I have read what I have written lately, both in this format and more traditional fare. It all seems so dark. I wonder if my natural inclination is fire and brimstone. When I read this there was in internal cringe because I imagined those that read what I have wrote may either disregard because they don’t want to hear about difficulties, troubles, etc, or, possibly they would find that the truth, if any, was that life was one unbearable suffering. Now, one might be expecting a but here, and a softening of the approach, and to some degree this is true. However, what I believe to be true and have found to be true is that this life is one unbearable suffering. But, this suffering is in perspective and not inherently.

 

This leads us to, sometimes, and in my experience as being Tibetan and a practicing Buddhist to come in contact with those that think that ‘perspective’ is something much more easily forgone than it is. Perspective, in the context of what I am meaning it, is not some cheery, sunny, disposition. That is not to say that this is bad, but it is not the answer that I was, and am, trying to attain. This sunny disposition is, often, strange to say, a form of nihilism.

 

What?

 

Yes, the hippy (of whom I have a great fondness for), not the driven hippy, but the sort of stereotypical one is a nihilist. Also, the modern form of them is as well-the new ager that falls into this same category by not having a logical, reasonable, or even any form of methodology of verifying their statements. Oh, some do, picking a word here and there from the orient and trying to posit it as a method, it works for some, but these are, unfortunately the vanguard of an alternative way of thought in our country. I think they are doing a terrible job, to be frank. They are nihilsts.

 

How?

 

A sunny disposition, by itself, as a goal of some form of method that doesn’t take into account rooting out the deep and abiding, fundamental, I would say, ignorance is conscious ignorance. The thought, argument, I have for anyone with such a disposition is this, “how can we smile when there are children burning, there are mothers butchered, there are whole cities being razed for no other reason than an imagined line in the ground. What of the animals on this earth? Not just those that get the press like the poor cows being slaughtered day and night, but even the ‘natural’ world.

 

The other day, in the eave of our porch, I watched as a spider, a brown spider, wait for a gnat. Unexpectedly one flew into its web while I was watching. I watched as it raced across the web in an excitement that I could only label as glee. I watched as the gnat twisted and turned in what I only could say was terror. Then it was bit, it was wrapped in silk, and I know from my biology class that the gnat will now lay in paralysis until the spider injects its stomach fluid into the body of the gnat, then, after it has digested in its own body, the fluid will then be sucked out by the spider.

 

I remember watching, in awe, an animal documentary that showed a cheetah chasing a small gazelle through the serengeti. Then the close up to the gazelle’s face after the cheetah clamps down on its neck. The narrator tells me that the cheetahs bite is not strong enough to sever the spinal cord from the skull and the gazelle is suffocated to death rather than quickly killed.

 

its ‘natural’....

 

so is rape, gang rape, infanticide, some would argue with strong evidence that racism, elitism, male dominance amongst mammals-is natural.

 

natural is not synonymous with Right.

 

There is a reason why, in times of yore, that beastial was a terrible epithet. It has, in more modern times, become less of an insult, just as long as you use, ‘natural’.

 

Thus, in this light, the sunny disposition is an imposed position. It draws a boundary between what they will consider and what they will not consider. It then says, “I will care about what is within this boundary,” and what is beyond this boundary, what is left unsaid, is that it is too overwhelming. What is implied is that the truth of the monumental tide of suffering and woe is the Truth and that the only way that a truth of joy and happiness can arise in the shrunken, arbitrary, bounded manner. This is the grinning fool.

 

I will have none of that sort of deluded joy. I will have only the oblivion or the Truth that lights the unbounded bliss. If it leads me to the belief that it, bliss, cannot be posited and that the suffering is indeed inherent then give me the void. Life is not to be bounded. It is too precious.

 

If you have read anything else that I have written you will know that through my own reasoning and logical step by step process I do believe that Bliss is our true nature. That Omniscience is our ultimate state. But to get to this space one has to be willing to accept the challenge of the Truth. The cost for this confrontation is the chance that you are answered in the negative in your quest for meaning. You have to risk that you are not anything, that your suffering and that of beast and human are all one sick fucking joke.

 

The sunny disposition is not risking it. In fact, it has made a choice. This disposition is the choice that there is, indeed, no meaning. It is the aborted attempt at the pinnacle where Truth is relinquished. Whether the mental capacity was too small in this lifetime or the will was weak, they fell by the wayside and accepted a flaccid, silly, sort of existence.

 

In the light of the Truth one can rejoice in the obstacles one is engendered with. They are not obstacles then. When one is thwarted in the worst way, when violence is done upon them, when they are at the best they do not need to make excuses for the perpetrator; they are able to accept the action and bless the perpetrator. For, when can one practice the immaculate practice of patience, love, forgiveness except for in the face of violence? In fact, to the best practitioner, one rejoices at their existence, blesses their feet, because of this truth then Bliss is attained by these practices, the perpetrator becomes our most cherished friend. To steal from me is a blessing to me, to rend my flesh from my body is a blessing to me. For who else will allow me to practice such arts but my own enemy?

 

Do not turn the cheek

Give the Other Cheek.

 

The freedom of the saints is all there is. Now. In this life. We have killed the God of the Nomads and Villagers. The God that allowed us to work and pray in a manner in which our simple hearts would be assuaged. Instead with our inquiry we have demanded the Truth of the Saints despite most of us being not of such noble stock. Most of us, myself included, are villagers, nomads, peasants at heart and yet we have demanded the Truth that takes the efforts of the Highest to milk.

 

That such roads are too difficult for most is obvious but with the atrocity of our crime against God, Meaning, etc. we cannot ever go back to such simplicity again. We try to dull ourselves with our Lethe of drugs, entertainment, of self-help and art, and yet it all falls so flat, eventually. We turn to the simple again, to eat, to shit, to fuck, to sleep, to revel-but even this is contrived. An illusion once revealed never again retains its luster. It is like these children’s parties I go to for my children, in ten years from now, the same party will be, to them, a dull and uninteresting practice.

 

And that is where we are, with all the sound and fury, despite this, the flash and bang, we are monumentally bored, frightened, painfully suffering, stuck in a purgatory (hell?) with no transcendent sustenance. And what should life be but to transcend?

 

I wish you well, that you may rejoice in this life, that I think you will not, that I will not, that almost everyone will not-is not pessimism but a reality of the equation we set for ourselves. To Kill God comes with consequences and we are not able to answer the demand that such an act requires thus we must be sunny, pleased, rubbing crystals on our armpits and pretending we don’t smell the malodorous wafts.

 

Be well

G