In Praise of Ageing by Carmel Shalev

Author:Carmel Shalev
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786784308
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2020-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

To study the way is to study the self.

To study the self is to forget the self.

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.2

Of course, there is more to dementia than forgetfulness, and loss of identity is scary and confusing. Nonetheless we may suffer less if we learn “to forget the self” and open to the emptiness of a world of experience that reveals itself from moment to moment. To forget the self is to awaken to all that we experience without distorting it out of self-regard or wanting it to serve our personal interests. To forget the self is to be open to the ways in which we are connected to a far greater whole. To forget the self is to bear witness to what is unfolding, and to rejoice at the wonder of an embodied human mind. We can train our minds to abide with what is fleetingly present and feel the pulse of life itself, without trying to redirect conditions to suit any personal purpose.

I sit and breathe. I draw back from the helter-skelter of the daily rat race and bring caring attention to the movement of the breath in the body and to the overall sensation of a body that is sitting and breathing. When thoughts wander – as they will – and I become aware of that, I bring my attention gently back to the sitting breathing body. Gradually the body relaxes and the mind calms down. The rush of thoughts chasing one another abates. Spaces appear between the thoughts, and within those spaces, there is a quiet that has nothing personal about it. In this impersonal expanse the self is forgotten, and in its stead, there is a simple moment of present awareness and unhampered experience. Morning and evening sounds, lights and shadows, shapes and colours, a caress of warm air on the arms or the face. It is a tender and compassionate stillness, empty of any personal characteristic or essence. Sometimes it is nothing but the sensation of a boundless field of vibrating energy.

Our memories from the time of our birth to the present are mere fragments of the infinitesimal moments of sensory interactions that amount to the sum whole of our life, most of which we fail to notice at all. We cannot assimilate the abundant flow of the sensory encounters that befall us – between eye and sight, ear and sound, nose and odour, tongue and taste, body and touch, mind and mental objects. The self is thus a selective collage of memories that fixes them like still photographs in an album. To tell the truth, I forget myself much more than I remember myself. I don’t even remember the words I wrote two minutes ago. From moment to moment I am a forgotten memory of myself.

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