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itateverybody-blog · 6 years

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The Life-Changing Power of Subliminal Persuasion Video

We made a plan for ourselves to go somewhere outside of the city over the weekend. It was something we had neglected to do for most of the summer. Late May, June, and most of July had raced by, and slowly the existence of the world outside of the metropole creeped into our minds. The idea of taking a trip to the country manifested itself as a feeling strangely reminiscent of shame, or maybe embarrassment, as if the recognition of our isolation in the great grid of urban space made us feel cheap and inadequate.

Looking back on it all now, I am willing to concede that the acknowledgement of our failure to visit the world outside of our city lives and the peculiar shame it brought with it, also made us think of how much our day-to-day lives with one another was founded on the comfort of routine and habit. Chicago’s claustrophobic loneliness underscored the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedules (both formal and informal) that comprised the bulk of our adulthood. Work, school, trains, buses, availabilities, timing, coordinations, events, and invitations; a never-ending logistical mapping that just led to the planning of future life-operations; a broad-spectrum self-administered micromanagement.

Sadly, our relationship with one another was not much different. We managed the breaks and flows of our intimacies basically the same way we did the rest of our lives. We coordinated time spent together, we maintained open lines of communication in regards to our competing responsibilities, and we provided regular feedback to one another regarding our satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the course of our romance. After several years, it was a functional relationship, and it was precisely that functionality that appeared ugly to us, that made us feel shame. The habits and routines of our love seemed to betray the passion implied by the term, “love,” as if our affections for one another were a struggle of rational planning and familiar procedures, not the ribald feelings of uncontrollable desire and delirium commonly associated with the term.

We decided we would take a trip outside of the city, to temporarily assuage the feelings of shame we felt towards ourselves for maintaining such a functional coexistence.

Sandy had always appeared pleasing to me. At first the attraction had been sexual, then sentimental, and now merely reassuring. It was as if I had come to treat her body with a degree of objectification far deeper than that of petty chauvinism. Beyond the realm of sexual objectification was the objectification that came with the quotidian familiarity of a long term romantic relationship. Her body to me held the same status as an old blanket or a favorite stuffed animal. Something that generated a placid sensation of calmness and security; an object that is so present in one’s life, that it is not even there, unnoticed because of its consistent use as a source for emotional relief.

As I looked at her then, when this all began, her features served to reinforce her invisibility. Her tall slender build, her short brown hair, her round face, he slightly accented cheeks, her elusive green eyes, her black, wire rim glasses, her pale complexion, her thighs, her armpits, the small of her back, the moles, the acne, the pimples, the rashes, the scars, the bare skin; she was an endless collage of normal things that gave substance to the phrase, “everyday life.” Sandy was everyday life. Her body was the lived experience of this notion that separated my existence as a private self from the public world of large populations and faceless institutions. My discreet, private love.

So we journeyed outside the city. Maybe I subconsciously suspected that looking at Sandy in an unknown context might change my own self, might make me feel differently in someway and even reduce some of the shame I felt for living so functionally.

We drove for an hour or two to a state park we had looked up online. The park was a series of trails spread through a large forest preserve. There was flora and there was fauna. There were a lot of people who seemed to have had the same idea that we did. Different families and couples and friends and even lone individuals, all drawn in someway to spend time in this serene space of pure nature preserved for the pleasure of human society. A place to go in order to forget the immense logistical project of living. I felt somewhat disappointed by the crowd, initially because I felt like it would undermine the tranquility of our idealized destination but later I understood that all my fellow day-trippers were revealing the underlying pathetic logic of our own micro-vacation; like a forest full of terrible mirrors, unrelenting in their savage reflections.

Sandy and I walked through the woods, mostly in silence. I felt the need to maintain a certain air of reverence, not because I felt any spiritual connection to my surroundings, but because I felt obligated to imitate an attitude I wish I was capable of maintaining. I had not felt much reverence for anything for many years. Sandy followed behind me, letting me guide our travels with my quiet, yet obscenely performative respect for the natural kingdom. We trudged our way down to a small creek at the base of a long hill. We sat by the water for a long time and Sandy laid her head in my lap as we both watched the sun drift through the foliage of the ancient trees and the dragon flies zip and zoom across the surface of the water. I felt hypnotized by the beauty around us, or at least, that’s how I would have characterized my feelings if someone had asked me how I was feeling.

In truth I don’t think I really felt that at all. I don’t think I really felt anything.

***

On the way back from our little weekend trip, we stopped at a thrift store we had never been to before and that we never returned to again. It was there that we found the first tape. It was stuck on the rack in the bottom right corner, between, Planet of the Apes, and, Honey I Shrunk the Kids. The cover of the case featured a hazy and worn image of a peaceful beach, with waves lapping the shore beneath a tranquil sunset. Overlaid across the image of the beach was the faint outlines of a sleeping body, its head tucked into its arms as if in the fetal position. At the very bottom read the title: The Life-Changing Power of Subliminal Persuasion Video.

Sandy and I bought the tape along with a new lamp shade and a couple of cheap framed pictures.

When we came home we were tired from the long drive, and soon settled in the bedroom, in front of the television and the old VHS player. We found ourselves playing the tape, anticipating a strange, mildly amusing collection of video sequences that would soon be forgotten.

The tape began with a calm and soothing voice providing an introduction over a series of calming nature stills. The voice introduced itself as Dr. Bill Convex, co-founder and chief hypnotherapist at Open Horizons, the company responsible for the production of The Life Changing Power of Subliminal Persuasion Video. Dr. Convex explained how the tape currently in our possession contained a scientifically developed mixture of audio and visual stimulation designed to enhance the critical and creative skills of the mind. While the video would only appear to be calming footage of placid natural environments, the footage also contained visual and auditory lines of communication perceivable only by the subconscious; secret sounds and pictures underneath the surface of what the conscious mind would see and hear. These secrets were tools for the scientific reinvigoration of the brain; a power to change lives. Sustained viewing of the tape’s contents over a prolonged period of time (along with other media products offered by Open Horizons) would cause the viewer to experience an increase in mental focus, streamlining the viewer’s cognitive abilities allowing him or her to maximize the full potential of their body and mind.

Over the next 45 minutes, Sandy and I watched with varying degrees of attentiveness as the tape played in its entirety. It didn’t seem terribly remarkable to me. There was a certain lightly pleasing cheesiness to the scenes of forests and beaches scored by the abstract non-linear tones of mid-80’s synthesizers. But beyond that limited scope, I didn’t feel as if the tape had anything much else to offer. After it had finished playing, I said as much to Sandy. She expressed no opinion, in fact she said very little at all after the video was over.

