Last week I didn't post because my computer broke. It's fixed now. I won't go into details - talking about your computer breakdown/revival is like telling someone your dream, extremely interesting for you, extremely boring for them.
However last week, hot, gloomy and fitful with hysterics about my precious machine-baby lying inert atop my bedroom desk, I thought: I really don't want to write some stupid post about how I get to work with my mind and its sense of expectations because my stupid computer broke. I just want my stupid computer to work so that I can write, and if it doesn't work, I just want to be upset about it. Enough with the 45 layers of 'how should I be feeling about this event' rigmarole.
That's probably why I chose to avoid reading the assigned chapter in our Tonglen book dedicated to transforming adverse circumstances until an hour before class. Oh how I wanted to suffer. You know what I'm saying. I wanted to listen to that
Ryan Adams song about "stealing all my records." I wanted to delve into my hidden memory banks and review every single shameful moment from four years old on just to feel that blush of pain. I wanted to overanalyze every recent conversation I'd had with anyone and see why I was a jerk. I wanted to think about all the dumb things I did for romance when I was younger, a subject always best left to fizzle into oblivion. You know that Buddhist dart teaching? How there's the first dart of the painful experience? And then we throw more darts, and those darts are the suffering? I wanted the World Championship of Darts to take place in my bedroom.
My favorite aspects of Buddhism were not brought forth by SickestBuddhistgate and the winding rhetoric of comments that followed. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy getting down with analysis. I do. But I'm not fond of when awareness practitioners are seemingly unaware that their desire to tear apart someone else's conceptual framework can easily veer toward malice if care is not taken. (I felt care was mostly, but not wholly, taken) This, I realize, is a dangerous statement to make - given that by addressing the stream of commenting (in a position of greater visibility) I am contributing to the arguments. Also the fact that my contribution criticizes the intent rather than the content gives some false moral hierarchy to the statement. And if my intent was pure, I would probably keep my mouth shut and appreciate the varied validities of arguments brought up in the thread, of which there were many. And that by thus disclaiming, I am attempting, through my awareness, to excuse myself from any argument, and by disclaiming my disclaiming I am further attempting to avoid argument and on an on into infinitum.
But, to requote Ethan Nichtern quoting Daniel Ingram, "a personal mixture of awakened compassion and selfish confusion forms the basis for everything we do." In other words, my imperfect no-self self has got a column to write. And the comment thread reminded me of the emotional tsunami that was recent dinner with my ex-boyfriend.
Saturday my friend and I had a discussion about what is really meant by the oft-ill translated Buddhist statement: Life is Suffering. This week in The New York Times Modern Love column , author Laura A. Monson I think gives a good, real life Western example of what that first noble truth really means.
An excerpt:
You see, I'd recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I'd committed to "The End of Suffering." I'd finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I'd seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.
Say what you want about Modern Love, I think her article is well-written and moving. Read it and let me know: do you think Laura A. Monson is an incognito Buddhist?
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