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Updates and News

I haven’t been posting as frequently because I was doing some empirical research for our “Looking for Logos”, series. I don’t think matters of transcendence and transformative experience are theoretical, quite the opposite. Half of the time I’m writing this, I’m wondering how to put my insights into words, since we’re reaching for what is known as the “ineffable”: that which can only be known through direct experience, not through speech.

This quest took me to the forests of South-West France, where I spent a week with Buddhist Monks and Nuns, experimenting noble silence, sitting and walking meditation, long strolls through nature and talks with the monastics.

The experience has been quite illuminating. By unplugging you from most stimuli, practicing silence during hours on end and meditating at sunrise, you attain freedom: internal silence. After three or four days, there were no more “voices” in my head, no more songs rattling around, just my breathing. The feeling is extremely liberating, specially because you’re constantly reminded of the principle, “nowhere to go, nothing to do” and to just enjoy life.

After you manage to stabilize your internal silence, then the world manifests itself. It is an amazing experience in which everything comes alive (thanks also to the guided meditations), and you awaken to the world that has surrounded you all along. You stop building mental barriers (“I have to work on this project”, “what should I eat tomorrow”, etc.) and you just exist.

I also took the time to talk to the monastics and get more insight into core Buddhist concepts that I found troubling. I’ve been studying the Heart Sutra with some friends for a while now, and the notion of emptiness always made me nervous. What do you mean, everything is emptiness? Am I nothing? I just couldn’t understand why my “self” is an illusion, and every time I meditated on it, I felt extremely nihilistic, as if I had a black hole in the center of my heart!

So I talked to many of the Brothers and Sisters who live permanently in the forest and have time to dwell on these things. Their answers deserve a proper post; for now, I’ll just say I found their ideas extremely though-provoking and well thought-through. During their talks, my mind would try to tackle their logic using philosophy, “hold on a minute, that’s Neoplatonism. So how do they avoid solipsism?” and such. I was very impressed at their answers, since they had steel-manned their position, including almost all possible critiques. Also, their answers were deep. I never heard a banal statement, like those you can find in modern self-help Gurus about mindfulness and meditation: no, the Monks didn’t take the easy way out and explored the limits of their approach in an applied and practical way.

So I’ll be posting about that in the upcoming weeks.

Book announcement

The other important news is that my novel (“Fish food!” in English), will hit the bookshelves in ten days or so. I’m publishing in France with Éditions Intervalles, so it’s in French. Maybe we’ll publish it in Spanish or English in the future, for now, I’m really excited to have a great editor behind the book, who is putting a lot of energy into the project. I signed 160 copies (which took me 2 hours, mind you) to be sent to journalists and media people, so we’ll see if we can get some traction.

You can pre-order the book in French here, or wait ten days and go to your favorite bookshop. I recommend using your local, small bookshop and supporting independent bookstores, but you can also find it in the usual places (FNAC, Amazon.fr…).

I don’t know if you realize what a milestone this is for me. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d publish in France. I thought I’d get published in Venezuela, maybe in Spain; but France? I came here without even knowing the language. Twenty years later, I have a great text I’m proud of and a publisher behind me. It’s amazing. It’s also been a long, sometimes frustrating, path. Yet here we are!

I’ll publish some parts in English on here to give you guys a taste, and I promise we’ll get back to our business real soon.

Have a nice week,

Vinz.