26. Non-sequiter: Time Is an Illusion

Today, right now, as I revise this text for the umpteenth time, it is May 22, 2023.* Past eleven, so soon to officially move into “tomorrow.”

• Edit: I am now on the next revision, which I have been at all day long, and it has just turned from Sunday May 28 to Monday May 29, 2023, one week exactly from the last time I did this. Wow...
• Edit #2: It is June 5, 2023 now.
• Edit #3: June 26.

Date of uploading this entry to the blog…

And so, time is relative. Is it not?

Exactly two months since I performed at Utero in Fukuoka. March 22.

Ah...

Well then, returning again to what I'd written previously...

[tickticktick]

If I know nothing about life, about the meaning of life, about why it is that I (or anyone) was put here in the first place, other than to realize that we just don't know why, and can free ourselves of stress and anxiety and fear and jealousy of others, or of wanting to belong to some thing outside ourselves, etc., by fully embracing this absolute and total chaos that IS and by accepting it fully, too, well... The one thing I do know is this:

I am a human

I am not a robot

I am not "A.I."

I simply am

And this is also why I wanted (and still want) to write this essay that has turned itself over the course of time into a book-length document about…what, exactly?

What is it about? What is anything about anyway?

One question I have lately been asking myself rather frequently is this:

What does it mean to be human? What defines "human" or "humanity," when so much of our world is so "inhumane"?

It means to be everything and nothing.

It means to be riddled with problems and inadequacies and self-doubt. 

It means to question things. It is to wonder, some days, why one is alive, was ever born, to question the very core of what one is or is not...

The Buddhistic/Yogic answer is rather simple, actually:

The self (small "s") does not exist.

Atman/Anatman.

It is an illusion.

We, then, too, are essentially an illusion.

"You" and "I" do not exist in any concrete, "reliable" sense.

According to this theory, OK? Or, well...is it a theory, is it philosophical, or is it simply putting the obvious into a logically-designed argument?

Yes, we have a body.

Yes, we have consciousness.

Yes, we have opinions, likes and dislikes.

Our bodies experience both pleasure and pain, for sure.

We can experience both ecstatic highs and depressive lows, too.

Also for sure.

Desire.

Wants.

Needs.

Need? 

Do you need it? Or do you just really, really want it? 

(Desire it, even?)

At our core, then, what makes us "us" is exactly...

What???

Which of these things, alone?
Can one say?

Your name.

Your occupation.

Your ethnicity, religion, sex, etc.

Well, maybe it is the sum of these (and other things), right? 

The sum of the parts is you...

But, even still, where are "you" in there?

Where, then, am "I"?

If one or more of the elements is/are removed, does this mean that "you" or "I" will just disappear into thin air? Like magic? Like just...poof??

If your name is taken away from you, your title or titles removed, if you are stripped down to the bare essentials, your identity as you define it trampled on by life itself... Does this change anything essential, anything fundamental, to who "you" really are, or, rather, "what" you are? At the core of your being? Now, or ever??

You and I...

And so, where are "you" in all of this, eh? Where "I"? 

Which part, or parts, of you or I can be said to be the sum total of you or I, together or apart, the sum total of a "human being"?

To be human means...??

The Buddhists (and even before Siddhartha was born, the Hindus) say that "you" were not there in the first place.

Nor was "I.”

To reiterate.

Why?

Because "you" and "I" do not, in fact, exist at all.

As I mentioned earlier.

Or was I the one who

??