The Streets and Neighborhoods of the Mind

After fresh snow blanketed Maine and with sunshine transformed his backyard to an enchanted land, Kyriacos Markides, in his book, Riding with the Lion, wrote : "A day like this made me temporarily oblivious of Cyprus. My incurable longing for the streets and neighborhoods of my youth and the hidden coves where I spearfished with my friends receded for a while to the back of my awareness."

I don't yearn for the streets and landscapes of the Philippines. I am not the patriotic sort. But images that remind me of the Philippines--coconut trees bending towards white, sandy beaches, hibiscus and plumeria blossoms, rice cakes on banana leaves, tiny village churches--delight and bring inexplicable pleasure.

What is the nature of delight in the mind. How do certain images or ideas seem to glow when they enter into the mind stream? What is the experience like? Can this be a phenomenon I could intentionally duplicate? But why only certain images or ideas? Taken together, do these images and ideas amount to something coherent and true about life, about me, about the universe?

For over 20 years, after sitting in meditation I would give dharma talks to those gathered there with me. Bits of ideas do come into the mind as I meditate and I do often identify one idea that is like the string with which I know I could pull the kite out of the wide blue sky. I start with that one idea and soon I am discoursing about Buddhist philosophy and its constructs about personhood and the "world," and I am amazed. Ideas tumble out of my mouth unbidden, often as a much a surprise to me as to my listening friends. I could feel the truthfulness of what I am saying. Thus I would think to myself have other people written extended expositions of prose that have inspired religions. But does the feeling of truthfulness mean these ideas are true?

In his book, Markides recounts how the two saintly mystics he had met back in Cyprus had had a falling apart. Do saints quarrel? Are they not supposed to have ego, pride, or vanity? The history of religions contains numerous examples of how religious leaders, many of them saints revered by their disciples, act in ways we think of as unholy. Even Jesus lost control of his anger and harried the vendors of animal sacrifices out of the temple in Jerusalem. Somehow Christian apologists were able to put his anger into something elevating but we all know how anger means loss of control to our ego. In anger we say harsh and hurting words, and act harshly and meanly.

What is the connection between the felt truthfulness of ideas that come to us in prayer or after meditation and virtue, the way we live our lives? Are the two compatible? Is there truly a person who after entering some doorway into sanctity forevermore acts, thinks and feels holy, kind, generous, compassionate, all the virtues our religions teach us as the way noble humans ought to act?

More to the point, does our feeling that an idea is true founded in truth? I think an artist also finds his art in a similar fashion. How many times does art arise from some mistake? How often do artists create new visions of enchantment after losing their way and finding themselves suddenly in a strange neighborhood where they'd never been?

Finally, what is truth? What is beauty? Are all these simply maya, delusions our minds bring about to soften the impact of a truly meaningless existence where there is no truth, no goal truly worthy of pursuing, no truly saintly or holy person, nothing worth living for? There is just this moment and how we construe it is immaterial?