This Is Not a Panic Attack: But a Pipe That Is Not a Pipe
The illusion of storm and calm through the art of René Magritte
Do you know Magritte? The painter René Magritte? The one with the umbrella that is not an umbrella and the pipe that is not a pipe. "Ceci n'est pas un parapluie," "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." The Belgian plays with reality. He shows you something and tells you it's not that thing.
And he's right because what you see is only a representation. For example, when you look at a photo of the person you love and kiss it, you're kissing paper, not the person. I look at it hanging on the wall of my existence, carefully framed by the mind: my panic attack, like a work by Magritte.
Below, an invisible caption reads: "This is not a panic attack." The hammering heart, the fleeing breath, the vertigo that confuses reality. I observe these phenomena as if they were brushstrokes on a canvas, representations that I mistake for reality. But I cannot suffocate because of the image of suffocation. And then, the so-called "calm" that follows. This relief that invades me, this feeling of having escaped. I cling to it like a raft, convinced I've found solid ground. But this too is just another canvas in the same gallery of illusion. The tranquillity after the storm: another deception of the senses, another painting signed by Maya. I breathe deeply and think: "There, now I'm fine."
But what is this "fine" if not the temporary absence of "bad"? Dualities are painted with the same brush of attachment. Well-being is perhaps the most seductive of illusions. It makes me believe that a state exists to pursue, a condition to maintain. But it's like trying to grasp the image of a wave: in the very moment I think I've captured it, it has already become something else.
Panic, calm, well-being, suffering: interchangeable paintings hanging on the walls of a museum that doesn't exist. The only difference is that some I define as "beautiful" and others as "ugly," but both are painted with the pigments of sensory attachment. When the panic attack vanishes and I sigh with relief, I am simply moving from one room to another in the same gallery of illusions. The paintings change, but not the fictitious nature of the exhibition.
This is not a panic attack, and what follows is not true peace. They are just different densities of the same veil, different ripples on the same surface of Maya's ocean. The mistake lies in believing that one is more real than the other, that one deserves more attachment than the other. True awakening is not passing from panic to calm, but understanding that both are temporary visitors in a museum where we are neither the paintings nor the spectators, but the silent space in which all this happens.
Ceci n'est pas une réalité.
Mmh... yes... wait... there... Come to think of it, this could be an alternative title for that work by Magritte, La Décalcomanie, yes, precisely the one with the red curtains against the blue sky, the clouds, that strange theatre of the mind that perhaps says better than what I've tried to say so far, clearer than all these words that chase each other, hide, return, like clouds, like thoughts, like panic that isn't panic that isn't reality that isn't...
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