Does being condescending make you feel better about yourself?  I hope so, for your sake, because no one else cares.

Coming to Zero Again

[...] We often feel that the flow of phenomena rolls on by itself.  No one is doing anything; it all just happens.  We see more deeply the empty, insubstantial nature of phenomena.  The beautiful appearance of a rainbow exemplifies this meaning of emptiness.  We see a rainbow in the sky and often feel a moment's thrill.  Yet on another level, no "thing" called rainbow really exists.  It is an appearance due to certain conditions that themselves are continuously transforming.  Can we live on both these levels at once, engaging in the world of appearances with the freeing wisdom of emptiness?

Coming to Zero

The Buddha gave one very short discourse that expresses the insight of selflessness very succinctly:

"Whenever you see a form, let there be just seeing; whenever you hear a sound, let there be just hearing; when you smell an odor, let there be just smelling; when you taste a flavor, let there be just tasting; when you experience a physical senseation, let there be just sensing; and when a thought arises, let it be just a natural phenomenon arising in the mind.  When it is like this, there will be no self, there will be no moving about here and there, and no stopping anywhere.  That is the end of dukkha, the end of suffering."

Ok.

The is and the what was.  How they mingle and collide.

The past can be a gruesome stalker, cruel and unrelenting in its interferences, making even happy memories bring only pain.  What once seemed lovely becomes a mockery, and this current state of unhappiness is the punchline.

"Was it all in my head?"
"Yes, of course it was and it is and it will be."

Memories can also be a soft light amidst darkness; a gentle reminder of peacefulness and good things. Here the past becomes a saintly mentor, holding your hand, bringing you warmth and comfort.  What once was lovely becomes even lovelier in the haze of remembrance.

"I hold all that in my small head?"
"You don't hold it. You are it."

Being a child of the modern world is a difficult thing: Belief does not seem to be an option and Truth is what you make of it.

The Enlightenment? Ha!

With the breakdown of the Medieval system, the gods of Chaos, Lunacy, and Bad Taste gained ascendancy.  After a period in which the Western world had enjoyed order, tranquility, unity, and oneness with its True God and Trinity, there appeared winds of change which spelled evil days ahead.  An ill wind blows no one good [...] Fortuna's wheel had turned on humanity, crushing its collarbone, smashing its skull, twisting its torso, puncturing its pelvis, sorrowing its soul.  Having once been so high, humanity fell so low.  What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale.

Merchants and charlatans gained control of Europe, calling their insidious gospel "The Enlightenment." [...] The gyro had widened; The Great Chain of Being had snapped like so many paper clips strung together by some drooling idiot; death, destruction, anarchy, progress, ambition and self-improvement were to be Piers' new fate.  And a vicious fate it was to be: now he was faced with the pervesion of having to GO TO WORK.

But you see...

Even in my dreams my wishes aren't coming true.

Persona

Alma: Making changes... The worst thing with me is I'm so lazy. And then I get a bad conscience. Karl-henrik scolds me for lacking ambition. He says I go around like a sleepwalker. I think that's unfair. I was best in my group for the exams. But he probably means something else... You know what I sometimes think of? At the hospital where I did my exam, there's a home for old nurses. Ones that have always been nurses, lived for their work. Always in uniform. They live in their small rooms. Imagine devoting your whole life to something. I mean, believing in something. Believing that one's life has a purpose. I like things like that. Sticking to one thing doggedly, irrespective. I think one ought to mean something to other people. Don't you think so as well? I know it sounds childish, but I believe in it. Goodness, it's raining a lot!

The Seventh Seal

[Block goes to confess at a confessional alcove in a church.]
Block: I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.
Priest: Yet you do not want to die.
Block: Yes, I do.
[As Block looks away, we see now that the "priest" is actually Death.]
Priest/Death: What are you waiting for?
Block: Knowledge.
Priest/Death: You want a guarantee.
Block: Call it what you will.
[Block kneels as if praying to the figure of Jesus.]
Block: Is it so hard to conceive God with one's senses? Why must He hide in a midst of vague promises and invisible miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear Him out of my heart, but He remains a mocking reality which I cannot get rid of. Do you hear me?
Priest/Death: I hear you.
[Block turns to kneel before the priest behind the confessional screen.]
Block: I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me.
Priest/Death: But He is silent.
Block: I cry to Him in the dark, but there seems to be no one there.
Priest/Death: Perhaps there is no one there.
Block: Then life is a senseless terror. No man can live with Death and know that everything is nothing.
Priest/Death: Most people think neither of Death nor nothingness.
Block: Until they stand on the edge of life and see the Darkness.
Priest/Death: Ah, that day.
Block: [laughs bitterly] I see. We must make an idol of our fear, and call it God.

Like so many people

Her logic was a combination of half-truths and cliches, her worldview a compound of misconceptions deriving from a history of our nation as written from the perspective of a subway tunnel.

IV How is home felt?

The Levy home stood among the pines on a small rise overlooking the gray waters of Bay St. Louis.  The exterior was an example of elegant rusticity; the interior was a successful attempt at keeping the rusting out entirely, a permanently seventy-five-degree womb connected to the year-round air-conditioning unit by an umbilicus of vents and pipes that silently filled the rooms with filtered and reconstituted Gulf of Mexico breezes and exhaled the the Leveys' carbon dioxide and cigarette smoke and ennui.  The central machinery of the great life-giving unit throbbed somewhere in the acoustically tiled bowls of the home, like a Red Cross instructor giving cadence in an artificial respiration class, "In comes the good air, out goes the bad air, in comes the good air."

