"The Buddha taught that there is no difference or boundary between each of us as individuals and everything in the universe that surrounds us. Intellectually, I can accept that, but instinctively, it feels otherwise.
I often feel as if what we perceive as 'reality' is just a movie I'm watching, although on a 360° screen. And that's the way I often want it. I don't need or desire to be immersed in it, interacting with it, having my thoughts, perceptions and emotions shaded or distorted by it."
I listened to an Alan Watts lecture last night that touches on this very matter. He said that people refuse to embrace oneness with the universe because they are 'afraid' of it.
I'm not sure 'afraid' is the word I would use, but I think that the general concept is on the money. The more I understand about the world, the less I want to do with it. I see people all around me caught in traps: people stuck in awful jobs to pay for all the expensive things they've bought; people stressed out about personal drama in which they immersed themselves because it seemed at the outset it would be 'fun,' 'sexy,' or 'exciting'; people caught in substance abuse.
I'm like a guy who can't swim who's watching people drown. If I jump in them after them, I'll drown, too. So, I just stay on the shore and try to not fall in the water along with them.
I make no bones about the Bodhisattva Vow. It's beyond me. I might as well vow to win the Boston Marathon, or become President. If I have a next life, maybe I'll be strong enough to work for the enlightenment of all beings. But right now, my goal is to just not screw things up.
It's interesting, though, how a person can feel directly connected to the whole universe, but still not want to leave the bedroom.
2 comments:
All of it seems necessary to me. By "all of it," I mean the good, the bad, the stinky, and so forth.
Ok, sure, don't go running after someone hell bent on f*king up his or her life. But part of existence, in general, is being able to observe others and neither love nor hate them. We all just... are here... right now... being. They're being f*ckheads. You're being aware. In the end, we're all welcomed into whatever you might call peace, or heaven, or the grand bowling event, or whatever.
I watched one of Joseph Campbell's PBS interviews recently. He phrases it like this, "The attitude is not to withdraw from the word when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simple the foreground of a wonder, and come back and participate in it."
Oops -- I really butchered that Joseph Campbell quote. One more time, for giggles:
"The attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder, and come back and participate in it."
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