“If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.” Lilly Tomlin
Us rats must stick together. I look back and see that I have been meditating since I was a child, with a large foray into drug addiction. And depression. They go together so well! Despite my initial attempts to become a perfect Buddha, you know, living life as a ideal human, I find I still do a lot of stuff that my more or less immature self was hoping would vanish. Built on ideas like, “Just don’t have those bad thoughts,” and “Control your mind and control your life.”
I’m not sure what egoic moron first came up that, the possibility that I can change my conditioned thinking by thinking about it. But thinking doesn’t cure thinking. And, being aware of streaming thoughts and body will only disclose reality, not nirvana. I never could “think” my way into an enlightened state. I don’t know why I engage with people who support that fantasy. And apparently a lot of people do.
I never have changed into that ideal I so coveted. I still don’t care much for people in crowds, and I like some people and not others. And the best I seem to able to do is tolerate people I used to not like. In other words, I still don’t like them. And I make an effort to spend minimal amounts of time with some people. That way I can keep tolerating them.
I worry all day about an event that never happens the way I worried about it. And then I attend the event and nothing I worried about happens. (Usually something I forgot to obsess about happens instead. Just to remind me I’m not in charge.)
I make a big deal out of death, if I like the person. If I don’t know you I’ll say I care, but it’s a lie. People I have known personally have died without a blip of emotion from me. I keep thinking I must care about everybody, but I don’t, not when I’m honest. Funny how honesty and clarity come together. I’m never that ideal I keep believing I’m supposed to be. Well, I used to believe that, but that wall is starting to crumble in the light of honesty.
I attribute intelligence and awareness quickly. I always seem to think people are smarter and better than they are. I believe I too am smarter and better than I am, but I see that’s changing. Bout time.
I have these moments of grace when life is exquisite, and other times when suicide whispers somewhere in the background. Just to remind the soul that it does have options if things get too rough. If I don’t admit that, I might go through life thinking it’s exquisite, and feel like a failure because I don’t see it that way all the time. But I can’t, it’s not. It carries a potential to be seen as exquisite, someday I’ll get that. Right now that’s way too advanced, I think I’ll focus on paying attention instead of philosophy.
I have moments of free fall, and there’s a deep agony there, when everything stops, and clarity rises. Duality folds into itself. And I believe I know something important, but it fades. And I find myself caught up in stories again. I’m starting to understand that this is life. The cycle from freefall to stories, over and over. And I never know if it’s going to be bitter, or sweet. And I can’t MAKE it either way.
Meditation was going to stop all that, my ego declared when this all first started, when meditation seemed like a magic ticket to an evolved something. But I’m still me. I will always still be me in these passing moments of attention. And now I embrace meditation, as a way to see, not a way to change. As a way to temporarily sort the mess, until it messes again. Nowhere to go, arrive, or achieve, just paying attention to the stories, and seeing them as stories, as fabrications of life, does help a little. But it’s a constant battle so far, no automatic Buddha responses from me. No rainbow nirvana, just life, as it unfolds, wild and unknown. A little scary, with moments of grace popping up now and again. And I can’t Think it into another way.
Moments of grace, moments of utter chaos, life in the bittersweet as it unfolds, maybe I’m starting to see something important, again. Maybe I’m just seeing how I am from moment to moment, the actual, not the ideal. Maybe that was the idea in the first place.
Hold the bittersweet today like a gift. It is.
Bryan Wagner