***

The next day was a Monday and I usually got home from work later than Sandy, who

Got off a few hours earlier but has to leave the house as I’m just waking up. At some point throughout the day I vaguely recalled waking up in a daze in the middle of the night and noticing that Sandy was not in the bed next to me, but the thought dissipated from my mind soon after it had first occurred to me.

When I did arrive home, I walked in to find Sandy watching The Life Changing Power of Subliminal Persuasion Video by herself in the poorly lit living room. We only had one VCR that we normally kept in our bedroom, which means she had brought the tape player out of the room and hooked it up out here. She was lying back on the gray couch casually smoking a cigarette. Other than wearing her socks, she was completely naked.

When I stepped into the apartment she stared at me blankly yet deeply, as if she were acknowledging the strangeness of what she was doing but was not going to attempt to justify her behavior. I decided to remain mute on the subject and instead reached out to her side and helped myself to one of her cigarettes. We both sat there smoking together in silence, as the dulcet tones of the tape’s soundtrack filled the room, accompanied only by the creaking of the ceiling fan whirring away above our heads. The tobacco smoke drifted out from our lungs and lilted in the air as the shifting colors of the tv screen shimmered across the haze we created. It was as if the smoke from our mouths and the light beams of the tv were the point where our bodies met and blended with the video content; the indeterminate porousness that exists between the viewers and the screen.

Over the course of the night, Sandy must of watched the tape dozens of times while I skulked around, unable to ask her what she was doing. Early in the morning, I went out to the living room and turned off the blank blue screen as she slept on the couch in a rather awkward position that I could only imagine was terribly uncomfortable. Although I turned off the television, I did not attempt to reposition her. I did not think of it this way at the time, but I think I was afraid of waking her.

***

The rest of the week transformed the first night into a routine. Sandy kept watching the tape and I quietly avoided her new fixation. I didn’t know how to interact with her unusual behavior. Perhaps I lacked the emotional depth.

***

Eventually, Sandy decided to find out more about Open Horizons and their other media products as well as hypnotherapy media prophet Dr. Bill Convex. The history was not hard to find, but the facts, once related, led to further questions.

Sandy calmly gave me the details she had uncovered one night as we ate dinner. Or, at least I was eating, Sandy mainly discussed the details of her findings and pushed her food around with her fork. She had recently started to eat less and lose weight.

Dr. Bill Convex had been a revolutionary clinical psychologist working in experimental new media therapy treatments in the late 1970’s. Dr. Convex claimed to have created a method of video and audio manipulation that unlocked the persuasive potential of video, allowing for a radical increase in the effectiveness of therapeutic treatment. Dr. Convex had apparently been shunned by the mainstream scientific community, but had overtime built a national community of committed followers through his popular self-help videotapes; like the one that was now sitting in our home tape-player.

By the early 1980’s, Dr. Convex had become partners with an eccentric hedge-fund manager that was enamored with Convex’s therapeutic program, stating on record that it was responsible for his skyrocketing business success. The two men constructed a pioneering medical clinic in a small suburban town on Lake Michigan. The clinic was envisioned as both a research laboratory and an active treatment center where Dr. Convex could pursue his future studies while still working directly with patients.

One day, soon after the clinic had been officially opened, a fire erupted on the grounds and Dr. Convex as well as a number of his most devoted followers died in the blaze. The fire was due to an electric malfunction. An electrical thing. A freak surge in the power system that overwhelmed the wiring and sparked a flame. Dr. Convex was killed, along with his groundbreaking approach to video hypnotherapy. Today, Dr. Convex’s work had drifted into relative obscurity, and the clinic where he was to further his radical approach to treatment had been abandoned and forgotten - apparently nothing more than a collection of ruins on an uninhabited island just off the coast of the Michigan suburb.

Sandy seemed overwhelmed with the gravity of this background once she had summarized it for me. I leaned forward in my chair and asked her if she was okay and she smiled softly assuring me that yes, she was fine. She asked me if I thought burning was a painful death and I said I didn’t know. I said that I was pretty sure most people who died in fires died of asphyxiation rather than the heat of the blaze and she nodded gently. I speculated that death by choking was probably just as unpleasant as death by burning. She sat there silently, mulling over this cruel but probably truthful observation. Then, she quietly closed her eyes and a thin smile spread across her face as we sat there at the table. Somehow, I knew that her self-induced state of tranquility was being brought on by thoughts of the video in her mind. She was mentally replaying the sights and the sounds of Dr. Convex’s persuasion video as we sat together at the table. She was focusing her mind in accordance with the stated influences of Dr. Convex’s audiovisual inventions. I sat there awkwardly, unsure how to proceed.

***

Sandy started to skip work. At first she used up all her sick days, and then she simply stopped going without bothering to excuse her absence. She said she had to keep working on her new project. She said it would be fine for her to dip a bit into her savings in order to contribute to rent and other expenses.

Her new project was locating copies of Open Horizon’s other media products. She continued to watch the one tape we had found, but she decided that she wanted to seek out more of Dr. Convex’s special treatments. She earnestly told me that the first tape was working, that she could feel her mind growing sharper, more focused and effective. But, she went on to say, she knew there was so much more room for improvement. The enhancement of her mind revealed to her just how much more she could be enhanced by Dr. Convex’s brilliance. Her words, not mine.

She began at home by surveying the internet for any available copies of his old video catalogue. Apparently Bill Convex had been a fairly prolific hypnotherapist. Open Horizons had released 96 different persuasion video titles, supposedly composed of unique audio and video content unrepeated in any of the other tapes. In other words, each one was special, and had its own specific effect on the mind of the viewer. Sandy’s internet exploring yielded her several copies which she had shipped to the house immediately, but it was by no means the entire catalogue.

Next, she moved onto the city thrift stores and retail shops. She systematically outlined a schedule for regularly visiting every second-hand shop she felt was a reliable source for rare Open Horizon titles like the one we had found. She was now kept busy biking across the city, popping in at one of the spots on her list and carefully searching through their collections of old VHS tapes.

By the end of the second week of her new project, Sandy was a proud owner of 34 of the 96 original titles and she planned to watch them all several times. I wondered if she would ever go back to work.

