Lokavagga: Worlds

I must be in a sour mood, because I am getting annoyed as I read the Lokavagga. I do feel out of sorts. I went down to Boystown to watch the Halloween parade, and I suppose I should have felt festive; it will be another seven years before Halloween will be on a Saturday again. There were plenty of people in some fantastic costumes all set to have a good time. But I couldn’t connect with any of it.

I took the El back to the Rockwell station where my car was parked, then drove home. Then I look up the next chapter in the Dhammapada and I see the Lokavagga and I feel like what’s the point?

“Don’t associate with lowly qualities.
Don’t consort with heedlessness.
Don’t associate with wrong views.
Don’t busy yourself with the world.”

Maybe, you think, I am already feeling the distance from the world that the Buddha taught we should strive for. But that’s not what I feel.

“Get up! Don’t be heedless.
Live the Dhamma well.
One who lives the Dhamma
sleeps with ease
in this world & the next.

Live the Dhamma well.
Don’t live it badly.
One who lives the Dhamma
sleeps with ease
in this world & the next.”

No, what I feel now is emptiness and a sense of frustration. Old feelings are coming back and I sense some kamma is nearing fruition. It makes me uncomfortable.

“See it as a bubble,
see it as a mirage:
one who regards the world this way
the King of Death doesn’t see.”

But it’s not a mirage. Pain and loneliness are real. I don’t want to dwell in such thoughts, but there they are.

“Come look at this world
all decked out
like a royal chariot,
where fools plunge in,
while those who know
don’t cling.”

I would have liked to do some plunging into the world tonight, but at the same time I felt so distant. And again, it’s not because I have managed to attain the proper mental attitude for regarding the world and its delusions. Rather, it’s that sense of apathy that arises after you lost something very dear to you – or someone.

“Who once was heedless,
but later is not,
brightens the world
like the moon set free from a cloud.

His evil-done deed
is replaced with skillfulness:
he brightens the world
like the moon set free from a cloud.”

I like these verses, as I feel like a moon obscured by a cloud. Or rather, a completely overcast sky. But it will pass, I know that. It just takes so damn long.

The final verses really don’t mean anything to me. They touch nothing within me. Instead, I want to feel the excesses of the world, I want to take another plunge and feel the fleeting bliss of pleasure, even though I know it won’t last. And despite that desire, something within me holds me back, a realm of melancholy that feels too comfortable at the moment.

As much as I want at times to feel the safety net of the Dhamma, there are times like these when things just plain suck. And I’m OK with things sucking right now.

Attavagga: Self

Self is one of those concepts in Buddhism that at times strikes me as a paradox. On the one hand, the Buddha taught that there is no real or true self, because we are constantly changing. So there is no static self you can point to and say, “That is me!”

Yet we all recognize, if perhaps unspoken, that we have something that can best be described as uniquely us, which we universally call “self.” There is an “I” identity, and for many of us and for a long time, it was a comfortable and automatic notion.

Then the Buddha shook my world. “I am not my body, I am not my mind, I am not my perceptions, I am not my consciousness, I am not my feelings: then what the hell am I?”

What really kills me is that other people have their own sense of who “I” am. And the Buddha recognized this, as many of his teachings are about how we are “defined” by our actions and by the company we keep. You see it in the Dhammapada as well, verses about how the wise behave and avoid association with fools, etc. And that’s partly what Chapter 12 is about.

With the Attavagga, the Buddha is treating the self as something real as well as something that needs protecting and nurturing. Because whatever the self is not, it does do things, and one of those things is create kamma. And creating kamma is what binds us to the endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth, etc.

“If you hold yourself dear
then guard, guard yourself well.
The wise person would stay awake
nursing himself
in any of the three watches of the night,
the three stages of life.”

We all hold ourselves dear, right? But it’s so easy just to cruise along and not pay attention. As a result, we are often careless and wind up doing things that are harmful to us. But regardless which of the “three watches of the night” we finally wake up – in youth, middle age, or old age – it’s not too late to properly nurse oneself and develop wisdom.

“First
he’d settle himself
in what is correct,
only then
teach others.
He wouldn’t stain his name
: he is wise.

If you’d mold yourself
the way you teach others,
then, well-trained,
go ahead & tame —
for, as they say,
what’s hard to tame is you
yourself.”

The Theravada tradition often gets knocked because it is “selfish,” because of a perception that it is focused entirely on the self. To some extent, this is perhaps true, it is a selfish practice, but not in a negative sense. As the verses above describe, I am of no use in helping anyone else if I haven’t got my own shit together. I’m not going to be a bodhisattva and help all other sentient beings if I can’t even control my own squirrely mind. I mean, think about it, even in the Mahayana tradition, when practicing loving kindness, where do you start? With yourself!

