the following is a reply to someone recently cut out from this place. they wrote me asking ‘what happened’ and i pretty much told them. they wrote me back saying ‘they had no idea i felt that way’. i chuckled, no, of course they didn’t, how would they when they haven’t been in touch?
sigh.
it is pointless, really. but this response given to their statement that they began following here because i wrote so often and well about buddhism and practice and how that seems to have ‘trickled off to nothing’ lately.
succinctly, i beg to differ. more verbosely….
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In all truth, it is all buddhist commentary, as I am buddhist and the life I lead is permeated by dharma. I call the entries ‘fictional’ because it seemed kinder than to underscore just how much there is not at all fictional, and it allows me to say what needs be said without necessitating the very ‘drama’ you mention.
There are layers upon layers in this dream we call reality. If you think upon it, everything is a dream. My dream, yours, someone else’s. Who is to say which perspective on it is ‘real’ and which is not? Or that one is greater or lessor, better or worse than another? Still, I judge myself and my own actions and words and expressions and it is certain that others do as well. We live in a world based upon assumption, judgement, and perspective…. good ol’ samsara, never lets us down (or up, as the case may be).
I stopped writing ‘buddhist specific’ entries when it dawned upon me that it is all buddhist. That every meaning, every moment, every day, everywhere, I see and think and interact and engage with the world as dharma. When I’m being kind and when I’m not. When I’m angry and when I’m not. When I’m happy and when I’m not. All of it, all the time.
Dharma isn’t just the stuff that can land pretty and soft and light and make us feel good. It is just as much the sticky shit that clings and stings and delves deep like a barbed hook. Perhaps moreso this stuff, because it shows us all the things we’re busy trying to deny about ourselves, the world, etc.
Halos and horns, you know? Dharma is here to lend to the practice of figuring out they are the same. My way to do this for myself is to stop drawing the lines that distinguish one thing from another and just embrace it all. Fact and fiction. Lie and truth. Nice and Not-so-nice. The same.
I will never be ‘a buddha’ in a way that I will know. But maybe, just maybe, in all my stumbling around and cursing, that buddha nature that is always here and there and everywhere manages. This, what I tell myself when I feel I’m hopelessly impacted, impeded, and afflicted (which is a lot lately).
The lesson I’m learning in this moment is to stop looking outside for anything. It’s hard for me. There are certain things about myself that I have never been able to embrace and they are just as ugly to me as they ever were. I see them in others and it makes me angry and sad. But only because it reminds me of myself and I have to work extra hard not to say it. (oops)
There are many moments in which I don’t think about any of this. But they are rare. The blog is many things to me, but mostly my charnel ground. The place where things go to die and eventually blow away like the dust they are.
There are moments when I want all of that verbosity to mean something, to matter, or to ‘make a difference’, but frankly, that’s kind of the problem. You’ll see me flip and twist a lot if you read there very long whatever, and the most interesting part is how I return time and time again to the same themes and patterns…. a worn, weary mutt gnawing a long dry bone. We do what we do until we don’t need to do it anymore, I suppose.
I”m not sure I’m making my point. I’m not sure my point can be made in words. The blog is my own labyrinth – the story I tell myself and the world. None of it matters, even as it’s all so very critically important to me. It’s funny when I think about it. My own well of dependent arising. Heh.
I’m probably going to post this reply to you as an entry. It’s timely in many ways and I haven’t really said this before so I likely need to remember it to myself for a while until the gleaning takes place and any helpful thoughts are more than fleeting wisps I haven’t incorporated just yet.
In many ways, I wanted the blog to serve as a little candle…. my candle. Doesn’t always burn as bright as I like, and stars knows there’s a lot of dirt in the wick, but it’s the only one I’ve got and I reckon this is my way of just figuring out how to let me be what I am.
That so many people I want to know and be connected to find it the means by which to distantly experience is just another lesson for me. There’s no real substitute for the things I’d like to enjoy in life and, obviously, there’s no way to insure they manifest except remaining open. Not always easy…. but then, what is?