***

When she wasn’t searching for more tapes, Sandy was busy watching them. She would go for hour long periods lying nearly motionless on the couch or on the floor just staring at montages of nature scenes that endlessly flashed across the screen. I would sometimes watch them with her, maybe with a book by my side as I would regularly lose interest pretty quickly. I was still struggling to understand what she saw in these tapes, and her borderline obsession was starting to make me uncomfortable. Perhaps I secretly enjoyed her in a state of hypnosis. Our relationship slipped into a new routine that proceeded according to Sandy’s continual viewings of Open Horizon’s many media products. Maybe that meant that Dr. Convex’s secret mind-enhancing techniques were really working.

She repeatedly claimed that the tapes were having an effect on her. She insisted that her mind was sharper, more acute, more focused. I pointed out that all she was focused on now was the tapes, which was technically a kind of focusing, one that basically eliminated her awareness of any other problem in her life. She nodded in agreement, with a slightly confused look of obliviousness. Apparently Sandy had understood my criticism as just further validation of the treatment’s success and didn’t pick up on the point I was trying to make.

Sandy had grown thinner every day. She was paler now too, a result of her spending days at a time indoors in front of the television screen. Convex’s tapes were causing her body to disappear while they enhanced her mind. The tapes were helping Sandy fulfill the great philosophical endeavor: a life of the mind. Sandy was quickly becoming a disfigured monster of cartesian modernity; the thinking thing beyond the limitations of the body; a kind of sickening transformation from primitive embodiment into pure mental energy, eliminating the illusory significance of daily reality. Everything else was fake. Doubtable. The tapes were real. They brought on a purity of mind that was impossible to replicate with the forgery that was normality.

I imagined Sandy mutating into a balloon, her head growing large as it inflated with air, while her body became smaller and thinner until it was only the weakest of string hanging beneath her expanding mind. She floated away into the sky, drifting in the wind until she was nothing but a dot in the horizon - a floating head lost to the heavens.

Dr. Convex’s videos had her undivided attention. He was delivering what he promised. He was focusing her mind.

***

One day Sandy asked me to go with her to the ruins of Dr. Convex’s forgotten clinic. She argued very forcefully that we needed to go and walk in the shadows of Dr. Convex’s videographic-neurological revolution. Her words, not mine.

I objected. I listed several reasons why this was a bad idea, reasons which ranged from the practical (i.e. I would have to take off work, we would have to make travel arrangements, we didn’t know how to find the place) to the psychological (i.e. her unhealthy new fixation with Dr. Convex and his hypnotherapy video tapes).

None of my arguments swayed her. The tapes had worked as advertised. Her mind was now endowed with a laser focus, and it was focused on bringing herself as close as she could to the dead Convex and his lost treatments.

In the time that Sandy had been watching and re-watching Convex’s therapy tapes, I had come to grow more and more resentful of them, the tapes that is. I felt like I had been left out, somehow. Why did the tapes have no effect on me? It was like Sandy had been selected for this video-induced madness and I had not, like it was gym class and she had been picked for a team while I had been left standing in the crowd of unwanted nerds. What was so special about Sandy, I wondered, that the hypnotherapy should work on her but not on me? Why was it that my mind had been left unsharpened and dull. I had had time to reflect on these tapes, and the confused theory of video that they were based on. My feelings of being left out evolved into a more refined critique of Dr. Convex’s entire conceptual artifice. Convex had claimed to have discovered radical new techniques of video hypnosis but wasn’t video itself a radical technique of hypnosis? What was so radical about Convex’s treatments that wasn’t already an integral part of the medium of video already? What really dated Convex’s works was not their music or their production value, it was the premise on which they were based: the misguided assumption that Convex had unlocked the hypnotic power of video. That was a hypnotic power that was already there. Video was already life-changing and persuasive.

Regardless of its insightfulness, my critique of Convex had fallen on deaf ears. Sandy remained transfixed, which only served to annoy me further. It felt almost embarrassing that she would fall victim to something explicitly called hypnosis. It seemed so much more obvious than more insidious and subtle forms of hypnosis like politics or art. Getting driven to obsession by self-described hypnosis was like falling for a con artist who tells you they are conning you while they do it.

***

Of course, my critique and my resentments were only a cover for my jealousy at not being affected by the hypnotherapy like Sandy was. I can admit that now, but at the time I was too emotionally immature to realize this, invested as I was in holding Sandy’s attention. I never realized how much I had depended on Sandy’s regular attention, something that was now stolen from me by this dead hypnotist.

***

Anyways, Sandy insisted that we go to visit Convex’s burnt out old clinic. She insisted that we walk through the forgotten ruins of a once futuristic and hopeful program for the psycho-emotional improvement of the mind. Soon we were planning a trip out west, to see the decaying palaces built on the dollars of persuasive video.

The car ride there took us through the city into the suburbs and corporate campuses collected in business parks along the highway. We rode together in silence while the radio blared pop song after forgettable pop song. Over time the clean and sleek contours of the suburbs gave way to the emptiness of soy, grown over long stretches of lonely farm plots. The sun moved across the sky and we drove and drove. We slept overnight at a cheap motel, just about where we had assumed we would stop when we were planning this little excursion. In total, we probably spoke no more than ten to fifteen words to each other throughout the whole day. The loneliness I had been feeling in our home had followed me on our trip out into the country and it had brought a creeping sense of dread along with it.

The next day we continued on our journey, deeper and deeper into the rural heart of America, past billboards and exits leading into unknown towns. We travelled up into Michigan, driving through empty roadways crowded by forests casting dark shadows on the highway.

Sandy did all the driving, even though I offered to take her place. She seemed slightly suspicious that if she were to let me drive, I might turn back or go somewhere other than our stated destination. Thinking back on it now, I probably would have.

***

I was reminded of that trip we had taken a few months ago, the one motivated by our shame; the banal trip out into the country that had felt so cheap. Our trip now felt nothing like that. There was an authenticity to it that was downright evil. I felt a queasiness in my stomach that I hadn’t felt in years, a primordial reaction to lingering anxieties creeping from the forgotten depths of childhood terrors. During the long car ride through the soybean fields, I kept thinking to myself that I should not have been so disdainful towards our past life as a functional heterosexual couple. Now that I was confronting the real I couldn’t find in our old life, I regret abandoning the illusion of comfort that it offered. Our new trip was one driven by obsession, by unchecked psychosis, by a violently real force of desire. I missed the trip motivated by shame; it seemed so peaceful in retrospect.

