Just Being Still

Sometimes, I prefer to stay still.

All the running around, shouting, doing work, accomplishing and planning appears ridiculous in these times. I wish to throw off everything and every concept I despised and every concept I believed in. In days of such times, I prefer not to even think about anything. 

It appears ridiculous because at the end, it gets you nowhere. The movement is only notional – after Death, all that we do, is erased. Then why should we keep doing something? Nowadays, I see everybody supremely engaged with billion tasks every second of their life – as if – a single moment of stillness would have been sacrilege! Hyperactivity, anxiety, stress are all a result of giving oneself lack of time and being overly attached to thoughts. 

The first impact of sitting still is that one becomes aware of the riot of thoughts that our mind generates. By practice, one is able to see the characteristics of thoughts – desire, emotions, feelings, intellect. One is able to see the impulse for those thoughts – environment, body, person, social construct or anything else. By further observation, one is able to see what “connections” do thoughts generate and what do these connections lead finally to – anger or joy or rationality or something else? This is called “perception”.

One may then start to decide, which connections need modifications and which connections need to be dropped off? By this, we are ensuring our own calmness. By sustained practice, we limit ourselves to very fundamental thoughts – and come close to understanding experience of Time and Space.  We therefore realize, that ‘we’ was a notional identity that we had created for us (a space-time phenomenon). This can be modified, altered, transformed for our own good. 

Finally, the fundamental learning is about realizing the experience of transcendence and going beyond mind-body consciousness. That zone is the zone of “no fear”. It is pure Space. Anything less than that (grosser than that) generates fear because of identification with mind-body.

Our responses in life are required to go in the above direction. By realizing pure Space, our movement acquires depth. 

Otherwise, at a fundamental level, we are all alone. Birth and Death and the journey spanning these two events is mine to take – any other thing in this journey is incidental – is happening outside me and I am choosing to respond to it because of my mind-body consciousness. Thus, watch the nature of your thoughts. It holds the key to everything.

Communication

There is a lot of emphasis, especially in our times, to be explicit in our expression. By explicitness, people usually expect others and themselves to be very direct, descriptive, factual, legal, time specific and define one’s and other’s boundaries of roles and responsibilities. This may be required for legal/ contractual work – but not always and especially not in intimate/ casual conversations with people or neighbours or friends or relations. Since working environments have become more competitive, digital infiltration has added to the requirement of micro analysis and refining one’s performance, what we end up doing is to be extremely contractual in our responses – therefore influencing our thoughts. Everything needs to be said clearly, precisely, without any ambiguity, at the right time, and should be clear enough (quantifiable) so that it could be evaluated almost immediately. This kind of conversation may be improving efficiency of output or performance – but I am doubtful regarding the quality of relationships this conversation develops among people. 

Conversation (or the sequencing and use of appropriate words, sequencing of thoughts) generate an “experience”. If one is concerned about an experience (and not just conveying dry facts), then we are required to deal with how we are arranging things, how are we saying things and whether we are concerned about feelings of others. We also need to be aware, that things may go out of hand, not everything is perfect, and environment and aspects of fears, desires, and feelings affect our thoughts, the use of words and how they get conveyed. Most people may underestimate the power of words (or the need to use appropriate language) and I would say, those people are most wanted/ liked who are able to say things in an appropriate manner  - so as to get things done but by being compassionate to human tendencies as well. 

We need to understand that there is a ‘limit’ in being explicit in our communication. By being over-explicit, are we hurting others, although it wasn’t anticipated? One should realize that whatever we say, we have already entered the terrain of human consciousness (shared by all) and therefore, what is required is a little bit of empathy, considerateness while talking. By defining our boundaries rigidly, we do not seem to entertain other kinds of feedback given by people. By defining explicit boundaries, we do not seem to entertain the fuzziness of thoughts that imply cultural implications, artistic implications, social implications, intuitive or perceptional implications. By being over explicit, we seem to convey “shortage of time” and a certain level of desperation to race ahead. 

This opens up (and probably should make us relook) at the aspect of silence, intermittent talk, brevity and other forms of even non verbal communication. What do these things give us that explicit conversation doesn’t? 

Art – definitely gives us feelings, and makes us experience them.

Silence and brevity – Gives us an idea of introspection and decoding and decluttering our mind from billion fragmented thoughts.

Senses (touch, eye sight, body language) – give us clues as to what the person intends to communicate but can’t verbally express it. 

All such things form a part of our complete experience as human beings. Silence, role of art, body language needs to be acknowledged – it cannot be shrugged off. By being ‘natural’ and acting the way one feels intuitively, one may be communicating in a far more human way than the very contractual based conversation.

