Cung-See
i Am
ema·jean
Microwave Assault
One thing none of us doubt is to face death someday. ‘Dead sure’, as the phrase goes. It is the necessary balance life seeks with death. A clear affirmation of nature’s cyclic basis. Being born is to admit death. To be in denial only holds us back from our abilities. The moment we come to terms with it, we spring into life.
The unceasing chase of nature signifies key characteristics. It conveys the imperfect nature of reality, which factors progress. It also signifies varying intensity of seeking balance. Each and every recurrence of all periods differ in their intensity of chasing. Some cycles are obviously evident of their variance, and some not so. The resonance of a cesium atom that ticks the most accurate clock appears to have a precise period, however, two synchronized atomic clocks next to each other will someday be skewed. In contrast, the cycle of human suffering and joy is quite obvious of its fluctuating period. In general, simple inanimate things appear more consistent with their intensity to seek balance, as opposed to animate ones. For instance, we clearly feel each night was longer or shorter as opposed to the indifferent clock.
It is natural for all human enduring to seek balance, which is a willingness to open all doors to opposing ends. Such willingness to be vulnerable also opens unknown doors bringing in progress. It is also natural to be occasionally drifted far to an end. Such a drift brings big changes, desirable or not. An intense swing on one side naturally is an opportunity for the opposite to vacillate so. The balance is in realizing how far to chase what before the outcome transcends comprehension. If not us or sooner, nature will admit necessary balance from a level and intensity we failed to imagine.
A perfect balance isn't realistic either, which would cease the cycle itself. The moment we become comfortable in our ways and ideas we stagnate in development, which also admits natural intervention to resume the cycle in motion. The cyclic chase for balance is far more fundamental to nature than our own willful acts, and it makes no sense denying so.
From a philosophical standpoint, reality can be seen as a metaphysical manifestation of progressive means to existence. It simply means, here we are having sought progress from what we have seen and understood. We have come this far having balanced extreme swings between epistemic and aesthetic possibilities. Our values, culture, religion, reason are all metaphysical forms with a keen reflection of our past. Any extreme indulgence, be it selflessness or selfishness, force or freedom, have shown to subdue progress. Regardless, the overall human condition has continually progressed despite adversities of imbalance our generations may have faced. Even in isolation, different cultures ended up traversing a path to progress similar to one another. All our systems of progress turned out mostly identical. Any geometric progression of unsustainable randomness has not thrown nature in disarray. Nature appears to have contained any growing chaos to somehow find balance. It hasn’t deviated far from its course to become incoherent in its larger meaning. Everything just magically falls in place. If we do something outlandish we pay the price for it, but nature ensures progress at large. The same is evident in the light of natural selection as well. Survival lends itself to the fittest in a random manner. However, the overall outcome has been progressively complex organisms sustaining balance and growth. The randomness of survival at one scale is bound by progress at a larger. Someday when we meet the stars above, their ways may not be terribly different from ours, but exotic for sure.
Once upon a time, a beautiful princess named Thoibi fell in love with a handsome young man, Khamba. Thoibi's love for Khamba becomes an upheaval battle with her father, king Chinkhumba. The king was disarranged by the thought of his beautiful daughter married to an ordinary man, leading an ordinary life. She was the king's fondest daughter. He loved her with pride and possession.
King Chinkhumba decided to put his foot down. He unraveled a game of matrimonial chess, and made his move. He arranged Thoibi's marriage to a neighboring prince, Nongban. He envisioned a royal alliance with his move as well.
Thoibi's rebel heart wasn't happy. She wouldn’t let her love peril either. Thoibi revolted back. She stepped up her game with Khamba. Her stubborn father, habituated by power and resources, curbed her freedom in retaliation. Thoibi was allowed to see Nongban only, but the princess didn't feel much for him. Khamba never ceased her mind.
Thoibi had an untamed wit that contended her beauty. It took her no effort to key a weakness of the king, to gather a plan. She knew her father’s obsessions well, including for her. It was the king who inspired her fondness of horses. She took Nongban along to the king, and asked if she could go horseback riding as an opportunity to know Nongban. Her positive spirit thrilled the king, and he agreed. Nongban, naturally excited, got the princess on his horseback and off they went.
Thoibi was pretentious of her ignorance with horses to Nongban. She asked if he would train her to ride. Nongban’s eyes were lit above his chin with a rush of blood that escaped his reason. Thoibi realized the moment. She asked him to walk along, with her on the horseback. Sooner then, she expressed her desire to sport a galloping horse. Nongban felt the oddity and wondered. He was curious of her abilities. Thoibi was a celebrated young woman in the collective consciousness of people for her abilities. Nongban agreed in curious intimidation. The princess, uttering no more words, pulled the reins thrusting her saddle back. The horse knew exactly what was expected. In the blink of an eye, she faded away, never turning back to Nongban's dismay. She was gone. She fled to find Khamba and never returned home.
