Feeding The Mosquitoes In My Search For Enlightenment.
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January 2013, Chennai. I’ve been sitting for seven days.
In Chennai, the tiger mosquito is the dominant type. According to my background research, you might be able to soon meet them personally, due to the flourishing Indian export and the milder and milder European winters.
These beasts are significantly larger than their familiar counterparts back home, with the ability to pierce through several layers of light clothing. They also don’t sleep during the day. Around me are 80 people in a room, all under the vow of non-violence. Now that is what you call a feast.
The mosquito is the ultimate enemy in nature. Obviously for certain indigenous folks it’s more the crocodile and the panther, but for the likes of such lakeside-and-tropics-dwelling-half-adventurer as myself, the mosquito is. The anger, the ancient command, the reflex — all sprout from the root of the spine, awake and in slumber alike.
No regard for orphan larvae, no matter if the blood of our fellow man (or animal) serves as memorial plaque of our desperate struggle on the Dulux or textile, for times to come.
I even have an ideology for it. As I was taking less and less, then finally no part in the systematic holocaust of the artificially manufactured fauna, a certain spotlight has cast its glow around the subject. I said: This is war! Every man for himself! I was attacked and the fight went literally to first blood.
So when it dawned on me that my enlightenment is at stake if I commit to murder, I decided to halt, to announce a 10-day-truce. I deployed my custom mosquito net con arte to my bunk. I slept precisely in the middle, because where one touches the net, there it shows the true nature of all matter, as more nothing than something.
I’ve been sitting for seven days. 10 hours a day. I can’t cover up, because of the heat. I did not bring repellant, nor do I want to go through the trouble of rigorously applying it. But now I don’t have to anymore.
It is quiet, peaceful. My body is a bright, spacious, airy hall. My thoughts are organized, benign. The problems of my life hover as multi-dimensional puzzles in front of me. I’m not afraid of them, patiently waiting for a solution that spares me and my fellow men from suffering alike.
And then, when I gain consciousness over what I’m doing, I gently wave it all out of the picture and return to reality.
The reality is that there are itching bites on my left foot and right forearm, and my left cheek, just under my eye is currently being penetrated by a tiger mosquito. There is no reflex, no anger, just peace, quiet and airy brightness.
I’m feeding mosquitoes.
The moment carries me away, the emotion, the intellectual humor. My ego is already firing up my nervous system’s ever ready tracks, and I’m already in the future.
I decide I will write. That I will tell you who I am, and where I come from, and how I got here. That I am tired of running, and I am lonely, and my heart is throbbing, and I want to belong, to live in peace and security.
And most of all, that the solution to all this I found in the most unlikely of places — deep within myself. I now know that the same lies in all of us, and our most important task is to bring it to surface, then look into each others’ eyes without fear, shame and doubt — and be together.
*****
A few years ago, David Maros left his life behind and ventured out to India in pursuit of adventure, Yoga and meditation. The year he spent there transformed his life, and Vipassana meditation was the single most powerful and effective experience he had, which turned out to be a truly transformative technique on the long run as well. Right now, he works in New York as a consultant for a meditation startup company and also as an aspiring DJ.
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