Through separating things, we've gotten them all mixed up. The most powerful instance of this is life and death. We have chopped up this ongoing ever-changing transformational flow into those two antagonists.Then we have come firmly down on the side of one while abhorring and fearing the other. How odd we are. How funny. How infinitely amusing.
Some of us get really attached to our feet, our face, our hands. We want to have them forever. The operative word here is "have."
Some of us get all attached to these personas we have so carefully crafted over the years. We just hope and pray our personality survives the jump, lands safely on "the other side," and goes on cavorting in its familiar peculiar ways. The operative word here is "our."
Some of us just absolutely l-o-o-o-v-e our mental ability, thinking the other humanoids are absurd stuporous brutes who just don't get it (whatever "it" is). We fancy ourselves as the intelligentsia of the universe, kind of the Teacher's Pet, and we know we won't be shelved with an eternal dunce cap. The operative word here is "fancy."
And so on. Survival, darling, we are talking survival. And in the form we are, with maybe a few little tweaks and changes, that wart, that guilt, that shame, a small surgical operation, nothing too drastic, you understand.
Some are scared shitless they are going to totally disappear. For others, that would be a blessed boon.
All these shenanigans start, as I said at the beginning of this death and doom and salvation and afterlife glory epistle, with our chopping up what can't be chopped into what we want and what we don't want.
Chaio Hung put it this way: "The wise person has no life. Not because he slights it, but because he doesn't possess it. If someone has no life, How can he be killed?"
The Zen dudes and dudesses put it this way: NO CLINGING!
Or as one of my favorite puns (somewhat outdated, but then so am I) puts it: Cling, cling, cling goes the folly!
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I understand. This is what Dipa Ma was saying too. She said:
ReplyDeletePiyato jayati soko,
piyato jayati bhayam
piyato vippamuttassa,
natthi soko kuto bhayam.
Clinging to what is dear brings sorrow.
Clinging to what is dear brings fear.
To one who is entirely free from endearment
There is no sorrow or fear.
but so very hard to do.
Thank you again for this.
I deeply enjoy your understanding and the amplification.
ReplyDeleteI cannot improve on what Kathy wrote. I also appreciate her conclusion, that ending the folly of clinging can be hard to do.
ReplyDeletePerhaps mindfulness will allow us to recognize the situations where we are clinging. Once we realize we are clinging, if we call into practice our intent to move beyond this habitual failure, we wlll feel the clinging subside and turn to openness.
For me, this takes continual practice. Luckily, my life gives me plenty of opportunities to do just that!
Thank you both, George and Kathy, for this wonderful, timely reminder.
Yes, our minds are programmed for survival. Our fear of death makes us try to escape an illusion since we are Consciousness existing through serial bodies over time and time is just a construct as well. And even that notion may be flawed because the reality is beyond the human brain to grasp. So, yes, no clinging to any illusions.
ReplyDeleteI like that about us having no life that we own.
ReplyDelete