“I wondered how it’d be when I died. What it’d be like to know that this breath now was the last one you was ever gonna draw.” – from the film The Thin Red Line
A good question: how will it be? Will you watch from afar as if taking notes? “Oh, now I’m dying,” you will say, “The room is getting fuzzy; I’m fading away. I’m going, I’m going; okay, now I’m dead.” We can’t imagine having no perspective – not being. Falling asleep is the closest we know. We are awake, then no more. How will light look when it is not present? What is your original face before you were born? Where are you when you are not there? These are the koans we don’t want to think about, because if we do, they end in a blank wall.
I’m going to look at the present, to look at “right now” and see what that reveals. I suspect this moment right now will be identical to the last moment before I’m extinct. I am here, then I will be no more, so let me examine what “here” really is.
Right now, I see my fingers clenched in a fist and feel that fist propped against my lips. I hear these very words I’m preparing to write, though I don’t hear with my ears, but with my mind. Sounds coming from outside are in stereo, are triangulated and given a location. Sounds inside my head are in mono and are dreamlike in their sound without sound quality. But these sights, sounds, and feelings are hardly the present moment. They are echoes of events now past. Sensory perception is downwind of the now, unless I define “now” as a hopelessly subjective, sensorial experience separate from objective events. In which case we can all “just be,” relax and take comfort in our limitation… or we can determine to dig deeper.
Behind and beyond perception there must be that which perceives. Yet, as soon as I perceive the perceiver he becomes the past. I catch my self paying attention, noticing, being aware of thought. What I can never see is the perceiver. I can only see reflections of my self. The ultimate Self is hidden. That which sees has no container, and has no form. The moment must be that which is not; that which is not past or future; that which is not seen or perceived. An ordinary moment carries within it a hint of the extraordinary, but also the sinking feeling that what I’m searching for is forever just around the corner.
“I just hope I can meet it [death] the same way she did, with the same calm. Cause that’s where it’s hidden – the immortality I hadn’t seen.”—from The Thin Red Line
The “calm” Private Witt speaks of in The Thin Red Line is more than peace of mind. The calm is awareness and within that is immortality. “Within” is a vague word on paper, but very specific in my experience. It feels like behind or underlying; as if awareness were a facade. Awareness is like the present moment transfixed by itself – two mirrors facing one another – aware of being aware. We are a body and mind aware of being aware rather than truly being/existing as awareness. The now is held hostage by the mind.
The present moment, our awareness, will be forever contaminated by the mind until it is transcended. Thus the often-heard statements that enlightenment is death and the mind must die. Death is awareness broken from time, from the body and mind, and from the dance of awareness watching awareness. When the I Am feeling/experience is gone our final point of clinging vanishes.
“Ah! What do I do?” you say, and you will be forever disappointed in the answer because what we are looking for is the reason you hold so tightly. Life is a series of substitutes for the truth. You need to figure out what they are and find people who can help you figure out until you’ve exposed all your reasons for living. Then live (or become conscious of) a life that allows you to hear and follow your deepest desire; that allows you to find the calm; that allows you to find awareness and rest in the awareness again and again. After that, all you can do is wait, not as if you were on the couch watching television, but like the archer with the drawn bow.