***

When we finally arrived in the town that sat on the coast of Lake Michigan just outside the abandoned island clinic, it was around four in the afternoon. Without stopping at a motel to check into a room or asking me what I wanted to do, Sandy drove us straight to the docks on the lake so we could find a boat to take us to the island. She was uncompromising. She wanted to see the ruins immediately.

It took over an hour, but Sandy was able to secure a small motorized boat for the evening to take us to the island. The boat was owned by an old man who seemed to have lived in the town for quite some time. When Sandy explained to the boat’s owner where we wanted to take it, he was surprised but also somewhat indifferent. Sandy had offered him quite a bit of money that we couldn’t really afford to be spending and the sum had convinced the man that renting his boat to some strange out-of-towners was still worth it. He laughed at us and said we wouldn’t find anything except charred buildings crumbling underneath the weight of nature which was quickly taking back the island that that wacky doctor had tried to claim as his own. His words, not mine. Sandy ignored this comment as she piled into the boat with one of her bags. If I hadn’t hopped in when I did, she probably would have taken off without me.

The last word the boat owner said to us before we departed was, “Careful.”

***

The ruins of Dr. Convex’s clinic were both majestical and horrendous, like roaming through a beautiful nightmare. I was reminded of the eerie glow created by the television screen late at night when Sandy played the doctor’s tapes. It was a feeling of entrancement mixed with a feverish nervous energy that bubbled somewhere in the stomach. Although I continually searched her face, Sandy did not seem to be sharing any of my feelings of anxiety. Instead, she seemed completely lost in the corroded elegance of the forgotten buildings, as if she were walking through the awe-inspiring constructions of an ancient civilization. Sandy’s borderline spiritual reverence intensified my feelings of anxiety, as I was suddenly struck with the thought that her and I were completely alone on this abandoned island and that only the aging boat owner knew we were here. It was at this moment that I also realized that I had become truly scared of Sandy, as I had no idea what she had become capable of since her prolonged exposure to Convex’s video hypnotism.

When we landed on the island, we came across an old dilapidated dock that must have served as the clinic’s main access point. We skipped landing at the dock as it appeared unsafe. Sandy brought the boat directly onto shore and we proceeded on foot from there. The front building to the clinic was a large square structure with a massive, unintended opening at its center that must have been caused by the fire. There was a front desk area that was smashed to pieces and the plant life surrounding the building had grown through the massive hole caused by the fire, as if the opening were an invitation to the earth to enter the forgotten building. Sandy stepped into the rapidly reforesting entrance and flicked on a flashlight that illuminated the hallway at the center of the first building.

After that first building, the clinic was essentially a large hexagon, with different sized sections. There were examination rooms, dormitories, a modest cafeteria, large meeting rooms for group therapy, a library of tapes (both audio and cassette) and, of course, a central complex for viewing video therapy. The viewing center featured both a small theater with a projector as well as private individual viewing rooms. In total the clinic probably comprised about seventy thousand square feet of space, spread out into a disjointed formation reminiscent of a small academic campus.

The first room beyond the main entrance was the meeting room connected with the cafeteria. These sections had suffered some fire damage but not as severe as the rest of the facility. I was struck by the fact that folding chairs were still assembled against the wall gathering dust. The buildings contained almost no other furniture, nor papers or debris or other materials one would assume would be left in an abandoned medical clinic where no one had taken the time to remove leftover objects after the fire. Why had they left these folding chairs? Surely collapsible seating would be the easiest objects to remove, why had they been left when much larger objects had been taken?

Sandy stepped towards the chairs and kneeled in front of one. Her posture appeared as if she were praying.

I turned to the left and looked over at the wall. A single phrase had been spray-painted in black letters across it. The paint had dripped down the wall, making the letters look like violent cuts in human flesh; the left over blood smears of slices made to spell out a simple command that made my anxiety boil over into real fear.

“Go Away,” read the spray-paint.

I called out to Sandy, still kneeling before the forgotten folding chairs and asked her if we could leave, maybe come back tomorrow. She ignored me and proceeded into the next room. Still feeling the fear, I asked again but she kept walking. I had no choice but to follow.

In the next room were the lost offices of Dr. Convex as well as his private examination rooms for one-on-one therapeutic sessions. Sandy now seemed to be completely lost in the hypnotic allure of this place, like she was being transported back to the heyday of Dr. Convex’s video-work. The office was almost totally decimated by fire damage, something that seemed strange seeing as the fire had left the main meeting room untouched but had created such a gigantic opening in the main entrance. It was as if the fire had been selective in its destruction, targeting the areas it felt most deserving of its unrelenting consumption.

Sandy spent what felt like an eternity in the offices and examination rooms. It was only her desire to move further into the ruins that allowed us to leave. At this point I was twitching and shaking, reacting to every sound around me as if we could be confronted by the writer of the unnerving graffiti at any moment. We stepped into the dormitories and Sandy began rummaging through the raw debris contained in each room. The living quarters for the patients were connected by a long corridor with entrances and exits on either end, with doors leading into each room running along either side. The doors into the main hallway of the dorms were still standing on their hinges, and swung in and out when pushed. As Sandy continued her bizarre exploration of each room I stood still in the hallway, counting each second and gritting my teeth. For some reason I slowly turned around to look at the doors to the hallway that were now swinging shut. Scrawled in the same hasty letters of black spray-paint we saw earlier was a request even more ominous than the previous message.

“Leave Me Alone,” it read.

I called out to Sandy and found her in one of the rooms. She was pushing around piles of decomposing ceiling panelling, what she was trying to find I did not know. I yelled at her then, I admit it. I shouted in her face that we needed to leave, that there was someone else who had come to this place after the fire, someone that didn’t want us to be there. I was scared and my fear manifested itself as anger, a panicked anger that was driven by an animalistic feeling of alarm at a looming threat to my own mortality. I had gripped her arms and my hands and I was still shouting.

She struggled free of my violent grasp and began running into another building of the destroyed clinic, taking her flashlight with her. I immediately began running after her, continuing to yell as I did. All I could do was follow the beam of her flashlight, as I was being left in the darkness of this dead place. The thought of being left in the dark here terrified me and, I admit it, increased my feelings of anger at Sandy for seeking to abandon me. I continued to shout as she ran deeper into that terrible hexagon, taking the safety of the light with her.

