When I Was Young, I Wanted To Be…

In my basic Japanese language class, the teacher required the class to make a very simple composition using the Nihongo that we have learned so far. We were asked to read our work in front of the class.

The topic was, “When I was young, I wanted to be . . .”.

Translated into English, my composition went like this:

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a teacher.

When I was in secondary school, I wanted to become an artist. I drew pictures. I made decorative crafts. And I wrote novellas.

But when I was in college, I wanted to join a revolution and be like Che Guevara.

Now, I just want to be a Buddha.

After reading my sentences, I peeked at my teacher who was standing by the side of the room. I waited for her comments and corrections. For a moment, she did not say a word. Then she smiled a very sweet smile.

I guess she liked my composition . . ..

As I went back to my seat, two South Asian classmates, stared at me. The one from India, his eyes, dark, deeply expressive, appeared very perplexed. The one from Nepal, his eyes, light brown, intense, also appeared very perplexed.

I was confused.

They both asked, “Did you say you wanted to be a Buddha? Or was it buta?

I said, I want to be a Buddha.

They then corrected me by saying that I should stress the double ‘d’ in Buddha. Otherwise, it sounded like I said ‘buta’ – which means ‘pig’ in Japanese.

The class was in Japanese language, but I had a simultaneous lesson in learning how to correctly pronounce a South Asian word!

Emotion Vs. Intellect in Personal Transformation

If Knowing is Acting, how do we go beyond the intellect in order to really feel, understand, and truly know what the sages know so we can act accordingly?

If you ask the “how” or the process, I won’t be able to tell you in a precise way.

The process is different for everybody.

What I can only say is based on my version of the story which, naturally, is based on personal experience.

The “how” of every transformation necessarily involves the emotions.

Emotion is more powerful than the intellect. Emotions move the body, whereas the intellect may or may not. Intense emotions penetrate every fiber, every cell of our being, causing the transformation of these very cells; the transformation of our physical as well as energetic bodies.

How potent emotion really is?

How do you think people like Hitler are able to influence, as if in a spell, large numbers of people including undoubtedly highly intelligent ones? People whose I.Q. are even much higher than Hitler himself? He appealed to these people’s emotions.

How do you think political organizations and governments, religious institutions, capitalist companies and the media, stir and play with people’s emotions to advance their interests? By evoking fears, insecurities and even sympathy.

How do you think highly intelligent and technologically advanced aliens, such as the Greys, look up to us, very much desirous of that one thing that we have – our ability to feel? You would think that these advanced beings, on their way to greater evolutionary heights, fully equipped with high intelligence and technological prowess, would not be bothered to take an interest on little dramatic earthlings like us. But they do because of what we have which they had long killed within themselves in their unbalanced quest for technological advancement.

We can learn from their experience as they learn from us.

If emotions can be used in very destructive ways, it can also be used in very positive and transformative ways.

Deaths, separations and breakups profoundly affect us that their effect on us are almost always life-changing. Emotion is so powerful that people in love go crazy and it changes their body chemistry.

Emotion is a very effective tool for personal transformation which may eventually lead to that which we seek – enlightenment.

To use emotion for personal transformation, it is crucial that one is able to feel deeply and intensely. And you feel deeply when you fully engage with the world. You interact with other people who serve to trigger within you deep and intense emotional reactions that almost always lead to changes in your life.

In spirituality, this technique or process seems to be the opposite of the other path which involves withdrawing from the world. That path of withdrawing from the world, a path which many in the past have taken, may actually be a longer path.

It was after seeing the truth, after he was enlightened, that the Buddha aptly advised his followers to take the Middle Path.

In my personal process, I am both a recluse and a “party girl”. I immerse myself fully into the world and then extricate myself to contemplate on my experiences and extract the insights I got from them. I follow my passions and whatever it is that is summoning me. This oftentimes requires boldness and vulnerability as I can get hurt and wounded in the process. But each time I come out of an emotionally charged experience, I gain more invincibility and a new level of illumination.

So feel deeply. Live passionately in the world. Play hard. Taste fully the flavors the world has to offer. Seek balance between the two extreme paths. You do not have to deny yourself one thing in order to get another thing.

Finally, do not wait until you “know” what the sages know before acting on their deep realizations and teachings. Because deep inside you, something already knows what the wise ones know.

 

The End of Spiritual Seeking?

 

Is there really an end to spiritual seeking?

We are infinite beings – do you take this as a fact?

If you do not believe that we are infinite beings, do you believe then that when you die, it’s the end of you?

No life after death?

We are in an eternal journey – another fact?

If you do not believe that we are in an eternal journey, do you believe then that somewhere, sometime, all existence will cease to exist?

If we assume, that we are infinite beings in an eternal journey, then we are always expanding.

If we are always expanding, shifting, changing, is there an end to spiritual seeking?

Yes, there is.

It is known as the state of Nirvana, Enlightenment, Awakening, entering the Kingdom of God.

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