VIS '08 Video

Hey everyone. I set some video from the semester to music (All We Perceive by Thievery Corporation). Hope it works. ~James

An Adeventure In Ladakh -by Otto Pierce

Preface:
A few nights ago, as I lay in bed, I decided to write about an experience I had that day. It was a Sunday, and a few days earlier Sam had announced that a hike would be happening on that day. Sunday morning rolled around, and lo and behold, just Sam and I were preparing to hike one of the mountains across from the Secmol campus. Everyone else in the group had chosen not to come with us because of one of the things that we were planning on attempting along the way. Little did we know that they were very wise in their choice. This is that story.
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Today was a day of strange yet hilarious circumstance. It started around 5:45 A.M. when I thought I had breakfast duty. My alarm went off and my heavy eyelids slid reluctantly open, my body and mind functioning at about 1% of their normal level. Twitching my toes and fingers and breathing in the fine dust flowing around my room, I decided that the treacherous beeping of my alarm clock had to stop. Flopping my limp arm over my chest and landing it on the sleep function, I was able to end the piercing waves of sleep destruction. Rolling onto my back I proceeded to stare at the ceiling and rally myself to rise, the particles of dust settling on my eyelids like balls of iron.
I hate alarm clocks. They tear away peace, rip you from you alter-reality into a world of cruel intentions and inflated egos. Instead of waking you up with a caressing hand or a soft kiss, they scream at you like some pissed-off Barbie come to life who just found out Ken is cheating on her with one of those Bratz dolls. Just the fact that alarm clocks make me think of Barbies and Bratz proves that they are awful things. I really dislike them.
I kick my feet up and raise my body into a sitting position, the beginning of the end. Sleep flees my eyes and I propel myself up and towards the door. Putting on my shoes I slouch outside into the crisp morning. On a far ridge the first rays of sun are breaking over the tops of mighty Himalayas, and a wisp of spring brushes my smell, faint and glimmering like the early morning light.
Morning is a time of dual personalities. First it is cruel when it wakes me, taking me away from the cool recesses of sleep and pushing me out into the day. Then however, when given time to appreciate it, it becomes accepting and beautiful to observe, welcoming me with open arms into its warm embrace.
Anyway, before I even got to the kitchen (remember, the only reason I got up so early was to make breakfast) I met Gyatso the secretary (A Secmol student) and he informed me that I didn’t have to make breakfast because today was some sort of ‘special’ day. (It turned out that the Ladakhis thought that VIS was making their own breakfast and consequently didn’t make enough for all of us…woops.) Well, I was pretty happy to be informed of this and meandered back to my room, reset my alarm (AHHH!), and promptly fell back asleep.
Having to wake up twice in one morning is almost too much, no matter how beautiful and accepting it can be. The second time actually hurt me to get up and start preparing for my hike, but eventually I did, excited at the prospect of climbing a mountain. With my layers and snacks and boots packed in my backpack, and my sneakers with no socks on my feet I was ready to go. After a hurried breakfast, Sam and I set off to attempt what we later realized to be complete folly. We were going to try and cross the Indus River (which is directly below the campus, and directly in the path of the mountain that we wanted to climb). Little did we know what we were getting our selves into.
Upon arrival at the banks of the Indus both Sam and I realized that it looked both a little deeper and a little faster than we were expecting. We also noticed small patches of ice ringing some stones near the shore, but what was it to us, we were two men on a mission (its up to you to decide if we were two block-headed men on a mission). I stripped down to my boxers (I was wearing jeans and if they get wet they suck the heat off your body about 200 times faster than being naked), and Sam rolled up his super lightweight pants as high as they would go. We were ready.
Linking hands we stepped into the current. Immediately, splinters of cold shot into my feet and we both started making noises something like this. “AHHHHHH! OHHHH! AHHHHHH! MY GOD, THIS IS SOOOOO COLD!!!!”
It…was…freezing. Rarely have my feet ever felt so cold, never have I put my feet in water that cold, and never have I even dreamed of crossing a river of water that cold. But, that is exactly what we were doing. As we moved farther and farther out we started to realize more and more that it was much deeper than even we had imagined on the shore. When we were about one-third of the way across and the water was up to the middle of our thighs, we knew that we had a decision to make.
When we got to the shore Sam said something about decisions that I thought was quite smart. He said that there are really two main groups of decisions that we have to make in life. The decisions in the first group are the ones made far ahead of time, carefully planned out so that when it comes time a set path is already made and stress is minimal. The decisions of the second group however, are a little more urgent. They usually are split-second decisions that have to be made in oh…lets say five or less seconds. An example of such a decision would be when two humans are one-third of the way across a near-to-freezing river, their legs are almost completely numb, the water is at the middle of their thighs, and the river only gets deeper and faster the farther you go. To the reader the decision may seem easy – turn back. However, when you are two people who really want to climb a mountain, and crossing the river for which India is named after I the very early spring is the only immediate way to do so, the decision becomes a little harder.
Now, I can tell you that stopping in the middle of a freezing, speeding river to have a miniature meeting is a very surreal experience. One can feel the cold soaking farther and farther into their body as the murky waters rush, and time takes on a new meaning, seeming to pass in an entirely different manner than it ever has before. It is not nesesarrily moving faster of slower, just differently. Seconds flow by with the icy water, not happening just at one time, but at all time, if that makes any sense, even though it doesn’t have to when you are in the middle of a freezing river.
Sam and I had a choice to make. Go on and brave the deeper, faster water so that we could climb the mountain, or turn back and face the disappointment of an opportunity lost, but perhaps the chance to climb another mountain. Decisions, decisions, really cold water, freezing legs, time, time time time flowing by water flowing by seconds out the window decisions decisions blur blur DECIDE! “Let’s turn back” “Okay!” Whereupon we turned and booked it back to the shore that we had left about two minute before. Screaming and yelling as we reached land again, we were walking not on legs and feet, but on clubs of flesh that used to be legs and feet before the Indus stripped them of their identity. Slowly, slowly life did return to those lumps of flesh, and we decided to make another decision.
Now wait, before I tell you this I would like to point out that we had just made a very good decision seconds before, so don’t reprimand us to badly for this one.

