Dreaming of Lhasa

 

There is no other place for me that is as enigmatic as this Tibetan city of Lhasa. Surely it's on the top of my list of "to-see" places before i die. Someday....

More Sands Under my Feet

Photo barrowed from www.fusionview.com


What if Albert Camus got it right that our existence is nothing but like that of dried peas in the pan, whiling away time and waiting for the next moment to be moved to another pan? Or maybe just as that old man whose repetitive act is our own Sisyphean task? Isn’t that scary? It kind of scares me at times, especially when I look at the great suburban America and its inhabitants, including me, easily get lost to the daily cycle of work- sleep- work, in denial that the daily thrusting of our lives into the world in pursuit of the elusive happiness is nothing but an illusion for everything that exist in this present reality are all temporal in their state. Storing treasures that has no eternal value at all yet we base our entire life and decisions upon this foundation that we deem is on solid rock. But if we were honest enough, we know that there are more sands under our feet than rock.

Awash in Mysteries

“God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.”Dag Hammerskjold

Not too long ago, my wife and I spent a day in a small island called Apo Island in the province of Dumaguete in the southern part of the Philippines. This is a diver’s paradise, a sanctuary for hundreds of species of tropical fishes and live corals and it is not as commercialized and crowded as that of the world-famous Boracay where we had just spent four days prior to our trip in this small island. On this particular day, there were only a handful of Caucasians in their diving suits and few locals working as their guide. Since we are not certified divers yet, we made use of what we have: snorkels. And snorkeling we did. Just a couple of feet from the shore, not even waist deep, my bewildered eyes, accustomed to city lights and bright building of Shanghai, were bedazzled by the different colors, almost kaleidoscopic, of soft and hard corals with crown fishes hovering over them. With bread on my hand, hundreds if not thousands of these sea creatures swooshed in like hornets and the lump of bread was gone in second. Looking further down the ocean bed, hidden under the rocks, crevices and corals are big fishes, stationary, as if frozen not by fear but equal amazement of the stranger in their sights.


A few more laps further from the shore, trying to brush off my nagging fear of the depth, I joined my wife who was under water but her head cocked up as if she was staring at a mural. Following her pointing finger, I soon realized that we were witnessing, not a curtain, but almost a wall of colored fishes, blue, yellow, orange, but mostly orange, unmoving, but dangles like a drape in the slightest move of the wind and as if on cue, darted in all directions like a dispersed rioters when we tried to go closer.


A short captivating moment, I feel like I had just witness something otherworldly that I would never recapture again in this lifetime. I couldn’t help but to play the scene in my mind again and again, hoping to pull the images as vividly as I could, the deep blue backdrop of the sea when all the fishes darted away is like a giant slab of ice on a summer day, inviting but eerie. It was such a magnificent view, what with the butterfly, wrasses, damsels, blue tangs and snappers, all looking curios to the momentary disruption of their world.


It was a truly breathtaking experience that could not be forgotten in years to come but would somehow reminds me that from time to time we seek experience that will put as in awe, stops as short, and as my theologian friend would put it “moments that grab you and won’t let you go; encounters that alter your perspective and experience of reality”. In effect, all of life is a search for some sort of contact with that who is mysterious and beyond our human experiences. Our desires, our wants, even in the seemingly instinctual needs that drive us, we sense that behind this is the search for the awesome, for that which is mysterious. We search for that which would lift us out of the drudgery of our existence, not as an escape from dealing with the now-ness of the moment, but rather, as a reminder of who we really are- where we are going, and what we will be. To welcome such moments is to keep in touch with the Absolute Reality. It centers us. It inspires us. When we catch a glimpse of that which is truly awesome and wonderful, we are changed, transformed.