Suddenly, Sandy threw a door open and slammed it shut, cutting me off completely from her light. For a moment I descended into pure darkness, surrounded by the nightmare world of Dr. Convex’s lost dreams. I reached the door and threw it open to find that Sandy had stopped running. She was standing totally still in the new room she had entered; it was the viewing center where Dr. Convex’s patients would consume his therapeutic video creations.

The room looked like the site of a recent demolition. It was filled with the bits and pieces of smashed and crushed equipment and videotape - a sprawling pile of annihilated audio-video devices that had once comprised the heart of Dr. Convex’s treatment center. It was a gigantic pit of wires, broken screens, jagged chips and thousands and thousands of miles of magnetic tape. Eviscerated televisions lay about the room, their electronic innards discarded on the ground like dead antelope felled by some unseen predator. I almost expected to see a group of hyenas feasting on the chunks of spilled television guts. The fire had reached in here, but so had something else; maybe someone else. The fire had not destroyed all this equipment or all of the videotapes. There was a mysterious source of violence that had left the signs of its presence lingering around the ruins of the clinic.

As the realization of this unknown force of destruction crossed my mind, Sandy began weeping. The sight of Convex’s work reduced to rubble was too much for her and she was lost in despair.

It took a moment for me to see it, but when I did, I knew I would never forget the simple, unmitigated feeling of pure fear that it struck in my heart. On the far back wall of the viewing center was another message written in black spray-paint. It was perhaps the most direct command yet, and, in a slightly off-putting way, expressed my most immediate desire in a short, little statement.

“Leave now,” it read.

***

I woke up in the middle of the night as Sandy was putting on her shoes by the doorway of our motel room.

We had finally made our way out of that horrible clinic, back to the boat, out onto the lake and back to the home of the old man who we had said almost nothing to as we returned the keys. We had driven around the small town until we found a cheap, dirty motel and checked into our room. We had laid down and I had drifted off to a sleep, aided by the immense feeling of relief I felt that we were able to get off that terrible island.

Now I was awake in the night and I knew before she said anything that Sandy was getting ready to go back there, alone.

I jumped up out of the bed, only in my underwear and I began shouting at her again. I was pathetic and stupid, it was the only way I knew how to express my fear. After I had shouted for awhile, I stood and looked at her with big, alarmed eyes of - blurred and puffy from interrupted sleep. She gave me a look that still frightens me to this day, a look that I still think about alone at night and feel a sensation of cold dread that paralyzes me every time. She smiled at me. She gave me this big bright beaming smile and laughed. She laughed and shook her head like I didn’t understand her, like I could never understand her. She smiled and laughed and shook her head and she said that she couldn’t sleep, that she was too excited and so she had to go back to the island right now.

I lost it. I did. I can’t deny that now. I was so angry, so upset that she had decided to do this, that she would put herself in so much danger as this. The sickness in her mind, brought on by Dr. Convex’s videos, it was pushing her into a darkness that seemed inescapable to me and this made me even angrier. I remember telling her to go, then. That if she wanted to take her own life into her hands, she was welcome to do so. That I couldn’t stand what she had become. That maybe she deserved to get lost in the ruins of that horrible island. That she should go if that’s what she really wanted. Of course, it was what she really wanted and she quickly disappeared out the door and I didn’t go after her, I didn’t try to stop her, I didn’t try to convince her to stay and wait till morning. I didn’t try to convince her to be with me for the night and try to remember the way she once felt before she was hypnotized by the dead doctor who had captured her mind from beyond the grave. I didn’t do any of that. I laid back down on the bed and fell back asleep.

***

That night in the motel room was the last time I saw Sandy.

She left in the night and never returned.

The next morning I rented a boat and traveled out to the Island and searched every inch of that decrepit graveyard and found nothing, no sign of her. No campsite or footsteps or fire to stay warm: nothing. Like she had never made it there or, if she had, she had left no trace.

I returned to the mainland and called the police. I filed a missing person’s report and explained to the local sheriff everything that had happened, why we had come there and why we had gone to the island. He seemed suspicious but he made the report. He suggested though that she may have left and gone home somehow, seeing as though we had had an argument. I told him that he was wrong, she would never leave the clinic.

Within the next day I had spoken to one of our neighbors who said he hadn’t seen any sign of Sandy at our apartment. He had knocked on the front door and received no answer. It was at that point that I alerted her family.

A few days later Sandra Clara Livingston had become a full-fledged missing person and the police were searching for her in earnest. The case was being covered by the media and her parents were pleading with cameras for their daughter to come home if she was out there. Search parties were formed with paid police from neighboring counties and willing volunteers from the town by the lake where we had been staying. A huge group of searchers were dispatched to the island and they had found just what I had: no sign of Sandy.

I told Sandy’s family everything that had happened, perhaps in too much detail. I remember at one point Sandy’s father had shouted in my face, much the same way I had done that night to Sandy. He screamed that I had killed their daughter, that I had doomed her to death because I had done nothing to help her with what was obviously some sort of mental illness, something that could have been treated. I briefly tried to argue that she had technically been undergoing a kind of mental health treatment, and that that was the problem. He did not find this argument convincing. I at least tried to tell him that it was not my fault, it was the videos that had done it to her, but I knew that he was probably right. I was responsible. I watched Sandy fall into the depths of madness and I had done nothing but enable her descent.

No matter what was done, Sandy was gone. Vanished without a trace. Gone. Lost somewhere in the ruins of Dr. Convex’s temple-turned-tomb of video hypnotherapy. No more to be seen and no more to watch the specially-crafted images of therapeutic mind-focusing technology Convex had given to the world.

***

Years later comedy would follow the tragedy.

Dr. Convex’s videos are becoming popular, more popular maybe then they had ever been. There is a growing cult following driven by internet exposure on Youtube and Vimeo. Popular Instagram accounts began converting screenshots from Convex’s hypnosis videos into popular memes. Decades after his research had began, Dr. Convex was finally gaining traction, but maybe not in the way he had necessarily intended.

Also propelling the videos into their rediscovery by a contemporary audience was the juicy novelty of the disappearances connected to them. That’s right, there were more people like Sandy, people who had also had their minds radically focused and were drawn to the ruins of Convex’s clinic like moths to the flame. Each one of them had left behind family and friends and entered into some invisible realm beyond life and death; the world of the unsolved disappearance; surrounded by mystery; locations unknown; possibly alive; probably dead. Each one of them featuring a collection of people like me who had watched their loved one slip through their fingers and failed to respond to their increasing hypnosis.

