A Place of Leisure

Posted on by Alain Joly

There is a place in ourself where we are not, strictly speaking, meeting anything. This is what ‘emptiness’ means, that we are not bumping into anything, that we don’t encounter any resistance whatsoever. There may be objective appearances showing up, but they are not met from the position of being ourself an object, a self, a thing with properties and qualities. As long as we believe to be a self separate from the world, and identified to a set of thoughts and feelings, we are placed in a loud and busy world, a world crowded with objects, where conflict is at home and suffering is the norm, both outside and inside. But only feel to be the empty presence that your self truly is, and your world will appear as a qualitatively empty and silent being. And this silent being is ourself, our being which had been previously crowded by our identification with perceptions, muted by our thoughts, and dumbed by our feelings. So, as empty being, we are never meeting objects and conversing with them, for the only reality we ever come upon is ourself — infinite, empty being. That being is that which we eternally converse with. So we keep company with being only, not with objects and persons. This meeting, or melting, with being — with the essence — is paradoxically the only source for a true, loving, and meaningful relationship between apparent people and objects. Any meeting that takes place only at the level of people and objects is a promise for suffering and conflict.

There is one easy and direct consequence of living, or relating, as and with being. It is that our life becomes a place of leisure. We are liberated from the constraints of objects. Therefore we have a free time, a free space where we are not occupied, not busy working it all out, being puzzled, grabbed by conflict, seized by suffering. We are therefore in for leisure. We are in a position of freedom from where we can contemplate the world and ourself as we are. We are on a holiday, a holy, consecrated day when we release our chronic identification with the objective world, and find behind it relief and an intrinsic peace. This freedom from identification bears joy as its DNA because we are finally allowed to just be. And this being forever shines through experience, which is seen as secondary. And this being renders the world back to its original transparency. Furthermore, being clothes experience with a space like quality. This is a space of ability and creativity, for we are not possessed by our entanglement with experience. This is a space of free will, for we are not constrained by our limiting faculties. This is a space of easiness, for it takes us home, in the loving harbour of our true self. This place of leisure is absolute freedom — freedom from space and time, and from the contingencies of appearances. It is a place of no haste, where you are with your spacious self alone, and enjoy its interior, which is nothing but the world. You stay in the perimeter of your self wherever you may go. And there is the loving influence of infinity in whatever you may do, which means that peace is coming forth in spite of circumstances. Above all, this place of leisure is the burial ground of your self as a limited and separated entity.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Contemplative Mind

Posted on by Alain Joly

Contemplation is a place of leisure and space. It is, as its etymology conveys, a ‘place for observation’. It has space within itself. It is a temple, which in Latin means an ‘open and consecrated space’. It is a sacred spot. A place where you find yourself meditating without having initiated it. It means that you — your Self — are on an equal footing with the objects of experience. You have not been absorbed, or engulfed by them. You are rather with them, hosting them all, embracing them in your emptiness. You see life from the standpoint of your temple of being. This is the position where from things acquire beauty and meaning. This is how you contemplate — by looking at everything from within the position of your Self. This is like being at the beach. The beach is a threshold, as are the front stairs that lead to the Ganges in Benares. This is when or where the city life is left behind and we come to be on vacation, on a holy-day — which is always a holy ground — to have leisure, freedom. To meet a certain form of death. To face the emptiness of the sea, the river, and the sky in front of us. We know intimately, or have the intuition of this place in ourself — this threshold, this passage from a dull and empty sense of acquired fullness, to the fullness of emptiness which is nothing but our natural, god-given state and being. This is the temple from which objective experience ought to be contemplated. This is where the contemplator is felt to be the contemplated. Contemplation then becomes a prayer. And such a prayer asks for nothing but the fact of being. This is the place of convalescence, where you come to heal from the world, from yourself. This is where you come to paint, to produce a new world out of your Self. This is where you get healed by this new vision, where your life finds a reorganisation, a new standpoint, a new temple where you can breathe at last and be content. Contemplation is completion. Sitting in an empty boat, or amongst dirty laundry, and be taken far out of yourself into your newly discovered sense of Self. This is a cleansing process, both of yourself and of the world. This is the contemplative mind.

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Painting and text by Alain Joly

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The painting was made from an original black & white photograph by Bjørn Weinreich.

Bibliography:
– ‘Benares, A Sacred City in North India’ – by Bjørn Weinreich and Ulla Mørch – (Denmark, 1983)

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Other ‘Ways of Being‘ from the blog…

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