubble of creed/opinion. There is a mystical element to my psyche that no matter how logical I become, still exists, a part some label the 'God-shaped hole'. I find myself drawn to the mysterious, like a hungry leaf turning towards the sun. I wonder if sometimes it is a yearning for hope in a dark and troubled human world and a feeling of powerlessness to change anything.

I am aware everything I see and experience is relative to me. Nothing is set in stone, each of us experiences this world in our own way and thus form our opinions of it based on those experiences. That is all any one can do; and so noone can ever know everything or what it is truly like to be another. We are organic islands interacting through brief expressions of matter, rotating at 465 metres a second on a planet orbiting a star in a universe of countless, possibly infinite stars and big bangs.

Makes all the life on this planet all the more precious I think, and we should be doing everything we can to preserve it and if that involves changing ourselves to become a more altruistic species then so be it.

Got my headphones on just listening to some sweet tunes. A bit of insomnia but I don't mind. Music is an amazing thing. Sometimes I like writing to the beats, feeling the rhythm and unlocking some hidden or normally inhibited part of my soul through the combination of words and sound. Stories are weaved in the dead of night, some forgotten past where everyone feels at home. The night surrounds the glare of my dimmed screen. There's a curious moth, it sits on the screen for a moment and then flutters away. An artificial focal point that different insects and my brain are drawn to and I sense their life and wish them well. Feel a sense of deep connection to the earth, probably the music, but that seems to just be the key to uncover deep hidden memories of a time long ago when the earth was first born. Maybe those memories are deep in our DNA, and sometimes things unlock them and we remember stuff. Do we carry the memories of all our ancestors? Each of us holding the knowledge of millions of years of evolution, perhaps it may even be possible to go far back to the first single celled life-forms, could the memory of that time be buried deep inside that double helix strand somewhere? We are all related, all creatures great and small, all the different species of life on earth are our kin; if we go back far enough we can all trace our ancestors back to that very first organism.