Eventually the hypnotherapy videos were all made available online. Full unlimited streaming on both Netflix and Hulu. Their new accessibility almost made me laugh thinking back at how desperately Sandy had searched for those tapes, and she had never located all of them. Now they were only a credit card and a click away. Available for the world to see in an instant.

And the ruins of the destroyed clinic had been woven into this new surge in popularity. It had turned into some sort of vacation spot for hipsters who wanted to explore the strange and ironically amusing world of the forgotten facility. The traveling fans sought out the clinic like Sandy and I had sought out the nature preserve so many years ago that day we went hiking and found the tape. Convex’s dead clinic was becoming the nature preserve of the future. It made me angry thinking of all these fools trudging around the island that Sandy had held in such reverence, it almost felt like they were desecrating something a loved one viewed as sacred. These feelings in turn would haunt me, as they only served to remind of Sandy, gone somewhere in the world, out there lost in the hypnosis of persuasive video.

Myself, I am still trying to find her. But I have given up finding her in the world of living. I know now that she will only be found in the world of video. The dead world of synchronized sound and imagery, the detached world of the recorded image. I know she is somewhere in that glow of the screen, having transcended her earthly form, she must now be some sort of pixelated angel. I spend hours, days even, watching and re-watching Dr. Convex’s Open Horizons videos, waiting for a glimpse of her sitting serenely on one of those beaches, or maybe casually dozing underneath a tree in one of the peaceful forests.

And most of all, I want to be hypnotized, like Sandy was. I’ll admit it. I want my mind focused on the videos. I want to lose myself in the power of persuasion video and finally discover what it was that Sandy discovered in those endless hours of dulcet synth tones and nature scenes. When will my life be truly changed by the hypnotherapy? When will I finally find Sandy and understand the power of persuasion video?

Any day now it will come. Any day now my mind will be changed. Soon I will finally understand. Soon.

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dramartyakumar · 7 years

Text

Buddhist Meditation

Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya

BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI

Chairman and Managing Director,

MultiSpectra Consultants,

23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani,

Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.

E-mail: [email protected]

Man’s quest for an end to his suffering has led him into an exploration of his inner self, its working and its dysfunctional behaviour under certain circumstances. Under such conditions,a radical shift in consciousness, perception and attitude is the only succour for a tormented mind. This process, involving the destruction of suffering, is based on the Four Noble Truths enunciated by the Buddha which are as follows:

1. Life contains suffering.

2. Suffering has a cause, and the cause can be known.

3. Suffering can be brought to an end.

4. The path to end suffering has eight parts.

The Buddha also laid out the Noble Eightfold Path which is given below:

Right view

Right intention

Right speech

Right action

Right livelihood

Right effort

Right mindfulness

Right concentration

As a Buddhist, the author is an “insider” and though he is well conversant with Buddhist tenets, his purpose here is not to explain them. Rather he would prefer to deal with meditation which lies at the heart of the spiritual practice of dharmic ( spiritual, Sanskrit dharma, Pali dhamma ) people. Atma dwipa bhava (Be your own island, that is,refuge) : this saying of the Buddha resonates among His followers whose number and geographical spread has made Buddhism a world faith.

Named Siddhartha by His parents when He was born, the Buddha was the only founder of a faith who claimed He was a human being, pure and simple. He always denied that He was divine. His family name was Gautama ( Pali Gotama ). However, His encounter with Angulimala, the robber, reveals to us who He really was. According to the Buddha, man sits in command over his destiny; he is however unaware of this fact and abdicates his responsibility of controlling his future, even death. This is so because man is, in a deep philosophical sense, deluded, asleep and unaware of his true nature. He normally identifies himself with his body, which was born and hence will die, some day. This gives rise to vices, insecurity and belief in that what is not. He also believes that he has relatives and friends and, if he clings onto them tightly enough, he will one day, after death, go to the nebulous place called heaven. But it is not true. The lacuna in man’s thinking becomes disturbingly clear to him when he finds that he is suffering. Man needs to be awakened and when this awakening process is complete, man will rise from the ashes of the world of the senses that he has just burnt to the world of pure consciousness. Buddhism is a journey where a man starts asleep and wakes up awake. In doing so, he sheds aside nothingness to awaken to a single state of Being. The process by which this takes place is meditation. Books have been written on meditation and it would be futile for the author to be didactic; so he will try to be brief. But one thing must be said. Buddhism represents the crème de la crème of Indian religious thought and philosophy.

The Buddha, unlike Christ, did not project Himself as a saviour of man. The Buddha did not refer to God either, as a supreme dispenser of justice and did not claim to be a son or some other relation of God. Rather, His title, Buddha, means one who is awake. He is considered to be the messiah who showed the path to eternity. The Buddha gave his teaching ‘for the good of many, for the happiness of many, for showing compassion to the world, for realising the spiritual purpose of life’ ( bahujanahitaya bahujanasukhaya lokanukampaya, arthaya hitaya ). He told man that though he is asleep, the capacity to be awakened is in him and also taught man the path to awakening. But man must walk that path himself, alone. Man must realise that he is always alone, whether it be high atop the mountains, in the company of his relatives or in the morning crowd in the downtown of a metropolitan city. A positive attitude to aloneness can develop in man when he can take a mental sword and cleave a distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Loneliness has a negative connotation in the sense that it implies a craving for company of other human beings, the exact opposite of the self-sufficiency implied by aloneness. The capacity to tread the path to nirvana ( Pali nibbana ), which means freedom, is already in man, he just has to use it.

He searched, He meditated, He found: this aptly summarises the awakening of the Buddha. When a man suffers, it is useless for him to talk of God, or to fast and otherwise to torture his body if his suffering is not reduced by any or all of these. The Buddha realised this fact and after His awakening promulgated the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. What is required of man is to effect a radical shift in consciousness from the finite to the infinite using right concentration. The concentrated focus is always on suffering and its elimination. The law of cause and effect is at work here too. If one is deluded, one suffers. If one studies the Four Noble Truths, one sees that man should identify the cause of suffering and systematically go about destroying it using the Noble Eightfold Path. The result of meditation is tremendous. One transcends the boundaries of his body; he senses that the entire universe has become his body. He senses that he has exchanged a weak mind for a strong one. He senses that though he may continue to reside in his mortal body, his consciousness has become irreversibly altered. He feels himself being pervaded by peace. He does not become a bird soaring in the sky; he becomes as boundless as the sky itself. He becomes awakened; prabuddha. The Buddha did not give His doctrine for strong wills only; His statements are just as applicable to weaker minds provided they have the determination to follow Him. He asked for nothing more than courage and promised eternity.

