Buddhism, and you can quote me on this, is the maturity of mature people. It is the growing up of grown ups.
If you are a child, focus on not being a child. If you are juvenile, focus on not being juvenile. If you are a grown up, focus on learning how to live in harmony.
If you can live in harmony, as an adult, then and only then, seek to learn about what lies beyond.
If I might offer commentary, it feels to me like many people think if they pay more money, they should get better experiences.
Your experiences flow from who you are. And who you are is, over the long haul, the integrated sum of your decisions over that period. What are you adding, today, to the sum, that will make it better? What did you add yesterday? What can you add tomorrow?
I don’t think life is so very complicated, or so very difficult. It does not ask of us everything all the time. It asks of us a bit, regularly. It asks that we give willingly. And it asks that we celebrate the dishes bought with what we have paid.
Dive in. Remember who you are. It is not so hard.
Well, I don’t think it is so hard. I don’t remember who I am either. If you figure it out, let me know. We can both stand there looking at the waves and sand and wondering why shells make noise, and think we might write poetry, but it likely won’t be very good. But we will know who we are, and that goddammit is something.
Buddhists don’t drink gin. But we are supposed to kill the Buddha, or something like that. Yeah, I vacillate between reason, rambling, and something that could be mistaken for poetry by an outsider
or an imbecile.
[editorial note: I find this funny]