Who are we, really? If you woke up, as Hari (surely that name is not unintentional?) did, not knowing who you were, how would you deal with it? Could you stand the notion that many “you’s” exist across the universe?
I stood in this emotional flood, and I was able to breath. I count this a good thing. My quasi-Choed practice seems to have helped. This movie was a type of Shugyo, one that was needed and useful.
Second point: I was also reminded of my Bubble image/dream, which I shared in my “Goodness Sutra”, which so help me God was the best I could do at the time (that was an apology). Here is a cut and paste:
Years ago, while pondering the depths of the decay in our philosophical
certainties, I happened in my mind upon an image, which has remained with me.For most college graduates, you will have been exposed to ideas which state in
effect that there is no up and down. We float, as individuals, like tiny bubbles in
an endless dark ocean, unable to see where the surface is, or even if there is
one. Am I upside down, or is that person over there? We cannot know.Some people curse the darkness, and out of sheer frustration curse their
neighbors. If they cannot know what is true, then all is lost, all is futile.Others, with more wisdom, see a lot of others like them, and realize that we are
all alone together. We may not be able to know which way is up, but we know
in what way we relate to one another. By giving to one another, by using one
another as reference points, we can feel less alone.And then the darkness is not so bad. It is warmer, and a little light intrudes.
Our task is to expand that light. We can’t know what will happen, but love feels
good, and that much is real.
We have Sartorius, who embodies the idea that “truth” is what science conjures, and that only that truth matters, and that only pursuing that truth matters. Morality, decency, humanity: all expendable.
For his part, Dr. Kelvin finds in love–a new love, one he was unable to express on Earth–the only useful meaning of life. He does not care which way is up, and which way is down.
His madness: ah, I will need to ponder that. Who was who, where?
You know I wander, if you read this blog (do I get pretension points for spelling it Blogue?) regularly. Look in a mirror: who are you? Who were you yesterday? Will you be the same person tomorrow? Can you finish this paragraph as the same person?
I will add (perhaps I missed my calling as a Baptist preacher) that I watched “The Abyss” the other night. It is a paradigmatic Movie Yoga movie. I was watching Ed Harris get ready to jump into the abyss, the darkness, and it came to me that the Buddha had surmounted that darkness too, the infinite abyss, the infinite unknown.
We want spirituality cheap. We want it “to go”. We want to hire smiling apostles of the New Age to tell us something easy, something simple, that will enable all our existential angst to disappear.
I have little good to say about the Existentialists. Almost to a person they were bullies, totalitarians, fools. But to the extent that they said you have to pay your dues, I would agree with them.
Oh, there is a bigger picture here, but I will leave it at that.
I will say that I sincerely hope that someone reading this benefits in some real, perhaps even measurable way. It is in some respects an exercise in narcissism that I post my thoughts and emotions, but not fully. I sense, I feel, the hopelessness, despair, hate, loneliness, and disconnection out there.
It is not only me. And it is not only you.
Look: there is an ocean.