In response to questioning by devotees in the kingdom of Kosala as to the importance or unimportance of belief, the Buddha pointed out the distinction between knowing and believing. Believing always connotes a second-hand approach to Truth; knowing about something through the experience of someone else. Knowing means a first-hand direct knowledge of Truth and the result of this distinction is that the modicum of doubt that always accompanies belief is absent in knowledge. Freedom of thought is permitted by the Buddha to His devotees so that they can discriminate and find Truth.

Thoughts flow like an endless stream in the mind of man. Several of these are highly disturbing and cause a man to become restless or worse. There is absolute tranquillity in meditation because the suffering has been clinically identified, its cause clinically identified and now the sole mission is to remove both the cause and the effect. It must be remembered that cause and effect are not meant here in the Christian sense of the term with a benign God sitting and evaluating each thought or action of a man and delivering an effect of each cause. According to Buddhism, the universe is in a state of flux and, in Japan, a circle or ensho is drawn to represent this eternal rule of cause and effect. Modern science and technology liberate but also trap man in fields such as astrophysics. When one looks up at the night sky, one is looking backwards in time because light has a finite speed however great that speed may be. However, we cannot see the extremities of the universe and logic tells us that the universe cannot have a spatial extremity. Similarly, the universe cannot have a zero-time extremity. Man lives in a space-time frame.

An explanation as to the types of meditation in vogue is in order here. Vipashyana ( Pali vipassana; passana means seeing ) meditation is practised in south Asia and other countries which practice Theravada Buddhism ( literally, the way of the Elders ), which is also called Hinayana Buddhism. Zen meditation is practised in East Asia, that is China, Korea and Japan, which are among the countries that practice Mahayana Buddhism ( literally, the greater vehicle ). Meditation is something that cannot be fully explained in words, it has to be experienced to be understood completely. Knowing about meditation is one thing; knowing meditation is quite another. A man can sit alone, cross-legged, in a quiet room in the full lotus posture ( padmasana ) or, failing that, in the half-lotus posture ( bhadrasana ) and try to enter into vipashyana meditation ( the third posture of sitting is called sukhasana )and yet there may be something in the world of the senses lurking in the mind that must be thrown aside from the mind before he can meditate. In zen meditation ( the Sanskrit word dhyana means the same thing as the Pali word jhana, the Chinese word chaan and the Japanese word zen ), one can take the help of koans or spiritual puzzles, which are in prevalence in China, Korea and Japan, on which he can ruminate just prior to meditation in an attempt to propel the mind to a transcendental state in which he can meditate. If one is unable to start doing meditation oneself, one should take the help of a guru ( literally, one who dispels darkness ) who will guide him in the initial stages. One must sit, preferably, in the lotus posture with one’s spine erect. There must be no slumping of the back, the head should be straight as if suspended by means of a string. Another analogy adopted is that the head should be straight as if bearing the sky on its top. The hands may be placed in the bhumisparsha mudra ( bhumisparsha gesture ), a mudra in which we find so many statues of the Buddha. This gesture is also called sakshi ( Sanskrit for witness ) mudra. Alternatively, a man’s hands may be placed on his lap, all fingers except the thumbs interlocked and the thumbs touching each other. This gesture is very popular in East Asia, that is, in China, Korea and Japan. Yet another mudra consists of the hands straight, placed on the knees, and the thumb and the next finger touching each other with the other fingers straight. This gesture of the hands is called jnana mudra. After one has sat correctly, he must close his eyes and focus on the inhalation and exhalation of his breath. In all meditation, the next step is samadhi, which is a transcendental state. It may be described by sat( being ), chit ( consciousness ) and ananda ( bliss ). In vipashyana meditation, he must then enter into vipashyana in which awareness is focussed on all parts of the physical body in turn and the sensations felt by those parts of the body are consciously sensed. Awareness and equanimity together, symbolise vipashyana meditation. If either part is missing, one cannot attain enlightenment. Zazen ( the practice of zen meditation ) also leads to enlightenment but by a somewhat different procedure. Zen has always positioned itself as quintessential Buddhism, implying that what is not zen is not Buddhism. This position of zen is untenable but it is undeniable that prajna ( wisdom ) and samata ( equanimity ) are essential in zen. Zen poses spiritual puzzles called koans to its followers; spiritual puzzles verging on the nonsensical. At the usual existential level, koans cannot be said to have any coherence and an existential leap is needed to bring harmony. This usually involves satori ( another word is kensho which means seeing into one’s own nature ). The spiritual puzzle posed by a koan may be such that even a strong will may be unable to go to the transcendental plane. The role of the zen master is important here. He can deliver a shock, an emotional one usually suffices but a physical blow or other corporal shock may be needed so that the spiritual aspirant is propelled into a higher level of consciousness. The author’s feeling is that if one is able to reside in kshana ( this moment ), that is, the ‘now’ prolonged forever,that is, in an infinite series of ‘nows’, man would be much happier. Vipashyana also leads to enlightenment. Meditation is ultimately a do-it-yourself project where a man must shed his ego and much else and discover at the end of his solitary journey that he is awake.

In this context, it would be in the fitness of things to look at the Yoga Sutra ( method of Yoga ) written by Patanjali in India, who came a few centuries after the Buddha, in the light of the teachings of the Buddha.

The Yoga Sutra deals with meditation leading to samadhi. It has eight steps, the first three of which are preparatory and the next five of which gradually lead to meditation. The eight steps are yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. The first two steps deal with a clean and virtuous lifestyle. The third step is taking a seat and a posture conducive to meditation. After one has sat correctly, he must close his eyes and do pranayama which is focussing on the inhalation and exhalation of his breath. The next steps lead to samadhi.

It is evident that the writer of this Sutra was heavily influenced by Buddhism and may have been a Buddhist. The focus on attentiveness towards breath, the description of the state of samadhi, the absence of any reference to God or any superhuman power, the stress on one’s own effort to attain liberation, the focus on prajna ( wisdom ) and samata ( balance ) and some other facets in the Sutra are in accordance with the teachings of Buddhism.

