Enough about bad news today, time for some muse instead...
"What's it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?" So went the popular song from the 1966 movie Alfie. Nothing like asking one of those fundamental, earth shaking, got-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-this questions, eh? It's the same question Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed and all the rest came to answer, and nobody gets through this life without asking it, or coming to terms with some sort of inner answer. There's an old Chinese proverb that goes: "He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever." Very clever, these Chinese.
Most of the world's great religions are all about answering the Alfie question in some final or fundamental way. But if you think about it, you give your life energy to finding that answer every day, in one way or another. The Hindus came up with an interesting concept called the Chakras, reputed to be energy centers in the body arranged along the spinal meridian, each also having to do with ever more sublime energies as you move upward from root to crown. The 1st and lowest Chakra was survival, the energy we put out to simply maintain and protect ourselves as a viable life entity on good old mother earth. It involves working, planting, harvesting, eating, building a safe nest. That accomplished, we can move on to 2nd Chakra, pleasure, and eat things we like instead of bare subsistance food. We can enjoy the activities of life instead of performing them simply to survive. 3rd Chakra is power, the energy devoted to deciding, controling, dominating, directing, acquiring. It's a kind of obsession to always have more than just enough that also involves enlisting the energy of countless others to help you get what you want. Generals, dictators, bankers, business tycoons and politicians love this one.
There are seven Chakras in all, and some folks are busier on the higher Chakras, giving their energy to compassion, communication, intuition and enlightenment. These are the artists, poets, feelers, and givers in the world, people who may live their lives in service to others, or to some sublime art. You now them easily when you meet them. They just don't seem to be obsessed with getting ahead or getting more, being quietly content with what they have and do in life. They still do all the basic things to survive and enjoy life, but most of their energy goes into those higher Chakras. Yet they are rare souls.
If you think about it, most people on the planet are answering the Alfie question by focusing their life energy on one of those three lower Chakras: survival, pleasure, power. Billions struggle to scratch out a subsistance living in the "third world," while those in the higher tiers of civilization obsess in the pursuit of pleasure, power, and the acquisition of "stuff," as George Carlin might say, to give you the illusion that you've actually attained that state of pleasure, or that you are indeed actually powerful. This constant reaching for more is basic to human nature, or as the poet Browning said: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" We are always reaching for more than we have. It's a reflexive drive, like an appetite, and some 600 years before Jesus showed up, a man named Buddha had an insight that it was the desires spawned by these appetites that were the cause of all human suffering.
Buddha's message to the world was starkly simple: 1) There is suffering. The world was full of sharks, ebola, fire, hurricane, earthquake, drought, let alone the cruelty of humans in the way they treated others as they sought their pleasure and power. "A flower falls even though we love it and a weed grows even though we do not love it." That's life. There is suffering, but it was overlaid with another level of mental anguish and anxiety that arose from our unfulfilled desires. We want life to be all flowers and no weeds. So Buddha concluded: 2) the cause of suffering is desire, logical enough. You want that big house. You dream about it, fill it with new furniture in your mind and landscape it with terraced gardens in your thoughts. One day you finally apply for the jumbo loan at 5.25% and surprise, the loan is denied. There's a credit crunch on and the banks aren't lending. So you get stuck in your old home, deeply underwater as it loses value month by month, you lose your job, the bank forecloses, and you suffer--first for the loss of your desired new home, and then because you are stuck in a place and set of circumstances where you definitely don't want to be. It's a double whammy of desire-spawned suffering that makes Buddha's insight fairly transparent.
The next thing out of Buddha's mouth, however, was the real trick. It was really no great metaphysical hocus-pocus, or even a leap of faith. It had nothing to do with a benevolent God out there somewhere waiting to rescue you, and nothing to do with worship, ritual, supplication, offering, sacrifice or any of the other trappings of religion. It was just another simple progression of logic when he concluded: 3) the end of desire is the end of suffering. Imagine that! Suffering because you want that house? Then stop. Just stop, and let the house go. Yes, just let the desire go, house, furniture, landscaping and all. Impossible? Perhaps, but sitting under his Boddhi tree one day he claimed he was able to let all the desires of life go, and the suffering each one spawned suddenly went with them. Bingo, satori, enlightenment! So there he sat, unmoved by the urges and yearnings of human life, quietly present to the one moment he found himself in--this one--the here and now reality of life that holds the totality of all there is.
You're in that moment there with him as well, right now. Believe it or not, you are sitting under a bodhi tree this very minute, whether you are behind a desk at the office, standing behind a cash register, hammering a nail, or stuck in traffic on a freeway somewhere, you are right there in the one moment that holds it all. So Buddhism is replete with assertions such as this: "Your Treasure House is in yourself, it contains all you need," or "the only rich man is one who knows he already has everything he needs." And Jesus said: "The Kingdom of heaven is within you." At root, Buddha is asserting that you do indeed already have everything--because everything in this one moment, the only place you are at liberty to be now, is perfectly here, perfect in every way, and needs nothing else to make it so. Your problem is that you are not paying attention to that basic truth, said Buddha, and this paying attention was called mindfulness, a state of awareness that allows one to see the clarity and meaning of all this insight, free from the ten thousand things that entice, irritate, and distract us each day.
