One of the most pernicious things in our culture is that stronger experiences are to be valued at the expense of smaller, seemingly weaker experiences. Like everything else, experience becomes a commodity, to be paid for and consumed.
It’s a cliche, but listen to it, perhaps for the first time: the best things in life are free. The smell of morning coffee. A light breeze on a beautiful morning. The smile of someone you love.
We punish ourselves for more, more, more, but what we get for it is ephemeral and often completely non-existent. I see many people who I really believe do things just to make other people jealous, just to be the person who did X, Y, or Z, took a bunch of selfies and pictures, then posted them on social media, all without FEELING ANY OF IT.
You cannot consume experience. You have to participate. You have to be present, not as a gulping hungry experience ogre, but as an emotionally present human being. We really are small and weak, in a cosmic sense. We are not much. But we are all we have, in these bodies, in this life. It takes faith to be human. And it takes time and patience. And it takes a lot of courage, honest, deep courage. None of us know where this wild ride is going. It helps, though, if you can handle ups and downs and hard lefts and rights with faith and sang froid.
I really think the point of life is this: to FEEL life within us, and around us. Nothing less, nothing more. To FEEL ALIVE. To feel energy flowing through us.
The more I study it, the more I feel the writings of Tarthang Tulku in the Kum Nye part of his work ALONE constitute a better body of thought and practice than those of any church I know of, including Buddhism itself, although I’m sure he himself would demur on that last point. It’s all there. How to live, how to manifest and nurture the feeling of being alive, how to bring that crackling alert energy into our daily lives, making all moments unique and memorable, and all at no cost.
I suppose the inevitability of this should have been obvious to me, but the smarter I get the dumber the world seems. We are a bunch of chickens, and fools, doing what we were told for no reasons other than fear and unimaginativeness. The rebellious experimentation of the 60’s has given way to a drab, dull thirst for conformity and herd membership.
Ayn Rand, in her talk on the topic, really captured the fact that nothing REALLY new and interesting happened at Woodstock. It was a bunch of emotionally underdeveloped yet emotionally greedy adolescents seeking experiences they muted rather than amplified by generalized drug use and hedonism. They did not invent anything new.
A society worthy of the name, a culture worthy of the name, has boundaries, expectations, and a system of growth. The moment of the moon landing was really something memorable. It was a moment of earned shared pride. Hard work was done, and effort expended. Imagination was called into action and tempered with specific planning.
The people who put our men on the moon died with strong positive memories. I am quite sure of that. And I think most of the people who were at Woodstock died bitter and regretful. Not all. Some grew up.
But from a strategic life perspective, I would offer Kum Nye as a means of developing emotional rationality, of learning about, and HARNESSING the patent power of emotion and feeling and instinct, without subordinating ones reason to them. Emotions provide the power, and reason the destination. It’s a strong combination.
I read through these books, and am astonished that there is no other system I know of which comes CLOSE to the variety and depth of the exercises Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche has created. Not within an order of magnitude.
I don’t know why it is not better known. People are stupid, I guess.
Putting more effort into it, I would say there is nothing sexy about it, and there are no immediate results. If you go to Asia you will not find monks doing this work. There is nothing “authentic” about it. It happens in California in a couple places, and small centers in a handful of other countries. That’s it.
I will teach it locally one day. I am slowly, slowly calming down and, as I tell people, becoming sane. What I mean by sane perhaps differs from what most people mean. In my case, it is the resolution of things which have haunted me since my brain evolved enough to form memories. And it is happening. It takes time.