Ordinarily, animal instincts bind a man to the world of the senses. Man lacks the initiative to free himself from them. Rather, he reposes his faith on some superhuman power whom he tries to propitiate in the hope that he may be rescued from his troubles. Patanjali does not theorise much; rather he goes straight to the action of meditation. Meditation may also be described as a tapasya ( a Sanskrit word whose root lies in the Sanskrit word tapah which means heat ), a burning of the impurities in the mind. In medieval India, the great scholar Shankaracharya has been described as a prachchhanna ( Sanskrit ‘in essence’ ) Buddhist.

Before the advent of Buddhism in China, the teachings of Confucius and Lao-tzu were mainly prevalent and and while they gave a certain moral order, true spirituality was absent. This inchoate body of teachings had and still has many followers. However, the arrival of Buddhism in China from India resulted in a spiritual awakening in the Chinese hsin ( mind ).

The result of the awakening of man due to meditation is drastic. It is as if the universe had always existed but one had been going about with his eyes closed and has now suddenly opened them. In the plane of the senses, his external world does not change but his way of processing his external world undergoes a drastic change. He becomes more peaceful with himself and with others. This is the significance of the koan uttered in zendos ( temples and other places where zen is performed ):

Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water;

After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water.

An awakened person feels that he is surrounded by peace at all times. It is important to understand that nobody tells him this; he feels it himself. He goes about doing his daily activities, but his way of processing his world has fundamentally altered for the better. He realises that he cannot and need not control all aspects of his external physical world. He realises that he gains more by letting go. He becomes aware of the non-peaceful moments in his life. He opts for shifting his consciousness to his mind and becoming aware of his internal mental processes when waiting, for example, in a traffic jam or while waiting in a queue. He opts for harmony in his mental processes rather than chaos. Genjo Hsuan-tsang, the great Chinese monk who visited India during the time of Emperor Harshavardhana, once made the following remark about the state of realisation : ‘It is like a man drinking water; he knows by himself whether it is cold or hot’.

Buddhism disagrees with Christianity on the issue of birth-and-death. Since it does not believe in zero-time, it does not believe in the Christian perception of creation. Also, the two world faiths differ, as has been mentioned and implied before, on their views regarding a supreme God and the presence or absence of a soul ( Sanskrit atman, Pali atta ). Christianity believes in the presence of an individual soul inside each man; Buddhism does not.

Meditation has been performed by theoreticians and philosophers as well as by rank empiricists. While their emphasis may have been different, it has been universally recognised that they have all contributed to the dharma. Also, meditation is now spreading to the West as well. It is said that Buddhism can be taught to people of any cultural background. That is why in spite of not having any tradition of meditation, the knowledge and traditions of the East are now spreading to the West. Westerners are learning that meditation is not a kind of mental suicide, as some were ought to believe, but an active mental process.

Buddhism transformed the life of Emperor Ashoka of India. The greatest Indian Emperor ever, ruling over a territory much larger than the current Republic of India, he did much to spread Buddhism. In his younger days, he was a warrior and conquered many territories. After he conquered Kalinga, or the modern east Indian state of Orissa, he was moved by the suffering of the people. Mentally tormented, he found peace after embracing Buddhism. Emperor Kanishka of the Kushan dynasty was another great Buddhist ruler whose vast empire encompassed a large part of India as well as a vast territory in western China ( modern Sinkiang ) and Central Asia.

One dictum in Chinese summarises the essence of zen: wu shih yu hsin, wu hsin yu shih. The meaning which is very deep is “Be business-less in mind, be mind-less in business”. The sentence is self-explanatory.

The Buddha showed how man can integrate himself to the cosmos. In this and in many other aspects, He was a student of life and a leader of men. In a caste-ridden society, the Buddha strove to establish the equality of all men. In this, He was the world’s first great socialist. Lao-tzu of ancient China in his book Tao Te Ching ( The Way ) described the qualities a true leader should have; leaders tread fresh grass amongst other things. The Buddha possessed all of them and much more. He was the ultimate tyagi, that is, renunciant; renouncing a throne, comforts of a palace, a wife and a son to leave his palace on horseback in search of Truth at night. In this, He showed Himself to be an exemplar of Holiness inspiring millions of others to follow suit. He elevated Himself to the level of a Purushottama (Sanskrit a Superhuman Man ).

Buddhism preaches ultimate tolerance to all faiths, even those which are incoherent and self-contradictory. A Buddhist hates none, loves all. The overarching philosophy of Buddhism encompasses love for all creatures on earth. Once, the Buddha said ‘Whoever sees me, sees the teaching’. That is the reason why it is invigorating to keep a statue of the Buddha in one’s place of meditation just as a Christian keeps a crucifix in his room.

Buddhism is particularly relevant in the violence-ridden world today. As said before, Buddhism treats all men as equal. Faith in justice; faith in the power of reason; faith in the bona-fide standing of any petitioner in a court of law; faith in the ability of people to govern themselves ensuring equality of every human being; faith in glasnost, that is openness, are the premises on which a civilised society is built. The unpleasant truth is that these premises are now under assault in some parts of the world from some quarters. As a Buddhist, the author feels that mankind can do much better.

The Buddha preached sometimes through formal sermons and also sometimes through answers to questions posed by devotees. Some non-Buddhists have sought to attack His teachings on the ground that He was silent on the issue of presence or absence of God. These people fail to realise that if the Buddha was silent on the issue of God, He was only reposing His faith in man and man’s ability to gain enlightenment through his own efforts.

With sambodhi ( supreme enlightenment ) of a man, he realises that death can be defeated only if it can be made unreal. His false self, or nothingness, dissolves into a vibrant awakened being.

from Buddhist Meditation

#Buddhist Meditation

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dramartyakumar · 7 years

Text

Buddhist Meditation

Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya

Chairman and Managing Director,

MultiSpectra Consultants,

23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani,

Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA.

E-mail: [email protected]

1. Life contains suffering.

2. Suffering has a cause, and the cause can be known.

3. Suffering can be brought to an end.

4. The path to end suffering has eight parts.

The Buddha also laid out the Noble Eightfold Path which is given below:

Right view

Right intention

Right speech

Right action

Right livelihood

Right effort

Right mindfulness

Right concentration

Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water;

After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water.

With sambodhi ( supreme enlightenment ) of a man, he realises that death can be defeated only if it can be made unreal. His false self, or nothingness, dissolves into a vibrant awakened being.

from Buddhist Meditation

#Buddhist Meditation

0 notes