Spatial Experience

If one tries to decode everything  - decoding manifestation itself, then one realizes the void.

For architecture, the central question is : what makes or creates a spatial experience? How does one define ‘space’ and what does one mean to give a spatial experience? 

This is related with similar question about art: how does music become ‘pleasing’ or a painting become ‘inspiring’ or a theatre play become ‘tragic’? 

In all above examples, we are talking of an “experience” (mood/ feeling) and this experience can be generated by a method of art or architecture. 

Our mind is filled with pure space (beyond context) and from where certain thoughts get created (tendencies). The creation and change in these thoughts is inherent in us. These tendencies prevalent in our thoughts/ mind can be subtly controlled, highlighted, managed, encouraged by altering spatial attributes ( plane, texture, shape, proportion, arrangement, scale, colour, smell, sound, wind, light, temperature). For me – these are the ingredients of creating spatial experience. By choosing certain combination of above ingredients, a particular mood/ feeling/ experience in the mind is created through space. Thus, perhaps space is meant to create mood. How does one define and ascertain a particular spatial arrangement results in a particular mood?  This is by practice and wisdom. 

Above observation is fundamental. It means that the neutral space of expanse (consider coming out of earth) creates a neutral tendency in us – it is literally unbounded – we do not feel blue sky (light) or the wind or smell or taste or touch – nothing at all. However, the moment we land on earth and start to sense the movement of sun (light) with the wind, temperature, see certain forms (mountains, trees, foliage, river or manmade planes), colours, hear sound (acoustics) – we start to react to the environment – certain thoughts get generated because of such space. Therefore, having known this relationship, it becomes important for the architect, to create a proper mood. This becomes the highest role of architecture  - the giver of experience.

On temples and Memorials

We have a subject in architecture – which articulates the global “history” of the architectural development that has been imprinted on our planet. It is impossible to digest the repercussions of built environment that humanity has chosen to build, modify, transform.

To know what we are dealing with, we need to understand effects of environment on our thoughts (survival instincts) and our responses to the environment in terms of architecture (shelter), food and clothing. We can gauge the recurring tendencies that are present in us and will continue to inform our future visions of built environment.

Interesting as this journey of recap is, it also entails an enormous amount of dedication and perseverance from the Scholar to realize these comprehensive connections at a global level and across generations.

In examples of building typologies that still talk about our past, we see ‘temple’ (space of worship); ‘memorial’ (commemorating the Dead) and ‘palaces’ (House of Kings/ political Space) as the chief remains of civilizations. Weren’t there any other building typologies prevalent? Of course there were many, but probably they haven’t stood the impact of Time. Whatever we know of our past, we can only decode in terms of above prominent remains.

Which begs the question – why have above typologies lasted so long and what do they signify about us? As far as temple spaces are concerned – we are dealing with the idea of sacredness, which is not just purity, but the entire idea of dependence/impermanence/ control/cosmos/ environment. A temple, is an artistic expression of the dimension of fear-survival-evolution. We may not realize the idea of ‘fear’ in contemporary times – what with all the distractions we face (which are nothing but several masks put to conceal this primordial thought)  - but the tendency is so prevalent, that it ensures our survival. The tendency is rooted in us, and therefore, probably, much emphasis seem to have been given to “respond” to this experience in terms of architecture and many other art forms.

Similarly, humans remain attached to an enormous extent to their environment. This is an extension of above tendency to cling on something because of fear of loosing out a part of self. Therefore, we can’t let go of the Dead – thus, we have been involved in construction of memorials for many generations.

The transcendental aspects and the memory – probably these two have remained the strongest of our subconscious tendencies – probably the two ends of the spectrum.

The third category – which is about the ‘palace’ draws our attention to structures of Power that manifest at an unprecedented level in its architecture. If this is so, one should ask where are structures of Power located now? And how they are manifested now?

The fourth category, which is immediate to everyone’s experience, is the residence. And herein, we find extremely intimate dimensions of existence in the built environment. Historical records are few, ironically, and we know nothing about ordinary people of ancient civilizations.

Makes me say that the humble abode of self – (may be even a hut) is as important and monumental to be considered, as much as a grandiose temple.

Ownership

Do I own my body?

Do I own this water or this Sun or this Wind or this Grass?

Do I own this position?

Do I own this relationship-role?

Do I own this event?

Do I own this outcome?

Do I own Time?

Do I own the moment?

Do I own ‘my’ breath? 

Do I own ‘my’ thoughts?

Do I own these questions?

Am I supposed to own anything?.....