Skipping a few verses:

“They’re easy to do —
things of no good
& no use to yourself.
What’s truly useful & good
is truly harder than hard to do.”

It is so hard for me to control my anger when I’m driving it’s pathetic. I know that anger is bad for me for so many reasons that I can’t count. But besides giving me headaches, making me tense, raising my blood pressure, leading me to use abusive language and to become distracted, when I become angry I am surrendering myself to the whims of the world, I am relinquishing control.

And most importantly, I am continuing to create kamma. And it’s kamma I don’t want.

“Evil is done by oneself

by oneself is one defiled.
Evil is left undone by oneself

by oneself is one cleansed.
Purity & impurity are one’s own doing.
No one purifies another.
No other purifies one.”

Next to the opening verses in the first chapter of the Dhammapada (which are posted at the top right of my blog), these verses are my next favorite. This is so important for me to remember. Only I can defile myself, no one does it to me. And only I can cleanse and purify myself. It’s not done by some deity or deva or saint or witch doctor or whatever. Only I can cleanse myself of the clutter I’ve accumulated through all my pasts, and I start by paying attention to what I am doing right now.

If I may use a baseball metaphor, in some ways I am like the home run hitter. I can bang that ball out of the park, do something spectacular that really elevates my practice, or say something that is really insightful. But like the home run hitter, I am very inconsistent. More often than not, when I step to the plate called life, I swing and miss. I need to stop being the home run hitter with the .210 batting average, and be the consistent base runner who hits .325.

“Don’t sacrifice your own welfare
for that of another,
no matter how great.
Realizing your own true welfare,
be intent on just that.”

I want to thank all my readers who I don’t know, and my followers who I do (sort of), as I plod my way through this project. I’m learning a lot about myself as I do this. Nothing remarkable or earth-shattering, but important nonetheless.

Metta

Jaravagga: Aging

It’s been a long day. Nothing particularly taxing, just long. I’m tired, feeling run down, and anticipating my task for the night. I sigh. And I’m not terribly motivated; haven’t been all day really. But dutifully I sit at the computer and I look up the next chapter in the Dhammapada and what do I see? Commentary on old age.

Fer crying out loud, do I really need this? And frankly, this chapter is not all that inspiring. I mean, how can you get jazzed up about anything, how can you fire up any intensity or resolve, when faced with verses like this:

“Worn out is this body,
a nest of diseases, dissolving.
This putrid conglomeration
is bound to break up,
for life is hemmed in with death.”

Oh yeah, this Buddhism shit is real fun. Get to meditate on how my body is a bloody mass of flesh and slimy sinew and gooey oozing shit like pus. Mmmm. And then I die!

I get all that. Believe me. At 51, I’m dealing with a body that is slowing down, getting achy and unwilling to do what it used to. I’ve slipped from – dare I say? – a dashing slim man of 6-feet-1 and 185 pounds who kept in good shape and could bed just about any man I wanted, from that I’ve slipped into this tired heap that’s about 215 pounds and lucky if I can get a smile out of a cute guy. In the gay world, I am now known as a bear, which just means I’m fat and hairy.

I still work out to stay in decent shape, swim several times a week, plodding my way through the water getting in about a half-mile in 30 minutes. But about all I can do now is swim and use the elliptical machine because anything else hurts. My right ankle and my left shoulder both have arthritis. Let’s see, what else can I bitch about? Oh yeah, my feet, ugly skinny things are gnarled so bad that I need to wear orthotics. And being 51, I can have issues with flatulence. Doesn’t help much on a date.

And that’s what I observe about my own body. I watched as my mother’s health deteriorated, slowly at first, but in the last two years of her life, it was quite rapid. And when she died at 89, I stood for a moment in the hospital room where she lie, alone, and meditated on her corpse. It was actually quite a special moment. When my mother died, I felt relief – her suffering was over for now.

Mick Jagger had it right when he sang, “What a drag it is getting old.” Wonder how he feels about that line now?

“Through the round of many births I roamed
without reward,
without rest,
seeking the house-builder.
Painful is birth
again & again.

House-builder, you’re seen!
You will not build a house again.
All your rafters broken,
the ridge pole dismantled,
immersed in dismantling, the mind
has attained to the end of craving.”

It is very unlikely I will find release in this lifetime, so I am destined to build another house – a bag of bones with ooze and blood and guts and shit and piss and … blech – that will also eventually fall apart into ruin.

I just try not to dwell too much on it for now. Death can be a powerful motivator, a force that can get us to do the right thing right now and not delay. But tonight I’m tired, and I think I’d like a glass of wine.