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It is, I think, impossible to view any person, thing, idea, feeling, etc. which you NEED, clearly.  If you need a person, you cannot see them as they are.  If you need to believe America is a horrible nation, or a beautiful nation, then you cannot see what is in front of you.  If you need to believe the worst or best of people, you cannot see what is in front of you.

If you don’t need people–this is my current process–then you can see them honestly, in all their glory and defilement, in all their potential, their failure, their curiosity, their hostility, their love, their joy, their hate.

It is not entirely inaccurate to describe myself as a hermit living in a cave.  It’s a very comfortable cave, to be sure.

And, there: Buddhism is a logical set of ideas.  If you want to see life as a whole clearly, then need as little as possible.  Eat only enough to survive.  Reject material comforts beyond the absolutely necessary.  Abide in no fixed place.  Be a perennial stranger to all but the Dharma.

But, then, Tantra: what you get when you loosen your attachment to this world is a constantly replenishing joy, which is the attribute of another world–one of many, but the best one, and the source of them all–which suffuses this one.  You get to that world by accepting everything in this world, by digesting it emotionally, by digging, digging, digging, until you reach the light.  No, it is more like floating down, slowly, as you untangle knots which constrain the light.  It is a process of slowly remembering what is at the root of your being.

I had something else to say, but it is hiding from me.  Come back, idea.

It’s giggling and running away.  Ah, it may come back.  It may not.  I wonder if we recollect all the ideas we had and forgot, and forgot that we forgot, when we do our Life Review.  For me, this will be quite a few.  I try to note things down as they come to me, but I don’t always succeed.

It’s an interesting process.  I wonder sometimes what I would feel if this blog just disappeared one day.  I don’t think it would bother me very much.  The goal, here, is to develop myself, my own ideas, my own practice which flows from these ideas.  All of that is in me.  I don’t need these words.