Sometimes, at the moment of waking up, I forget who I am. A pink ray of early sunlight hitting my eyes is all there is to my consciousness. In this empty space, it doesn’t matter if I exist or not, but not in a sad way.
Then fraction by fraction, the memories come back - “oh, my mom said this to me yesterday”, “ah, I have to do this today,” “right, my lover hurt me like this.” It’s almost like in Iron Man, where Tony summons pieces of armor to his skin, except that only the armor exists and I’m completely empty. Back with those fractions of memories are the emotions they carry - all the worries, wallows, deep love, and longing. Attaching memory by memory, I’m back to being me.
When I meditate, the opposite happens. I shed memories. All the worries, wallows, deep love, and longing, all cease to be me. Instead, they look like fractions of consciousness, floating around. Sometimes they enthrall my awareness. But sooner or later they fly away, then there’s quietness. In this quietness, everything seems arbitrary, like how I was raised and how I overthought the strawberry ice cream that my crush gave me. In fact, I could hold the memories and emotions of a billionaire, or a flower petal in the meditation retreat. The boundaries between me and everything else seem arbitrary. In this space, it doesn’t matter if I exist or not, but not in a sad way. Because there’s nothing, and everything is me. In this space, if I do the loving-kindness mediation, sending love to all beings somehow also means sending love to me, and vice versa. I don’t feel selfish about sending love to just myself. It also means I could love everyone and everything, the extent of this is sometimes shocking. Shedding memory by memory, I’m back to being me.
I often cry at the feeling of being me, like, the whole of it. The whole glory and gore of it. In this complete acceptance, I don’t need to do anything - the whole of me already exists, and they suffice. It doesn’t matter if I do something great or get better at communication or be a kind friend or commit sins. Self-improvement seems ridiculous in that space. Or to be exact, the idea that I can control any aspect of me seems ridiculous because I am but fractions of consciousness floating around.
But shouldn’t I fix this and that and make my life perfect? I’m 23 and I’m hungry. At times, I look at everything I do with an intense desire to be the best on Earth at each and every one of them. But after emptiness, I often give zero thought to being great. I fluctuate.
The few hours after quietness are often confusing like this. I have no idea how to interpret this state of mind. It sounds similar to “no-self” in Buddhism, where one’s ego dissolves. I heard people completely transformed after experiencing no-self, perpetuating in pure bliss or something. I didn’t quite experience a radical shift like that.
Or maybe I did, just not in a glorifying way one could give sermons on. These days, I could sit with the intensity of heartbreak from seeing my mom cry and not feel like it would haunt me, or transform into depression. These days, even if everything is going south and maybe I woke up disliking myself so much I drowned in the phone for 2 hours, I feel like I could still have joy. These days, I cringe less at saying “Con yêu mẹ,” (I love you) in full and clear Vietnamese to my mom. Maybe the transformation is just me having an easier time existing with myself - not something to save the world over or praise. But it’s somehow enough. And I keep coming back to mediation, shedding, memory by memory.
Many thanks to Kasra for reading through and editing!
bài này hay quá bạn ơi!!
so beautifully written… !