The red pill

Last weekend when I was in Singapore, a friend of mine remarked,

"There's lots of political news going on in Malaysia. You spend a lot of time there. How come I don't see you talking politics on your blog?"

My friend was pulling my leg. He knew what my answer would be but I had to say it anyway. There are two things I don't write about. People's private lives and Asian politics. Okay, on private lives I make an exception for Octomom's case. She made her choice to lift the privacy of her life on national tv and I'm just adding to a pretty noisy public discussion.

Although I don't comment on politics, it doesn't mean I am unaware of it. On the contrary, I am painfully aware of it in all its gory detail. Awareness is a basic training of any good martial arts school. In my school, we were trained to notice things ordinary people wouldn't. The wind, the sun, the terrain, ambient sounds, the physical and mental states of people. We'd sit in stillness for hours learning to "be" with the surroundings. We could sit in a packed subway and tell you what we saw in detail. These observations tell us a story about the balance of forces surrounding us.

If it sounds like meditation, that's because it is. Many people think that when you meditate, you shut down your faculties and get lost in a dream world. Actually you don't. Your senses heighten and you notice every itch on your body, every smell, every sound. You just don't get attached to them. They come, you note, you let go.

Politics tell a story too - one about the state of your non-physical surroundings. If there is one thing politics is useful for, it is to remind me that nothing is forever. It doesn't matter which side of the divide you're on. The unstable nature of existence guarantees that no single side will endure. What you see today is a mere screenshot of a never ending movie which had zig-zagged through time and will continue to zig-zag to eternity.

In fact personally, the more I observe politics, the clearer the great truths of life seem to be. One of them is that no matter how wealthy or influential you are, you cannot escape dissatisfaction. Accumulating more wealth and power will not do anything to eradicate it. Neither will clinging to any ideology, tradition or dogma, no matter how right or fulfilling it might seem to you at that moment.

So I treat politics as the background noise of an unstable dimension, what I call The Matrix. I accept there are pathways that lead out and its not by more politicking and counter-politicking. Its by taking the proverbial red pill. The ancients have done it. With right understanding and right concentration, anyone can do it.

At this point, I admit this is purely faith based. It doesn't have to be, as I should discover when I've summoned enough courage to walk down the entire path rather than turning back halfway as I am doing now.

But as this dimensional upheavel picks up pace, with society and the ecosystem breaking down as they had done in countless existences, I have to say the prospect of not turning back is getting more and more attractive by the week. It is soul searching time.

"The red pill is an unknown quantity. We are told that it can help us to find the truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to find it. The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning. In order to answer the question, you can gamble your whole life and world on a reality you have never experienced."

Maybe its time for me to take the red pill seriously.