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I was gonna finish the blog at the end of this month (today)
Cus that would be the 2 years up, and i’ve felt there should be some kind of cutting off point.
I can’t keep doing this forever, blogging and churning out post after post about my trite little meditation practice.
But here i am, i’ve reached the day to be finishing with it.
And i can’t.
Can’t seem to let go of it.
Not all there is – but mostly all there is.
Suffering is unstoppable.
The suffering can feel gross sometimes: as anxiety, or panic, or fear or anger etc
And sometimes it can feel more subtle: as a gentle kind of longing, or a hidden kind of yearning, or a special kind of melancholy.
Or a suffering that wants to hang onto sublime moments….stretch desirable feelings out as long as possible, as far as they will go….
….happy….happier….
…..calm…calmer….
….pleasant….pleasurable…. ecstatic….
And the bit of my life that doesn’t seem to about suffering….
Is when i’m in bed
Fast asleep.
There’s no end to suffering.
I suppose thats why i can’t call myself a Buddhist. Cus a committed Buddhist believes that there is an end to suffering (3rd Noble Truth) and the means to end suffering is enshrined in the Eightfold Buddhist Path (The 4th Noble Truth)
I don’t ever see my suffering coming to an end. I feel chronically conditioned to suffer.
It’s not gonna stop.
Until i stop.
When i’m dead.
Until then, i’m gonna keep on suffering.
Always.
A distinction can be made.
There is physical pain. Which can be acute: i’ve dropped a statue of the Buddha on my toe. Or chronic: reading books on Buddhism is giving me a headache.
There’s readymade cures for pain: stick on a plaster, drop a pill… throw that book or Buddha statue out the window.
And there is suffering. And suffering is mental.
Suffering is anguish. Suffering is dissatisfaction.
Suffering is wanting but not having (craving) Suffering is having but not wanting (aversion)
And there’s a cure for suffering too.
Only its not so readymade.
You can get some immediate momentary relief for the acute kind of suffering (through simple mindfulness of breathing)
So as to not want so much. Or not not want so much.
But chronic suffering? I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any cure for that really if i’m honest.
Chronic suffering seems to be here to stay.
The perpetual condition of being a human being.
A flesh and blood teacher i’ve liked is Bhante Bodhidharma. He used to teach Mahasi Method at Gaia House. He was the resident monk, did all the robes and shaved head thing, wore cheap NHS glasses.
I think his Christian name used to be Adrian, originally from Hull or Goole, bought up on a working class council estate. You could talk to him about things like Bovril and Prog Rock. You could say “Fuck” to him and he’d just smile, in his wry dry Goolian sort of way. A straight talking, straightforward, Yorkshireman. Down to earth.
I’ll forgive him calling himself Bhante Bodhidharma ( i don’t like when people give themselves, or get given, “spiritual names”; i think it confers too much grandiosity on them, makes them sound too preciously other, conspicuously different)
Actually, i’m gonna appear a bit inconsistent here – but being around him didn’t make me feel especially liberated, or transformed. He could/can sound a bit long-winded and obtuse at times in his talks. A tendency to complicate Buddhist ideas has our Adrian – rather than lay them out for you in simple steps. Occasionally I’ve got bogged down inside his thinking – rather than made to feel that life was becoming increasingly clear, or transparently self-evident.
So not one of those teachers you could stick up on a pedestal as a (self-appointed) Guru.
Maybe thats a good thing.
Probably why i liked – and related – to him.
If i were to become a monk i’d probably want to be like him.
Actually, it was probably not fair to be dissing spiritual teachers on the basis of my rather limited experience of them.
True, some have appeared arrogant; some have seemed a bit unfit for the real world – of you and me (all that shitty ugly stuff that happens at the base of life)
But some i’ve met have felt like the real deal, the genuine article. And i usually measure that by how enlarged and enlivened i feel in the presence of such a person.
How free to be myself they make me feel. How accepting they are of everything in me that is also in them – but they’ve somehow faded all this small stuff into insignificance or inconsequentiality. None of it really matters. None of it is getting in the way.
There’s a transparency about them them that is becoming visibly, and tangibly, also transparent in me.
No, i’ve encountered some “teachers” like that.
And in their presence you feel immediately transformed.
Strictly speaking i don’t have a teacher – cus to need a teacher you have to feel yourself a pupil or student (of Buddhism) And as i’ve said many times before on this blog: i don’t want to be, or become, a Buddhist.
But i suppose i do have many “virtual” teachers; the Gil Fronsdal’s and the Larry Rosenbergs et al that exist in cyberspace via all those talks i’ve been consistently listening to these past couple of years.
Maybe they’re safer like that, where they are – as virtual teachers, as voices minus their vices. Most of the so-called teachers i’ve met in the flesh have been all too easy to dislike or disdain – cus they’d had all too familiar commonplace personalities or disappointing ”back-stories” – the persona or presence of “spiritual teacher somehow diminished through encounter with what they were really, and actually, like.
But its easy to like Gil Fronsdal as his ethernet presence, his cyberspace persona; his microphoned , mellow, mellifluous,voice.
I don’t have to bother, or be bothered, by the rest of him.
Do i feel virtuous when i’m meditating? Yes, mostly i do. I did today.
Sometimes unbearably virtuous – like i were being such a good boy for doing such a seemingly spiritual thing as “meditation”.
By merely meditating gets conferred on me some kind of meritorious “honour”. I go straight to the teachers desk to receive my pat of approval and my goody good gold star.
Only, i don’t have a teacher tp pat me on the head.
And after a while, collecting the gold stars i give myself – gets kind of boring.
One of those Buddhist cliches; used as a disparaging reference for the usual mind we all carry around with us all day long. The mind that jumps reactively around, chattering to itself uncontrollably, going “me. me, me”.
But sometimes – i have to admit – while sitting, i quite like this monkey mind monkeying around my awareness.
I get to feel entertained by what monkey mind gets up to. Amused. (Like i was this morning)
And even at times – i have to say – enlivened.
But never – at any time – enlightened.
There are times – mostly all the time – when i seem to prefer entertainment to enlightenment.
There are different experiences of empty.
Empty that is like vacant; the mediocre withdrawal into mindlessness and meaninglessness.
Empty that feels redundant, like an absence of energy, interest, vitality.
Then there is empty like the empty i experienced this morning while sitting:
The empty of Full Being.
Being full of Being
Nascent with Now
Fizzing with, tingling with
Expansive, exponential, Emptiness.
