I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and found myself further contemplating Hangover 2. It literally made me nauseated to think about it.
If it has any redeeming quality at all, it is that it never pulls you in. You are always aware that you are watching a movie. You're in a seat in a theater, and what you're seeing is on a screen at the front of the room.
This is also how I often view so-called 'reality'. 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 posted an item the other day about the acquaintance who announced on Facebook that he felt he was in physical danger hanging out in a bar. He was sitting there with a can of pepper spray in his hand, just in case. But he didn't leave, which is what I think any rational person would have done. There's a guy who's really immersed in his 'reality'. He's sort of like Hangover 2 1/2 — another movie I can watch, but I want to feel like I'm just a spectator in the audience, not part of the cast.
Isolating is my way of getting out of the theater of 'reality'. It's actually just a different scene of the big movie, but it's a quiet, dark scene that doesn't cause me sensory overload.
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The Most Important Goal
Determination to be free from samsara, based on disillusionment, is the foundation of all dharma practice. Unless you have made a clear decision to turn your back on samsara, then however many prayers your recite, however much you meditate, however many years you remain in retreat, it will all be in vain. You may have a long life, but it will be without essence. You may accumulate great wealth, but it will be meaningless. The only thing that is really worth doing is to get steadily closer to enlightenment and farther away from samsara. Think about it carefully.
Contemplate death and the sufferings of samsara, and you will not want to waste a single moment in pointless distractions and activities (including Hollywood movies), such as trying to get rich, defeating your enemies, or spending your life protecting and furthering the interests of those to whom you are attached. You will only want to practice the dharma.
A bedridden patient only thinks about getting well again. He or she has no wish to remain sick forever. Likewise, a practitioner who yearns to leave the miseries of samsara behind will make use of all the ways in which that can be done, such as taking refuge, generating the mind set on attaining enlightenment for the sake of others, undertaking positive actions, and so on, with a firm determination to get out of samsara constantly in mind.
It is not enough to wish from time to time that you could be free of samsara. That idea must prevade your stream of thinking day and night. A prisoner locked in jail things all the time about different ways of getting free - how he might climb over the walls, ask powerful people to intervene, or raise money to bride someone. So, too, seeing the suffering and imperfection of samsara, never stop thinking about how to gain liberation, with a deep feeling of renunciation.
From Heart of Compassion by Dilgo Khyentse
The Zen teaching, if I understand it correctly, is that samsara and nirvana are yin and yang, opposite sides of one coin, and you can't flee one but embrace the other.
Regardless of that, my personal experience is that the more I immerse myself in my surroundings, the crazier and more stressed out I feel; and the more I withdraw and create a tranquil, quiet environment for myself, the saner and calmer I feel.
Let me clarify that a little. When I immerse myself in surroundings that are high-drama, or even just high-tension or high-energy, the crazier and more stressed out I feel. If I am in those surroundings, but keep a psychological barrier around myself, it helps protect me from that. The barrier is difficult to maintain, though, and will eventually break down.
But I can stay calm and feel more sane if I can physically remove myself from high-drama surroundings, and be enveloped instead by a quiet, tranquil environment.
The psychological barrier I'm talking about is that sense of seeing it all as if it were a movie — happening all around me, but with me as nothing more as spectator.
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