Thoibi settled happily into a new home, a tiny one, with Khamba. As days passed, it became unsettling for Khamba to realize that a princess instead of being with a prince choose to be with him. He had nothing for her comforts. He began suspecting if Thoibi was secretly seeing Nongban while he went hunting at night. His doubts began to weigh him down progressively. One dark moonless night, he decided to put it on trial. Instead of going far off hunting, he chose to hide around and watch. As the night fell quite and dark, he began calling Thoibi’s name in disguise. Thoibi heard the chilling sound of her name. She felt a menacing intruder up for advantage of the dark night. She heard the voice again, only closer and louder. Unable to tolerate the intimidation, she flung her door open and threw a spear straight towards the voice. In dead silence, she recognized the moaning cry of Khamba. She ran towards and found Khamba in a pool of blood. She held him, hysterically crying. Khamba’s breath escaped away slowly from her eyes.
Hearing such stories naturally provoke a moral on us. We can innately gather the possible harm posed by any extreme means, such as the ones evident in the story. Between trust and doubt, freedom and control, and so forth. It occurs so because we relate, we find a connection to our own becoming. We are naturally built to associate harm and assimilate them, to find a path ahead. It is innate in us to see progress. We magically seem to have inherited many such stories from our ancestors to discover morals. Epic tales from various cultures or geographies are a razzmatazz of battles between extreme possibilities. Their morals led us to our metaphysically reality today. Morals that cannot be constituted by mere logical arrangements, but only attested by stories that we relate to. They corroborate our innate affinity to move ahead, balanced.
The subjective-objective contrast, or outlook, that we often stumble across in our scientific stride today is worthy of juxtaposition. Scientific methods are objective, or epistemic for most part. The staggering advancement of science has undoubtedly been the greatest in our recent history. At the same time, ensuring no harm to fellow humans in retrospect is becoming alarmingly clear as well. It is a metaphysical concern, a concern that comes naturally from being aware of extreme objective possibilities.
We may get inclined to see the objective-subjective distinction as a matter of physical vs. the non-physical. However, it does not mean everything physical has a context broadly applicable to all that is physical. The relationship between the inanimate can be generalized fairly well objectively. However, interaction between the inanimate and animate can subjectively vary depending on the level of animate awareness. The same way, interaction between animate entities with more developed consciousness can vary even more by subjection. Regardless of being physical or not, there's value in seeking subjective as well as objective outlook to situations varying by context. Such an outlook can help address our metaphysical concerns.
We all have seen a rainbow. It is an optical effect of light refracting through mist. We typically see it right after rain, if the sun reappears. In most cases the sun will be behind, and the rainbow in front. The sun, ourselves, and the rainbow are aligned straight. Not everyone will see the same rainbow in an entire city as the alignment eventually differs beyond a certain scale. Imagine scaling things down to a lamp in a room with mist to form a rainbow. A person next to you won't see the rainbow you see at that scale. The rainbow becomes subjective then, despite being physical.
I am reminded of a proverb I once heard from my mother - "When food reaches your stomach, it becomes yours only." The same way, there are some things I see that you cannot see unless you get into my eyes. Some smell I sense that you cannot, unless you are in my nose. If for some reason you can get into my eyes and nose, you essentially become I.
The balance to chase between feeling and thinking is crucial to our development and progress as well. Thinking is epistemic, and feeling aesthetic. Whatever we think has been taught to us for most part. Thinking involves common facts. In contrast, how we feel is original to us. If we become purely thinking oriented, we are bound to become identical and predictable like robots, lifeless. On the other hand, to only feel is meaningless as well. It will turn us into distinct lonely beings, at standstill. The cyclic dependency between thinking and feeling, their tug-of-war, brings us imagination. We feel thoughts, think with passion, that's when we create. To only think and not feel make us greedy, which has pure materialistic end. To only feel and not think make us selfish, with an isolated end.
At times we find ourselves doing something totally whack one night, and next morning we say - "What the hell was I thinking". Fact is, we weren't thinking, we were feeling it, which is just fine. We ought to feel the moment and live life at times, without causing harm.
Cung-See is a phrase in my native tongue. It means Enter-Exit. It is primarily used for counting as odd-even in a repeating manner. The notion of ‘beginning and end’ can be challenging to comprehend at times, in which case, if they are made circularly continuous instead of spreading out far, they can be easier understood. The proverbial 'chicken and egg' is a good example. Instead of trying to figure out which one began, they can be thought of as a progressing cycle that wasn't quite chicken-egg before, and will not remain chicken-egg in the future either. Much the same way, some of us may find it difficult relating to zero and infinity, or the nuances of mathematics, and that’s perfectly fine. There really isn't anything in the world that is zero or infinite. Be it people, sand, or stars. There is no infinite mass, temperature, speed, or density either. They all will have a threshold respective to a context, and upon crossing the threshold they will progress to assume a different context.
If you ever tried walking on a balancing rope or seen someone do so, it becomes evident that it isn't about maintaining a perfect balance. It is about oscillating left and right to move along the rope. A long stick spreading out with the arm helps maintain the oscillation and balance. Sometimes the swing to the right is a little more, sometimes less, but it is all about keeping the left-right motion going without falling.
Nature is an ensemble of opposing qualities much like the ensemble of atoms and molecules. It can be applied to our personality traits as well, to help us grow. Introversion-extroversion, sensing-intuiting, judging-perceiving, learning-creating, pragmatic-romantic. Chasing them in balance help us realize our full potential and become holistic beings.
Sagolsem Chandrasekhar Singh
2019 CE