The home was as sensually comfortable as the human womb supposedly is.  Every chair sank several inches at the lightest touch, foam and down surrendering abjectly to any pressure.  The tufts of the acrylic nylon carpets tickled the ankles of anyone kind enough to walk on them.  Beside the bar what looked like a radio dial would, upon being turned, make the lighting throughout the house as mellow or as bright as the mood demanded.  Located through the house within easy walking distance of one another were contour chiars, a massage table, and a motorized exceising board whose many sections prodded the body with a motion that was at lonce gentle yet suggestive.  Levy's Lodge- that was what the sign at the coast road said- was a Xanadu of the senses; within its insulated walls there was something that could gratify anything

A Confederacy of Dunces

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. - Jonathan Swift "Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting"

"But I couldn't stand that town.  Honest, you should see it.  God-fearing and man-hating.  Sugar.  Sugar.  There was so much sugar in the way they pretended to treat each other that I suffered from diabetes of the soul."

The Egotist

In a self-centered circle, he goes round and round,
That he is a wonder is true;
For who but an egotist ever could be
Circumference and center, too.

You see?

For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem.

We all tried. But it didn't work.

Mary's voice broke as she added, "Oh, poor... poor..."
"Poor what?" asked the doctor.
"Life," Mary replied promptly. "These bivouacs where the soldiers are, are bad.  We can't all be heroes."
"A bivouac," the doctor pointed out," is not where the soldiers are.  A bivuoac is any encampment."
"I'm telling you the way it was," Mary replied with a tinge of irritation. "A word doesn't matter.  The bivouac, where all of us were, was bad.  We were soldiers in a losing battle.  That's the way it was.  Still achieving, still pursuing, we learned to labor and to wait.  We tried to be patient.  We were very good all the time when we were little.  We learned a lot, and we tried and tried and tried.  Sybil tried.  I tried.  We all tried.  But it didn't work."
"Mary," the doctor remarked gently, "perhaps something stood in the way of trying.  Perhaps the trying will work when we discover what that something was."
"So you see," Mary answered, ignoring the doctor's comment, "you can't always trust the poets. I don't trust anybody."

Insight Meditation Says...

"Another thing to remember as you deepen the systematic exploration of your mind in practice is the fact that though the unwholesome qualities of consciouesness appear to be getting stronger, in fact they are not; you are only becoming more aware of them.  As practice deepens, we feel overwhelmed by the multitude of different mental hindrances that arise.  We see restlessness, laziness, anger, doubt, greed, conceit, envy, and all the rest, and it sometimes seems that our mind contains nothing but these afflictive emotions.

A traditional Buddhist analogy describes this phenomenon.  If you have a cloth full of grime and dirt, no particular spot on it stands out.  But as the cloth becomes cleaner, each stain becomes more obvious.  In the same way, as our mind becomes clearer and more lucid in meditation practice, the hindrances show themselves more noticeably.

So keep a balanced perspective as you work with thoughts and emotions in your mind and heart.  It is important to see the hindrances as they arise, and to understand that the clarity to see them comes precisely from the growing purity of your consciousness." (58)

That's right.  It's not a flaw to see, admit to, and try to change your flaws.  It might be painful, it might be confusing, and living in oblivion or delusion is certainly a lot easier - but still.  But still... I really don't know.

Life advice from Sarah Palin:

"Don't retreat, just reload."  Rev up your gumption. Don't waste those new tears on old griefs, folks.  Just reload.

Oy Vey.

It's too cold out to think.  Major brain freeze.

When only the mountain remains.

Life often hands us the clearest revelations during our darkest hours.  That may sound cliche, yet it makes sense that the hollowed mind becomes most receptive to truth.  A full bucket will collect sediment that floats idly in its waters, while an empty bucket will collect this sediment at its core, its base.  And what is the "sediment"?  It's impossible to say.  Perhaps it's just feeling the absence, the eternal abyss.  The feeling that behind all this stimulation is merely chaos, or nothingness; a thought that's impossible to fully embrace.  After all, in some way we are each Ahab's, chasing our own Moby Dicks. It is easier to have a full bucket: an obsession, a goal, a life shrouded by social necessities and obligations.  That is what living consists of.  Yet as Ahab himself said: "Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts?" (Melville 396).  So I ponder the empty bucket, the hollowed mind, and I can't help but think of the whiteness of the whale:

"Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and that at the same time, concrete of all colors: is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?  And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues - every stately or lovely emblazoning- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits; not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge - pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like willful travelers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him.  And all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?" (Melville 165).

Yes, that's a long quote, and I'm not sure if I'll ever fully grasp the meaning of Melville's words.

But, in the whiteness and the hollowness, in the absence of a monomonical pursuit like Ahab's, what are we left with?  Enlightenment or blindness?  Or both?

Ecstasy and Emptiness

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Wisdom is...

Wisdom is the clear seeing of the impermanent, conditioned nature of all phenomena, knowing that whatever arises has the nature to cease.  When we see this impermanence deeply, we no longer cling; and when we no longer cling, we come to the end of suffering.

A Fourteenth Century Japanese Samurai Wrote:

I have no parents
I make the heavens and earth my parents
I have no home
I make awareness my home
I have no life or death
I make the tides of breathing my life and death
I have no divine power
I make honesty my divine power
I have no friends
I make my mind my friend
I have no enemy
I make carelessness my enemy
I have no armor
I make benevolence my armor
I have no castle
I make immoveable-mind  my castle
I have no sword
I make absence of self my sword.