Hi.
It’s been in my mind to write a proper introduction for quite some time, but as it’s hard to strike a proper balance I have been reluctant. I will, uncompromisingly, stick to the disordered structure of this blog in keeping thing self-contained. I do not know why you are here, reading this. I do not know what interest it is to you, and what you hope to, or actually do, gain, from it. I can only speak for myself, as to why I am sharing. What my ambition is in keeping this quite radical collection of texts public. I am serving the hope that honesty feeds honesty, and that self-transparency encourages truthfulness. Not for others necessarily, but within. To interject with a passage from a current work-in-progress:
It is a collection of an inner life. As such, it is highly irregular in terms of commonly expected properties, structure, and goals. It serves to portray a world not commonly shared outside of those few and precious moments of vulnerability one might find throughout a lifetime. Not only to portray but to evoke, to bridge the gap that trap us in the banality of language and create a shared experience, an intimacy, and an understanding, which seem to be so lacking in normal circumstance.
It is, in short, a guttural scream across the void, arisen out of that final hopelessness which can only result in the freedom to actually try. I pray only that it might resonate in one of those who find themselves on the other side, if for nothing else than to communicate something which we all might one day hope to hear: You are not alone. Your experience is just as much in me, and all the characteristics in the world which we might list to prove otherwise only further drives home this point.
I am not here to offer any reconcilement, to hint at solutions, or to give out hope. I am here to encourage you to realize that these are lacking. That before any attempt at finding a solution can be made, in an existential sense, one must first become intimate with the questions. These questions are at the heart of the absence we call ‘drive’, and looking at them honestly offers no relief. That is the point. To quote a man whose life was given to the journey towards a solution, Nanavira Thera:
The reader is presumed to be subjectively engaged with an anxious problem, the problem of his existence, which is also the problem of his suffering. … Only in a vertical view, straight down into the abyss of his own personal existence, is a man capable of apprehending the perilous insecurity of his situation.
The point is, which I hope the intimate tone and subject matters properly convey, to put forth a very personal and subjective problem. The deeper each man might dare to venture into ‘the abyss of his own personal existence’, the more self-transparency he might develop, the more, I postulate, he might be alive. If I can serve this goal, in any sense, in any quantity or quality, this blog serves its purpose.
I am currently in the process of making rather big structural changes, and things will hopefully substantially develop in the soon-to-be future. Until then, I will keep a previously written list of recommended entry-points:
In closing, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to anyone who donates their time into reading my musings. I hope reading it gives you even a fraction of what I get from writing. Thank you.