The all-pervading duḥkha

The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my dearest friend a few days ago. I thought it's precious enough to share with the world:

Last night, when I was going to sleep I had that time when everything in life seems... feels sore. All the dreams, actions, responses, goals, memories, the entire manifested realm seemed impermanent and sore. This feeling was reminiscent of duhkha; and, indeed, it probably is exactly what it was. I felt duhkha in my body, its movements, in my mind's thoughts, ideas, concepts, in the world around, the world that strives for something. I felt duhkha in the dreams we share and in the moments we try to stop. I felt duhkha in my research paper that I write and in the hundreds of books that I read or will have to read so as to make the research more or less accomplished. I felt duhkha in my desire to be richer financially. I felt duhkha in my desire to be richer spiritually. I felt duhkha in the way the world was presented to my awareness at the moment. I felt duhkha and a desire to die and to arise liberated and reshaped in a different form. These were the precious moments of realizing at least for that period that there is virtually nothing to personally cling to, to want, to desire, to force oneself into. I fell asleep and had dreams and as I woke up the duhkha unveiled something beneath its sheath, something mysterious and yet blissful, something ultimately joyful and knowing. 

While there is always duhkha in the relative world of living, beneath it there is ultimate joy of participation in the constant co-creation of the manifested realm. And I realized that the thing I want the most at this moment, even though wanting itself is duhkha, is transforming myself to be able to always already be connected with the vast universe of different magnitudes of experiencing- and being-in-the-world. Life as it is in its unknowingness is nothing compared to life that is enriched with knowingness, jnana, and energies of the Kosmic creativity. I humbly pray to my innermost being to realize my deepest potential and to transform the utterly familiar into a completely different world of the mysterious. To realize my supreme identity and liberate that of others is what my living is for. To have fun surfing the waves of the ocean of primordial awareness. No amount of gold in the world, no amount of traveling, no amount of lesser experiences can overbuy this awareness which turns everything into gold and the most profound experience of being by leaving it perfectly the way it is now—a changing manifestation of the Unborn.

And, perhaps, the most painful and joyful is to let go of these words as well as of their opposites for giving the space to actual reality beneath them.

For those interested, a very detailed and yet simply-written article on duḥkha can be found in Wikipedia.

The Kosmos experienced is the Kosmos experiencing

In the cartography of my experience there is one that I treasure much. What I speak about is an experience of the Kosmos—at least that is so in my interpretation. It should be noted right away that in contrast to cosmos, the term Kosmos describes not just the physical world, or the physiosphere, but rather the entire universe of phenomena, which includes physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere, and pneumasphere.

For Ancient Greeks, at least for some of those, who were savvy enough to leave a philosophical legacy, the fabric of the Kosmos was that of objects in all those realms: physical realities (of the physiosphere), biological realities (of the biosphere), mental realities (of the noosphere), and spiritual realities (of the pneumasphere). Greeks maintained that there was nothing outside the Kosmos; and the entire world of sensibilia, intelligibilia, and transcendelia in the broadest sense of those terms was something that is inherent to it. A. F. Losev, a brilliant Russian dialectical philosopher, has spent almost the entire 20th century on studying and interpreting the ancient kosmology; and in his own words:

So, there is nothing besides the Kosmos? Indeed. Then the Kosmos depends only on itself? Yes, it does. Then it is liberated? Sure, it is. No one has created it, no one has saved it, no one has been watching it. <...> If everything exists only in the Kosmos and there is nothing besides it, if it expresses itself, and if how it expresses itself is the Absolute, then it is not simply the Kosmos, but... a creation of art. In terms of the entire aesthetics of Antiquity, the Kosmos is the best, the most consummate creation of art. (Losev A. F. "Dvenadsat' tezisov ob antichnoy kulture [Twelve theses on antique culture]." Studencheskiy meridian, 1983, N9-10. [Note: This paragraph is translated by me; the academic translation is accessible here.])

It is hard for me to describe the Kosmic consciousness in terms of experiences and states. These words are somewhat deceitful in how they convey the phenomenon, as if you were the subject experiencing the object (the Kosmos), while this entire subject-experiencing-object schema exists in the space which is the face of the Kosmos itself. 

It is awareness of the oneness with the entire manifested universe that is aware of you at this moment; and not the opposite, for the moment it is the opposite, the opposite transfigures. You are the object of this awareness; and the moment you become aware of it you realize an ever-present condition of being what you truly are, infinite, joyful, and encompassing Kosmic consciousness. What follows is the experience of understanding that, if paraphrasing Meister Eckhart, the Kosmos is closer to me than I am to myself. I am nothing but a spark in the vortex of the living memory of that which is always already closer to me than my fleeting identity will ever be.

And here, in the very heart of the Kosmos, which is the very heart of yourself, everything vibrates with love, passion, and devotion.