We live in an era of confusion and discord. Just when the pandemic seemed to be letting up, the monster of war awakened. War is the Moloch that the poet Allen Ginsberg said destroyed the best minds of his generation, such as the people who believed in utopia and were the first to populate the Empordà as if it were a new Arcadia where the songs of freedom were reborn.
Man without spirituality drowns, said local legend Raimon Panikkar from his retreat in Tavertet. We are much more than our minds, but we tend to forget this and let reasoning strangle us. Disciplines such as yoga, tantra, Vedanta, and a holistic view of human beings remind us of this and are gaining increasing numbers of followers every day for the very same reason.
We must also learn to flow within the Tao, in permanent flux, because this is one of the challenges that the pandemic has brought us. We must understand how to live in impermanence. Crisis is in the mind that always seeks a fixed and established plan. As the Hindu sage Krishnamurti recalled in one of his best books, called The First and Last Freedom (Harper & Brothers, 1954), we wish to face a changing reality with a rigid mind. Therefore, we must be able to make our reasoning flexible and become more tolerant. The question calls for focusing our minds and hearts to see the world as it is and not as we think it ought to be.
Considering people's tendency to want things to go back to the way they were in the past, we must take the present, the here and now, as it is, valuing both the small and big things we hold dear, seeking internal harmony more than external harmony. More than accumulating and possessing, we must transition towards the essence of our humanity.
Perhaps we cannot control the actions of powerful elites in their eagerness to squeeze the world dry, but we are free to travel within ourselves and connect with the vitality of the person we are. The main obstacle is fear, today's zeitgeist, which seeks for us to be submissive and obedient. However, as the path of the bodhisattvas shows us, we are entitled to awaken and enjoy our inner freedom.
Eastern philosophy shows us another concept of time, one which is not linear but circular, where life is not contemplated through a fear of death thought of as an absolute end, but as a return to the origin. There is no beginning and no end, everything returns. Every instant matters and we must experience them with joy, not with the anguish of what is finite. Awakening every day without fearing death is one of the best ways to celebrate life.
Now is the time to take the path towards self-awareness so we do not fall victim to the psychosis surrounding us. The mind creates realities and everything we feed on shapes us. We overdose on news and information, and the spread of social media lobotomizes and anesthetizes us. We must reconnect with real experiences, both individually and as a community. We need to go out, spend time with others, and celebrate the arrival of summer. At the same time, we must keep moments for ourselves, to meditate with the sunset or at dawn.
