picked up a paper this weekend to get the classifieds. as usual, the only section i actually read (other than the ads) are the comics. the ‘dilbert’ strip is one i usually avoid for its cutting, often sarcastic jibes, but today’s read included even this one and the reward was this gem in the final panel:
i actually laughed, but not for the reasons intended.
i first laughed because there it was… truth… and hidden in plain sight. as always.
i then laughed because the intended humor i did not find funny, only sad, and i was thinking about how utterly serious i have become about so many things. i am too serious. i wish i knew how to be more carefree. i was laughing at myself for my seriousness and for the manner in which my immediate thought on finding these things is almost always a sense of sadness for how it supports that which distracts and divides people from one another.
i then laughed because it reminded me of a conversation i had about three months ago in which, on the heels of this realization (which is actually fairly deep), i had asked him why he never told me about this in the context of our sharing (sangha) and his reply was, ‘because i needed to hear you speak of it as i do.’
it occurred to me even then that such carelessness and selfishness could only be negative for both of us. i ignored it. my fault, that.
that isn’t why i laughed. it is just a memory that rises as i’m about to explain, since the reason i laugh and what i’m about to tell you was a response to that conversation and that realization of carelessness and selfishness.
i said, both to him and myself, that i intended to remove the word ‘hope’ from my vocabulary and set myself more to the middle way.
it was, of course, a much greater goal than i may meet. but perhaps that is the point… shouldn’t goals be impossibly distant so as to encourage one to strive the harder? hmm. maybe. maybe not. there is a point at which, failing often or deeply, one no longer finds in them motivation, but only despair.
perhaps even goals are mired in samsara. we spoke of the difference between desire and aspiration today at one e-sangha. the english language doesn’t really have a good word for bodhichitta. the best we can manage is ‘aspire’ and even its definition is rooted in self.
so we use it, but try to clarify and shift it by saying the intent of use of this word is to denote that which seeks for others and has no component of self involved.
i have very few desires. but i do have them.
i have infinite aspirations.
i’m trying to give up hope so i can have emptiness for more than a fleeting moment. but i laugh as soon as i write this, because they are all fleeting moments. maybe this is the real problem. this moment is all that is, all that matters. practice keeps the mind and body and spirit focused on this moment. lack of practice inevitably finds all three either looking behind or ahead.
ah, mr. adams. thank you. today i read through your efforts the whispers of the universe and i smile for yet another demonstration that connectedness is and truth is and take this moment to be thankful and comforted that, though i am so very ignorant, i am able to see this.