In that state

Yesterday I was at the local immigration office and was rejected for an extension to my visa for 30 days. It was already 4:30 PM so I couldn’t get out of the country anyway so I’m already over staying by one day. By the time I arrange a flight from here to Bangkok and then closer to Laos, it will be three days over stay already. There are harsh penalties for overstay, depending how the authorities find out about it. In this case, it should be just a ฿500 fine for each day and a somewhat negative comment in my file.

Telling my daughters that I didn’t get approved for the extension was difficult. It never happened before. I have been here for 20 years and I have been relatively successful in navigating the puzzles put in front of me to stay in the country legally.

I just booked and paid for the one way plane ticket getting me close to Laos and then I will rent a motorbike to go to the border cross the border apply for another type of visa and hopefully get back into Thailand. There are many uncertainties with any plan, especially those involving visas and immigration.

When the overly emotional and frustrated woman at the immigration office told me that I need to go out of the country and come back in in order to get a proper visa, there was no emotional reaction inside. I was in the state already as I handed her the passport and she rifled through it. The state is helpful in so many ways. Just having access to the state is something that changes one’s life immeasurably if one chooses. There is usually the choice of whether or not to enter the state though it does come on in a quiet times as it just reverts to itself when the ego isn’t there.

In this case, I didn’t purposefully move toward the state as I handed her the passport, but maybe I do this automatically when things are completely out of my control and I realize that the result could be profoundly negative. I think it’s probably automatic by this point. It has been 18 years of this.

So this is the next morning and I’m sitting at my desk and verbally typing this with the speech to text on the computer. My sliding glass door is open and I’m looking out onto palm trees and banana leaves from the trees below. The sky is perfectly blue. The state comes very easily in this room most times that I just look out into the outside world.

My family is stressed out in a pretty major way because of this. But as I look out the door frame, there’s nothing of emotion that has the power to create fear in me. That’s one aspect of this phenomenon that is really helpful. Just being in the state erases all fear or uncertainty and confusion. Literally erases everything. There’s nothing known, remembered, thought about, emoted about, that can cause a stir in the mind in the state.

So that itself is very helpful as one goes about life life on this stressful planet.

Just knowing that the state is there anytime I consciously choose to move toward it or to let go of the Vern state or the ego state that I am in now as I speak to you. It’s really comforting. I guess you could say.

Though I’m not Buddhist I have seen a lot of Buddhism here in Thailand. I know some forest temples where I have had some memorable experiences.

One of the temples that I like to walk around at it is called Suan Mokkh Temple. Buddhadasa founded the temple and I have read a number of his books due to them being recommended to me early on in my path.

As one walks around the temple grounds there, you can see artwork done by the monks in paintings, sculpture, molds for steel and concrete, and other media used by monks to create Buddhist art. One of the recurring themes at this temple is something that Buddhadasa used to say often. He was rather known for it among monks under him, and I guess over time as the world found out about him.

I will maybe look it up now to make it factual, but as I remember, there is a small phrase that is on some of the artwork and it’s something he felt strongly about. He felt that it was the underlying state of things. Of reality. Of the truth. Of Dharma. It was translated by some monks in different ways, even by the same monk who struggled with ways to define the phrase from Thai to English, the phrase means something like suchness. Thisness. Thusness. This. All is this. Just this.

It’s interesting to me because this is the idea that I have about the state as I come out of it and back into my Ego state when I think back to what the state is really like. And in the state it’s really as if their is just no separation between anything. Not between me and anything, not between that tree and that tree, not between the birds flying in the sky and the trees and my balcony and my computer and me and everything outside of my visual range.

All of it is just this it’s of the same flow. Of the same state. Of the same stuff. So there is no aberration in the state. There is no difference between things. The differences can be seen with the eye between birds and palm leaves and banana leaves, and people and ants and balcony. The difference never stirs the mind.

I don’t know to what extent Buddhadasa had experience of the state, but it was obvious that he had spent some time there to come up with this way of looking at the truth of reality.

Anyway it was interesting to me as I stopped to look outside this morning and realized that there was no fear there was no anxiety, no stress, no anything, about the next days and maybe weeks that lie ahead. Everything would be as it is and I would be able to cope as an ego, as a self, as a separate person, with the help of the state which is always present just underneath.