We decided to try it again.

Moving upstream to a calmer part of the river, and what we suspected to be a shallower section as well, we prepared for round two. For this section we decied to go by ourselves and as fast as possible. Because of this I was ready before Sam who was re-rolling his pants, and with a war-cry I charged back in. All was going well for the first four steps and things were looking good. Suddenly though, before I knew what had happened I was up to my waist. My fifth step had been over what was apparently a large drop-off, and with another yell, this one not off triumph but of surprise and then humor, I leapt back out of the water and laid on the bank laughing as hard as I could at what had just happened. Sam too, decided he would give it another try, but only got about three steps before what he described as his toes ‘re-freezing’ made him beat a quick retreat. Sitting on the shore we both started to laugh at the ludacracy of what we had just attempted…twice. The pull of the mountains must be really strong around here.

Back at the campus that day we managed to catch a bus to the closest village, Phey, and cross the Indus on a bridge (miracles of madern engineering), and then climb the mountain that we had been shooting for all along. After we had reached the summit and come back down onto the bridge, I was left to contemplate the events of the day as I stared down into the water of the Indus. ‘Reaching the summit of that mountain will not be something that I will easily forget’ I thought, ‘but today shall be remembered for only one thing in my memory.’

Otto Pierce--Emptiness

To be empty, truly empty, one can never be more full. When your mind is emptied of all wants, desires, greedy and needy thoughts, then it can be filled with everything else. It can be filled with understanding, empathy, love, and the ever-present Om. When you understand you can be made to care, which leads to empathy, which leads love. Love though, is not a skin-deep love, an artificial love, but a love that goes much deeper. Love is something that goes straight to the life force, the inner peace and calm and Nirvana.
When you are empty you do not dwell on what has happened, or what will happen, you simply are in the moment. Time has no hearing on you anymore because the passing of time means nothing if you are everywhere at once, yet completely in one place.
When you are empty you are everything, as well as part of everything. You are pain, suffering, love, knowledge, peace, and enlightenment. You are the smallest grain of sand, the graceful stag of the forest, the powerful and immovable mountain, and even the thumping washing machine in your back room.
To be empty is to be a glass full of superficial substance, as well as full of something that can’t be seen. What can’t be seen, what the glass is truly filled with is what truly matters. Inside the glass, behind the cover of substance, little bits of everything pile up upon each other until they flow over the top. Those little bits of everything are all separate, yet inextricably connected. Every action intimately affects every other piece. The whole of all the little pieces is called existence, and while one may dwell in the present, if they exist they are part of everything that is, was, and is going to be. Their thoughts may not reside in those realms, but their Om, their existence does. Whether it is our soul or our Nirvana or our just our indestructible sub-atomic particles that have existed since forever, it means that we have too.
Emptiness is to simply be aware of ones existence. Awareness is what we strive for, the banishment of ignorance. When ignorance is gone, then emptiness arrives.

