Roundabout now

At the start of 2005 I’d had it. Years of spiritual seeking had left me gutted. Upon so much as hearing words such as meditation, self-enquiry or enlightenment, I cringed. For the last five years or so, these words and the activities they entailed had been the staple of my life. I had done all the seeker stuff. I had meditated arduously and read dozens upon dozens of spiritual books. I had enrolled in noble silence ten day retreats. I had travelled to India and studied Tibetan philosophy. As with all the other seekers zig-zaging down the spiritual path, I too had experienced flashes to keep the fire burning. Mostly short glimpses of clarity and transcendence. Other experiences had lasted for days, and on one occasion even for months. In the end though, these flashes had ultimately faded, leaving me not enlightened but instead disillusioned and jaded. In the end I felt as if all my seeking had only made me miserable to a point where I found life pointless.

My daughter Vitoria’s birth supplied me with all the reasons I could ever wish for in order to put a lid on the lofty world of spiritual seeking. Instead of meditating and pondering upon the nature of reality, I now found myself focusing on more mundane and grittier activities such as the changing of diapers.

The grittiest part of parenthood is having your child suffer serious illness. When my daughter was nine months old I was faced with this nightmare. Our little family were living in Brazil at the time, and throughout one late October afternoon Vitoria was running an increasingly high fever. As day turned into night her body felt as if on fire, her pale skin had turned a shade of ash, and her lips were bluish. I immediately called for a ride to the hospital. When I reached down to pick up my daughter, her tiny body felt simultaneously rigid and twitchy. In the front seat of the car heading for the hospital, Vitoria lay in my lap. Her body still rigid, her eyes tilted upwards. There was froth on her mouth. I had no idea what was happening to my precious little princess, but there was a very real and ominous feeling that she was actually dying, right there in my arms.

As we neared the hospital we passed through a roundabout. Some writers of books like this say realizing the nature of reality was a gradual process. Others claim to know the exact moment when the ultimate truth finally dawned upon them. I’m pretty sure however, that none of them had the realization occur in a roundabout. That’s what happened to me. As we were driving through that roundabout two blocks from the hospital, I turned my head to look out the window. Right then and there, I realized the essence of all the spiritual teachings I had grappled with over the years: I realized that there is no inside and no outside. There is just this moment in its entirety, and that moment is who I am – is who we are. We exist as this moment and not in it. My daughter was diagnosed with febrile convulsion. It’s a condition that barks much louder than it bites and she soon recovered.