On The Ordinary & The Sublime
Some time ago I was at an Aldi near the Central Station in Leiden. I almost never go to the Aldi, but for whatever reason I was there.
It’s a small store, there are no windows, the produce is surprisingly fresh and sometimes you can find Trader Joe’s products.
I was standing there, nothing special, bright white lights, people moving quietly through the isles, then suddenly something shifted. There was an experience of “being everything”. If I try to describe it probably the closest I can come is a kind of unbounded awareness in which nothing stood apart: the Aldi, Iguazu Falls, it’s all good. There was no-body to reference back to or to “ground me”, no need for that either.
No magic, nothing shocking, I just dropped into a state where everything simply was. In the moment, the experience felt very ordinary, but when I look back, it feels completely extraordinary.
As usual, it took a long time to integrate the experience. And as the months went by (and the years) one day I found myself talking to a very old sympathique Dutch man in Katwijk, he was selling tiny handmade poetry booklets on a street market. At the time I was also writing poetry, I had accidentally started writing poetry to try to make sense of who or what I was, a habit that grew stronger and more fun after my son’s birth.
We had a long conversation, he had been practicing Zen for many years, it was a quite pleasant and unexpected encounter. At some point he paused and told me: you know, Buddhism is a religion. He told me that to indicate his posture, but also to find out where I stand in the whole philosophy – religion situationship. To my surprise, I very easily agreed with him. I agreed with hm? That prompt a period of self-questioning.
I think I always saw Buddhism mostly as religion in Asia and a philosophy in the West. Probably due to an amalgamation of ideas, thoughts, assumptions and all sorts of mental objects supporting the idea of philosophy being superior, above or further ahead.
But after the Aldi experience + a lot of time, I seem to have integrated the experience in a way that now I seem to believe that what happened in the Aldi, unbounded pure awareness, is what happens when we die. The self dissolves, and everything just is.
This is not what I think. Due to the embodied experience, I seem to now believe this.
After years of meditation practice, Buddhism, or more precisely, some experiences brought about by meditation, changed my understanding of death. More significantly, my understanding of what happens when we die, and for me at least, that is what religions do, provide a map, idea or “certainty” about the afterlife.
Maybe in some years that experience will be explained by synapses and chemicals in our brains, or I’ll have a new experience that’ll override my experiences of unbound awareness.
More likely, that narrative or the need to interpret experiences will also dissolve. But for now, if I question myself, to my surprise I seem to believe this is what happens when we die, and I sort of live accordingly.
The tiny poetry book from the curious market man
The Dutch & the child in Katwijk
Self-Ethnography 