Emma Gershun-Half

Ladakh is a place where the mountains are the size of dreams. They reach up past the sky, their tops dusted with snow and high-flying birds.
Ladakh is a place where the incremental creeping of the Indian subcontinent somehow results in a majestic collision of earth and stone and peaks three miles above sea level.
Ladakh is a place where weather worn faces smile from every direction and where young children look with wide eyes but never say a word.
Ladakh is a place where one can hike for miles with endless possibilities in sight, but never know the destination or what it will hold.
Ladakh is a place where dust settles and blows and is a general nuisance, but belongs just the same. It coats the nose and throat, but also is the stuff that mountains and stream beds, gompas and homes are made of.
Ladakh is a place where the day is greeted by the sun, and the night by the moon, both of which are so bright and vibrant that midnight and midday are equally inspiring and un-oppressive.
Ladakh is a place where the landscape is barren, yet full of otherworldly life. A place where it is possible to feel peacefully alone and part of everything simultaneously.
Ladakh is a place where it is possible to be.

Post 2, Tess Townsend

The following entry is a response to the prompt, “Emptiness.” In Buddhism, emptiness does not denote a lack of something, but rather is viewed as the ultimate wholeness and fullness. The goal of meditation is to empty one’s mind. To be empty is to recognize that the “self” is an illusion, merely the product of every other thing that exists. A tree does not exist independently. It is the result of air, water, earth and sun, as well as the result of whatever results in air, water, earth and sun.

emptiness emptiness emptiness emptiness fullness fullness fullness breakfast breakfast fasting fast fast running running running walking slowing-down sitting emptiness emptiness emptiness wholeness wholeness wholeness hole

hole in the center of a bagel
hole in the center of the earth
black hole in the center of the universe vacancy void
the universe itself is a hole of wholeness and emptiness

dogs barking in the abyss barking barking barking inconsequentially

emptiness emptiness emptiness

celestial twinklings
infinity and nothing
nothing for infinity
nothing forever
everything for eternity

no eternity no time no beginning no end fishbowls snow globes finite floor and ceiling try not to bump your head impossible existence of beginning and end within infinity there is no infinity there is not light there is no earth there is no basis no ground and no sky no floor and no ceiling

emptiness emptiness emptiness void vacancy abyss droning droning droning a flower roots bees air water soil no words complete collapse words inexpressible words illusions no separation no tangibility no strength and no weakness

emptiness emptiness emptiness

books class time passed ineffable

students screaming into the void
dogs barking into the abyss
beggars begging bits of illusory sustenance
addicts addicted to dream-creations
painters painting reflections of mirrors

look into the void see the void reflected infinitely
see it reflected not at all

Ladakh is a place where...Duncan

Ladakh is a place where…
Duncan Nelson

Ladakh is a place where time has seized to exist, a place in which humans do not revolve around the fourth dimension, a downward spiraling death trap. It has not yet been invented here. A river, has no sense of its own fate, it doesn’t abide by time’s suzerainty. It exists everywhere, always. People here embody a river, omnipresent in all realms of existence. To have the gift of this wisdom is something humanity secretly strives for. Part of this wisdom means that you do not have to search, you do not have to tread down a beaten path to find it. So, one thing I have learned is that a river not only is the universe, but it is also nothingness. Can anyone melt into the river? Be warned, it pours into lush valleys, screams down rapids, carves out stones, stumbles through grassland and disperses into the ocean, again, again, forever. Some people end up in the ocean, others remain dust. To let go, to be like a river is easier said than done. We are only human, and only humans let their lives get in the way of living. Only Humans abide by time’s cruel restraints. I can only hope that someday, We can finally deem time antique, old, wrinkly, and place it in a red collapsing barn along with other useless trinkets and melancholy memories, where it collects dust and mice use it’s confines to make their nest. One day, I can only hope Ladakh can be a model to the world, a representation of simplicity and meaning. Only then will the naïve idealist hopes of total peace and happiness come true. A day when time dies of its own fate, never to be dusted off and given back to humanity, that is my hope. Ladakh is a place where time cannot pierce through eight thousand meter peaks, it cannot breathe the blood boiling air, and it cannot put wrinkles in the soul. Ladakh has been untouched by time, and will remain that way for eternity.

Jansyn

Ladakh is a place where I see my “other life” contained in an invisible snow-globe. I hold the globe very still in the palm of my hand and watch the pile of plastic flakes grow. That which was previously hidden by the swirling snow is now revealed as the flakes settle.
Ladakh shelters me, shrouds me in a sky full of stars. In Western Mass. these same stars cower behind a veil of artificial light. In Ladakh I drink in their presence until a heavy wind throws sand into my face and I stumble back into fluorescent reality. Conventional reality.
Ladakh is a white screen. Steep, eroding mountains are projected onto the blankness. Packages and postcards arrive through a small door on the lower left hand corner of the two-dimensional landscape. Ladakh is so fantastic it can’t possibly be real.

No longer am I wedged in that glass snow-globe staring out at a distorted truth. Ladakh is a place where I no longer know what “truth” is.