Ocean Waves

      The sky tonight was an eerie grey, with swirling clouds that looked purple in places. To the northwest, there was a patch of yellow light, which made it appear to be day and night in one single moment.  Heading up along a street called Vaughan Road, I pause to wonder where this road will take me. And I find that the road gets closer to the place I used to live in Rogers Road, with the tiny strip plazas and the coin laundries. I am nostalgic for the diverse cultural mosaic there, as well as the sense of aliveness in all the people and two storey apartments.

     Today, for some reason, I was thinking a lot about religious conflict. It might have been from my watching the movie Z for Zachariah, a film which explores the conflicts that happen when people get together to survive after a nuclear holocaust. There is a scene in the movie where the couple decides to dismantle a church that the main character’s father had built. The protagonist argues that God had kept her alive, and the continued survival depends on God. The other characters in the movie argue that God is in the heart, and the wood from the church could be used to build a water mill. Apparently science wins out in the end, if only temporarily. This part of the movie lead me to wonder: who is right in this situation, and is there a ‘right’ way? And I find that the conflict continued to linger for a while.

    

    When a group of people have conflicting views, the tendency seems to be on convincing the other side that their view is the correct one. I also found that to be a skill that people are encouraged to cultivate in school. In Seventh Grade, for instance, I had been asked to convince a class of twenty students that a certain brand of taxicab is superior to others. This was introduction to debate 101. And I remember feeling anxious that somehow the way I presented would not be convincing enough, as though identity were bound in that presenting.

    When I was meditating this morning, the thoughts just came and went like bubbles. If thoughts are seen as bubbles, are they worth defending to the death? Actually, the more I see the thoughts as equal in quality, the less substantial they seem. It is as though one were being provided continuous subway service every thirty seconds. With such availability, there is no need to be anxious for one train, as the next one will come in its stead. So it is with viewpoints. Views are a dime a dozen, and they constantly change with the tides, according to new circumstances or information. But one often forms an attachment to views when they perceive that they are somehow being threatened by what appears to be a conquering viewpoint. And one should be on guard here, because what is it that makes the view or the thought powerful? Thoughts don’t have minds of their own. It is this mind, the mind used to read these words, that brings thought to life.

     If I recognize the transience of thoughts, then does the sense of a bounded, fixed subject disappear? Maybe or maybe not. It makes me more sensitive to the fact that I am a subject. I am bounded by a subjective sense of body, and my position limits me in some ways. It’s the very knowing of this that could be liberating, because then  there is no illusion that there is a fixed, unchanging “Self” and “Other”.