Release it all, quiet down, pay attention. This is the basic message of Buddhism. Do this and you will awaken, as from a dream that was filled with all your desires and striving and yearning, and you will suddenly realize that you are here, you are OK, you are perfect as you are, and that here is enough. Bingo, satori, enlightenment!
Admittedly, getting to Bingo is hard to do as you stare at those unpaid bills or swipe that credit card to make ends meet each month. It's hard to do if you are standing in an unemployment line, or facing foreclosure, or pondering your diminishing 401k. All these activities are about getting somewhere else--to a moment when you will feel yourself to be OK, safe, and "happy." But Buddha's insight was about telling you that moment is here and now, and if you cannot find a way to feel OK now, what makes you think you will after you get your big house?
So being happy is no great mystery. It doesn't take years of meditation, hours of prayer, incense or offerings. And it certianly doesn't take a big house, a big bank account, or a big ego either. It just takes one moment when you realize you are here, along with all of it, and it is all perfect just as it is. Get it? Zen doesn't care if you do or not, because nothing really changes. A Zen proverb goes: "If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are." So your insight or ignorance are really one and the same. The wise and deluded are just here along with all the rest. Nothing more, nothing less.
Perhaps you've had a moment of that feeling and insight, and the fundamental contentment it brings. It comes easily in moments of triumph, where you have realized some long sought after goal, but it can also come in the simple, ordinary moments that also hold everything if you pay attention to them. Some of these moments are easier than others to reach that place of contentment. You know them...those quiet moments in the dark when you hold someone dear to you, or sit with an old friend on a seaside bench, or walk hand in hand in the Farmer's Market with a newfound love. You have "happiness" by the tail in such moments. Can you also grasp it standing alone on Christmas eve, and looking out the window at the lights of the city where Santa visits everyone else, but seems to have forgotten you?
If you think about it, Alfie had it right from the very first. It is just for the moment that we live, that one moment that holds all things, and brings every contentment and chance of happiness if we but pay attention. This is the answer to Alfie's question. It's always here, never tomorrow or yesterday, and I hope you savor it.
Have some wine too!
"What's it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?" So went the popular song from the 1966 movie Alfie. Nothing like asking one of those fundamental, earth shaking, got-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-this questions, eh? It's the same question Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed and all the rest came to answer, and nobody gets through this life without asking it, or coming to terms with some sort of inner answer. There's an old Chinese proverb that goes: "He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever." Very clever, these Chinese.
Most of the world's great religions are all about answering the Alfie question in some final or fundamental way. But if you think about it, you give your life energy to finding that answer every day, in one way or another. The Hindus came up with an interesting concept called the Chakras, reputed to be energy centers in the body arranged along the spinal meridian, each also having to do with ever more sublime energies as you move upward from root to crown. The 1st and lowest Chakra was survival, the energy we put out to simply maintain and protect ourselves as a viable life entity on good old mother earth. It involves working, planting, harvesting, eating, building a safe nest. That accomplished, we can move on to 2nd Chakra, pleasure, and eat things we like instead of bare subsistance food. We can enjoy the activities of life instead of performing them simply to survive. 3rd Chakra is power, the energy devoted to deciding, controling, dominating, directing, acquiring. It's a kind of obsession to always have more than just enough that also involves enlisting the energy of countless others to help you get what you want. Generals, dictators, bankers, business tycoons and politicians love this one.
There are seven Chakras in all, and some folks are busier on the higher Chakras, giving their energy to compassion, communication, intuition and enlightenment. These are the artists, poets, feelers, and givers in the world, people who may live their lives in service to others, or to some sublime art. You now them easily when you meet them. They just don't seem to be obsessed with getting ahead or getting more, being quietly content with what they have and do in life. They still do all the basic things to survive and enjoy life, but most of their energy goes into those higher Chakras. Yet they are rare souls.
If you think about it, most people on the planet are answering the Alfie question by focusing their life energy on one of those three lower Chakras: survival, pleasure, power. Billions struggle to scratch out a subsistance living in the "third world," while those in the higher tiers of civilization obsess in the pursuit of pleasure, power, and the acquisition of "stuff," as George Carlin might say, to give you the illusion that you've actually attained that state of pleasure, or that you are indeed actually powerful. This constant reaching for more is basic to human nature, or as the poet Browning said: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" We are always reaching for more than we have. It's a reflexive drive, like an appetite, and some 600 years before Jesus showed up, a man named Buddha had an insight that it was the desires spawned by these appetites that were the cause of all human suffering.
