What Happens

I underwent a sobering experience recently. Another layer of unearthing. It’s funny, even as I am about to use words to express what I mean, I already know they will fall flat. How to express the nuance of this process? How to capture the increasing subtlety with which realization dawns?

I will try, even though I already know I am going to fail miserably…

This process of realization is not about discovering something “true”. It is about losing the ability to attribute value to experience. Good, bad – these are values. Right, wrong – these are values. Happy, unhappy – these are values. Positive, negative – these are values.

Every human being has a value system. What you value may be different from what another person values. And this discrepancy may cause conflict. But you both do value things.

You value good things, right choices, happy experiences, positive outcomes. What you value may differ, but how you value is the same.

But what of the person who cannot perceive value in this way?

Here I want to mention that I am not talking about lacking discernment. I am not talking about being unable to show judgment in life situations. This discernment and judgment are relevant within the context in which they are expressed. Yet, there is no underlying value driving them. Just like a soccer referee can raise a flag when the player is offside – and still know that there is nothing fundamentally “wrong” with a ball being kicked ahead of everyone outside of the context of the soccer game. So too, can we live our lives making ethical choices without there being an underlying belief in some intrinsic value that comes hardcoded into experience.

The absurdity of existence that is always apparent to me in the background does, every once in a while, come fully into focus at the expense of all else. It did recently in a profound way. This was not a desolating or troubling experience for me. In fact, it felt strangely liberating – though not in a blissful way. The best way to describe it is as “an astonishing feeling of neutrality”.

I’ve outgrown the gurus. I’ve outgrown the anti-gurus. I’ve outgrown duality. I’ve outgrown non-duality. I’ve outgrown materialism. I’ve outgrown spirituality. I’ve outgrown my own values. I’ve outgrown my own ideas. I feel like a snake that keeps shedding its skin layer by layer until that skin has become the whole world and everything that happens within it.

I am acutely aware that every action I take is saturated with a sense of futility (including writing this post). Every thought of mine has been exposed for how hollow it is beneath its shiny surface. Every emotion I feel is like a child’s firecracker, sparking up a racket and then fizzling just as quickly.

Seeing this does not disturb me as it once did. In the past, I may have succumbed to a sense of dread, foreboding or a bout of nihilistic brooding. Now, even nihilism feels too self-indulgent. Even becoming depressed and feeling desolate strike me as too self-consumed. It reeks of seriousness and self-importance.

No, my life feels like a “Barbie” movie. Over-the-top, ridiculous, vapid, implausible, hilarious and addictively immersive. Searching for “deeper meaning” in it feels laughable. There is no deeper meaning.

Life is artifice. Its only purpose is to experience it for its own sake. No deeper motivation than that. And the only choice one need make is whether to take it seriously or not.

J. Krishnamurti, when asked by someone what his secret was, replied, “My secret is that I don’t mind what happens.”

I always resonated with this quote and to a certain degree identified with it. For the first time, I can clearly say I echo this statement completely. Yet, my arrival at it has been interesting. Because I didn’t learn “how not-to-mind what happens”. Instead, I gradually lost my desires, hopes and wishes for what I want to happen (or don’t want to happen) – against my own will.

What I am left with is an ambivalence that is not cynical but open and earnest.

In losing my ability to value, life has paradoxically become priceless.

By not minding what happens, suddenly it all matters.