“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” – Sigmund Freud
I am not sure how I’m going to tell this story without appearing incredibly fucked up and twisted around. It’s funny, what I am about to share is always lurking somewhere in the shadows of my mind. I’ve never been inclined to write about it, because it’s always felt too big to pin its shoulders down long enough for a win.
I do invariably end up talking about it, whenever I sense an opening. Wait, I don’t think that’s entirely true. It has to be a big conversation, maybe dealing with our ability to tackle global warming.
When the talk goes from the immediacy of our lives to the bigger talk targets, I’ve already loaded my cannon, targeting our popular, cultural canons. We humans can fix anything, mostly in our minds, because that’s what we do. We never fail, we just forget.
Crap, I can’t let this one go by without a fat run-on sentence. I don’t have the slightest, infinitesimally-minute doubt that after thousands of years of walking this earth, with a variety of names and ugly mugs, we have fucked it up so badly, its life is hemorrhaging all around us. Actually, now that I think of it, I often unleash my ground breaking theory under those kind of circumstances, invariably laying an egg.
The Buddha initially got my attention in my early thirties, whilst in the midst of a shredding marriage. I think even as a young kid, I wanted to understand what this life thing is all about. It just never made sense to me. I’ve written countless times about my father dying when I was nine. It set me on a path the rest of my life. In a way, I gave birth to myself on that dark, lonely night. I’m still teething.
The brass ring in the land of Zen is enlightenment, a state of mind-body-spirit that has no words, nor copies. Personally, I don’t give a shit about enlightenment, because I don’t know what it is. My relationship to this practice has everything to do with sitting. I have been meeting myself every morning at around dawn, sitting on my damn cushion for over thirty years. Now, that alone is going to mess with you, on some basis or other, it just has to.
Just like the kid, I have been looking and looking for some clarity. Honestly, if you are able to get to a place where you are able to see clearly, it can become spiritually infectious. You gotta take off your bullshit glasses and see things as they are. The most important measure is history, because it predicts our future. We live in the world that is, not necessarily the one we want.
A quick word on the facts of history. Just today, I read that science has been dramatically off in predicting the occurrence of the Big Bang. Now, I am not going to discuss whether you believe in it or not, because that’s not the point, plus I don’t know fuck all about it anyway. Conventional thinking has been that the universe is around 13 1/2 billion years old. Not so fast, it is actually more like double that. Remember, we are talking about time in the billions, making for a huge miscalculation, recently corrected.
I hate to bring him up again, but the Buddha made a big deal about the past, present and future being this huge board game of constant change. So, when you make these positive statements of rock-solid certainty, they will inevitably turn to dust and re-form once again. It is no miracle, it is the way. Thank you Mandalorians everywhere.
It’s funny, I have been dealing with two extremes in my own life. The small view is the one about me and what my journey has been like and where it may take me tomorrow. I spend a lot of time thinking about it. I do share some of it with you. I still keep the genie’s bottle nearby, with some private stuff inside, to be rubbed only in an emergency. Over on the macro side, get out of my way, because here comes trouble.
I was communicating with a friend about some idiot, who defaced the Coliseum in Rome.
Here is what I wrote:
“The problem is not about changing human nature, which is a waste of time, indelibly proven out over the millennia; rather, what are we to do about it? Everything we are now doing in the world is about solving awful problems, but we are the problem. We have always been the problem.
My best buddy, the Buddha, states in one of the Four Vows I say each morning, “GREED, HATRED AND IGNORANCE RISE ENDLESSLY. I VOW TO ABANDON THEM.” This is truly our work as human beings and that is the only way out. While there is room for everyone, very few actually give a shit. It is the best each of us can do right now and forever. So, we try.”
The response from my friend took strong issue with my perspective, which defined for me, the challenge we face as human beings. We keep trying to win and we keep losing. Since the beginning of time, we have been takers. It’s what we do. So, to me, there has to be a cumulative effect and ultimately the alarms go off, but the takers are always deaf to it.
Maybe some of this enlightenment business is about seeing ourselves for who we are; self-judgment can take a hike. To me, until we can see where we’re really at, there’s no chance. Every dominant society, since forever, has fatally succumbed to cultural egocentricity. We are better than our past and we are going to make the difference this time.
Accepting our limitations, in light of our tenuous longevity, is something we have always sucked at. In fact, we have sucked so badly over the millennia, we’ve made matters far worse than they ever needed to be. Prowess has always kicked the shit out of humility, in a world we want to desperately make over in our own image.
A quick insert, before the big finish. Notice, nowhere have I brought up the name, God, other than as an attention getting device for the title. I think it makes an already complicated situation, even more complicated. I ain’t messin’ with that, so don’t come after me. Thank you.
No way we’re closing out this tale with a War of the Worlds, David kicking Goliath in the balls. It really has not been very hard to reconcile the world as it is with my own very small journey of the soul. What I am about to say is definitely a luxury for far too many of us and that is to seek out joy whenever and wherever you can in your life. The worlds clash here and I can’t help it. I won’t allow my own very small magnificent journey to get sidetracked by yet another version of how things will be different this time.
I live in two worlds and thrive in my own.