Buddha's message to the world was starkly simple: 1) There is suffering. The world was full of sharks, ebola, fire, hurricane, earthquake, drought, let alone the cruelty of humans in the way they treated others as they sought their pleasure and power. "A flower falls even though we love it and a weed grows even though we do not love it." That's life. There is suffering, but it was overlaid with another level of mental anguish and anxiety that arose from our unfulfilled desires. We want life to be all flowers and no weeds. So Buddha concluded: 2) the cause of suffering is desire, logical enough. You want that big house. You dream about it, fill it with new furniture in your mind and landscape it with terraced gardens in your thoughts. One day you finally apply for the jumbo loan at 5.25% and surprise, the loan is denied. There's a credit crunch on and the banks aren't lending. So you get stuck in your old home, deeply underwater as it loses value month by month, you lose your job, the bank forecloses, and you suffer--first for the loss of your desired new home, and then because you are stuck in a place and set of circumstances where you definitely don't want to be. It's a double whammy of desire-spawned suffering that makes Buddha's insight fairly transparent.
The next thing out of Buddha's mouth, however, was the real trick. It was really no great metaphysical hocus-pocus, or even a leap of faith. It had nothing to do with a benevolent God out there somewhere waiting to rescue you, and nothing to do with worship, ritual, supplication, offering, sacrifice or any of the other trappings of religion. It was just another simple progression of logic when he concluded: 3) the end of desire is the end of suffering. Imagine that! Suffering because you want that house? Then stop. Just stop, and let the house go. Yes, just let the desire go, house, furniture, landscaping and all. Impossible? Perhaps, but sitting under his Boddhi tree one day he claimed he was able to let all the desires of life go, and the suffering each one spawned suddenly went with them. Bingo, satori, enlightenment! So there he sat, unmoved by the urges and yearnings of human life, quietly present to the one moment he found himself in--this one--the here and now reality of life that holds the totality of all there is.
You're in that moment there with him as well, right now. Believe it or not, you are sitting under a bodhi tree this very minute, whether you are behind a desk at the office, standing behind a cash register, hammering a nail, or stuck in traffic on a freeway somewhere, you are right there in the one moment that holds it all. So Buddhism is replete with assertions such as this: "Your Treasure House is in yourself, it contains all you need," or "the only rich man is one who knows he already has everything he needs." And Jesus said: "The Kingdom of heaven is within you." At root, Buddha is asserting that you do indeed already have everything--because everything in this one moment, the only place you are at liberty to be now, is perfectly here, perfect in every way, and needs nothing else to make it so. Your problem is that you are not paying attention to that basic truth, said Buddha, and this paying attention was called mindfulness, a state of awareness that allows one to see the clarity and meaning of all this insight, free from the ten thousand things that entice, irritate, and distract us each day.
Release it all, quiet down, pay attention. This is the basic message of Buddhism. Do this and you will awaken, as from a dream that was filled with all your desires and striving and yearning, and you will suddenly realize that you are here, you are OK, you are perfect as you are, and that here is enough. Bingo, satori, enlightenment!
Admittedly, getting to Bingo is hard to do as you stare at those unpaid bills or swipe that credit card to make ends meet each month. It's hard to do if you are standing in an unemployment line, or facing foreclosure, or pondering your diminishing 401k. All these activities are about getting somewhere else--to a moment when you will feel yourself to be OK, safe, and "happy." But Buddha's insight was about telling you that moment is here and now, and if you cannot find a way to feel OK now, what makes you think you will after you get your big house?
So being happy is no great mystery. It doesn't take years of meditation, hours of prayer, incense or offerings. And it certianly doesn't take a big house, a big bank account, or a big ego either. It just takes one moment when you realize you are here, along with all of it, and it is all perfect just as it is. Get it? Zen doesn't care if you do or not, because nothing really changes. A Zen proverb goes: "If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are." So your insight or ignorance are really one and the same. The wise and deluded are just here along with all the rest. Nothing more, nothing less.
Perhaps you've had a moment of that feeling and insight, and the fundamental contentment it brings. It comes easily in moments of triumph, where you have realized some long sought after goal, but it can also come in the simple, ordinary moments that also hold everything if you pay attention to them. Some of these moments are easier than others to reach that place of contentment. You know them...those quiet moments in the dark when you hold someone dear to you, or sit with an old friend on a seaside bench, or walk hand in hand in the Farmer's Market with a newfound love. You have "happiness" by the tail in such moments. Can you also grasp it standing alone on Christmas eve, and looking out the window at the lights of the city where Santa visits everyone else, but seems to have forgotten you?
If you think about it, Alfie had it right from the very first. It is just for the moment that we live, that one moment that holds all things, and brings every contentment and chance of happiness if we but pay attention. This is the answer to Alfie's question. It's always here, never tomorrow or yesterday, and I hope you savor it.
Have some wine too!
