Rant 107: A Basket...

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Rant 107
A Basket Filled With Words of Neither Coming Nor Going

"Either we get depressed when confronted with impermanence or we devalue what we see and push it away...Only by cultivating a mind that does neither, taught the Buddha, can transience become enlightening...it is the very tendency to protect ourselves against mourning that is the cause of the greatest dissatisfaction. When we distance ourselves and recoil from time's passing, we are creating an artificial duality. Our being and time are not separate, they are one and the same. They are all we have."
-Mark Epstein, M.D. (Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart)

"In a place where there is something that can be distinguished by signs, in that place there is deception. If you can see the signless nature of signs, then you can see the Thus Gone."
-Vajracchedika Praj?±aparamita Sutra, ch. 5

"You are you. You are not you. But who you are is always the third option."
-Ancient druidic saying

"Only kidding! I made that up."-Eris (The Complete Book of "This is Just a Working Title")

Where is your beginning and where is your end? And outside of the words and ideas with which you cover up the reality that can't be understood, what do you really know of beginnings and ends? How can you be so certain that it's over when it's over? Is it really more surprising that you may possibly have more than this lifespan than it was to be born and have this life in the first place? How you are going to see it is really all up to you. You can keep choosing a philosophy or metaphysics of consolation that only confirms for you the validity of your prejudices and half-baked ideas. Or you can choose to step outside. Get yourself out of the way. See around the edges of your identity and your thoughts.

Erisianism or Discordianism or whatever you want to call it, isn't what you think it is and it is exactly what you think it is. But what does that really mean? Are you "getting it" so often that you feel you have made it to some secret or elevated place above all of the others? Or are you getting it and learning that the only real use for answers is to beget more questions? You can say that these words are all just a bunch of mystical hogwash mixed with the impressions of a nervous system influenced by dharma practice, but that is still only a preconceived belief for which you can find much evidence to support. (Evidence is always perceived in ways that twist it to support whatever prejudices you have.) Your words of denial or support are still only words. And words are easily enough to manufacture in pretty little streams that cause things to be thought from one mind to another. Nothing more than things to think about. Freethinking is nothing without freedom from thinking. The incessant chattering of the discursive Choronzon inside each one of us tries to deceive us into thinking that only further thinking can defend us from the utter ecstasy and terror of existence. But thoughts are just thoughts. They need to be laid aside for us to experience the most powerful events of life, regardless of the fact that these events are happening all of the time.

Awareness comes with no conceptions. And conceptions eventually grow to become the enemies of awareness. Attachment to explanations sometimes only builds up more obstacles. Even so, awareness is not the destruction of neuroses or the abandonment of "ego" or the merging of the "self" into some mystical state. Awareness is simply the state of a being that can handle everything because it clings to nothing.

Silence resounds like thunder and in every thunder clap you can hear the profound silence that gave rise to its expression. The sledgehammer of Eris strikes hard, but some say it is the sweetest most intimate embrace and that it is only hard for those unwilling to let go of themselves and take a look around. Chaos is only disruptive and full of discord for those people who refuse to accept its reality.  Your life is only a limiting prison if you are unwilling to erase your personal history. What's the use of holding on to modes of perception and of being that have run their course and must dissolve? What's the use of trying to prove points that become pointless as they fall apart, dance, and recombine into other things? What's the meaning of a life that cannot fathom its own fathomlessness? And what's the meaning of life if meaning is all that there is?

You can say that it's all an illusion so what's the point of embracing anything? But that's only a childish way of seeing it. If you won't embrace anything at all, then your life is just an isolated fragment of what it could be. Stop whining about the fact that everything changes as if you are the only one who is acutely aware of impermanence. Cry if you must. Laugh if you can. Being here, exactly where you are, is the point of your existence. And it is better to befriend your own impermanence than to deny it and sadly learn that your denials, entreaties, and attempts to stave it off are all just as impermanent as you and everything else around you is. The essentialist cries "Why is it this way?" and laments the fact. The nihilist cries "Oh woe is my hell. Nothing matters!" and tries to remain aloof. Both of these people should be stripped and beaten with bamboo sticks for their foolishness. You must grow up and grow out and dance with your impermanence in order for you to forget your "self," let its guard down, and truly laugh and play. (Even children know this part of reality before it is drummed out of them by society and culture.)

You can say that the world isn't all about beauty and smiles, but that's just because of your own neuroses which prevent you from coming out of your mental boxes and learning that life is full of sadness and happiness. So what? Take a chance. Happiness will only be served to you on a silver platter if you can choose happiness, despite the sadness. You want some magical miracle fix-it cure for your existential condition? That is a sad state to be in. Take it or leave it. Your general background state of happiness is only as strong and real as you are aware. If you are the freethinking free spirited free being you say you are, then why would you not choose happiness? Eris may try to tickle you but even She gets impatient. She won't hold your hand to lead you to where you need to be, but She may laugh with you when you get there.

You can still resist and refuse and deny and chatter and intellectualize and theorize about all the ways and things that make you so unhappy and about all the reasons you have for not being at your best. But that is only because you are just being stupid. You can claim that life sucks but chances are if you are reading this, you have enough to eat, you have a roof over your head, you have access to information technologies (to find opportunities to change what the things in life you need to), you live in a society that is for the most part free enough for you to be able to read this, and you have some intelligence about your environment. So what is it exactly that gives you the temerity to make half-assed judgment calls about the nature of life? Assumed avant garde and chic post-modern apathy or nihilism doesn't much cut it. And any bitterness you may have over the way things have not turned out the way you had intended at some point in the past can be ameliorated in the realization that everyone alive today has reasons or excuses that they can use to keep clinging to their bitterness.

It may be that meditation is the one medicine that works in establishing the sort of mental habits that can lead you to realize happiness more often. It may be that the medicine of awareness may be the only real reason why you are alive in the first place. Don't blame me, I didn't do it. I am only working out the implications.

July 30th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Driving under the influence of caffeine, nicotine, happiness, dharanis, and dharma practice.)