Shifting Sands

I can't recall the film in which I saw it, but I have a distinct memory of a world that seems perfectly real, but that dissolves behind you as you walk through it, as if it were real only in the moment you are in it, but then devolves back into chaos (or nothingness) as soon as its usefulness to you (or the plot) is past.

I have been having a similar feeling the past few months. I feel my role changing at work. My role as a husband has changed. As a father, a son, a person in recovery—all of these roles are shifting and transmogrifying. And I don't like it. This is very striking at work: in their insecurity, the younger workers assert their superiority and seeing this so sharply in them, I perceive it ever more clearly in myself. Don't they know how very hard I have worked to get where I am? (I can hear the whining in my head). Don't they know who I am?

One of the clearer messages of the Buddha's teachings is that such change is inevitable. Not only is our house built on shifting sand, the house itself is made of insubstantial stuff, of spun sugar and clouds. (Just ask our plumbing, which is disintegrating and needs replacement, but that's an entirely different subject!) I have thoroughly accepted this intellectually; of course life is all about change, who doesn't know that? Of course we all grow old, sicken, die, get hurt, become feeble, lose our faculties, our memories, our abilities. Of course the young come up behind us with more energy and new knowledge and displace us. This is all as it should be! Of course. But emotionally I find myself ill-prepared for the new realities springing up around me.

I'm not complaining, really. I feel more bewildered than hurt by these things. The illusion of solidity is nonetheless a very comforting fantasy and change usually happens so slowly that it is easy to believe that there is a solid reality here. There isn't, in case you persist in this delusion. This is not bad news, of course. It is what it is. The Buddha's message is one of thorough acceptance of this reality, that there is, paradoxically, no reliable reality. In fact, if we are looking for substantiality, we can never be anything but insecure (which is why there are so many destructive actions in our world motivated by fear and insecurity).

I am studying Wagner recently, specifically the Ring Cycle, in preparation for seeing it next year. (For those of you not familiar with it, this is a cycle of four operas, three of which are in excess of three hours long). I wanted to be more familiar with these masterworks in order to better appreciate them. One thing I was surprised to learn is that Wagner was influenced by the proto-Buddhists of his day. The conclusion they seemed to draw (or at least the one that Wagner incorporated) was that there was no God and that any drive to perfectibility was futile. I'm not sure that's what the Buddha had in mind, but it is interesting that Wagner should assert this.

What this has to do with the subject at hand (other than the fact that they are both rattling around in my head together just now) is this idea, which Wagner incorporated rather late in his career: we must come to terms with the idea that our lives will never reach an ideal state and remain there. The opera cycle is fairly explicit in the vagueness of its conclusions (if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms). Pretty much everyone dies in these operas, which is rather odd. Usually there is one hero left standing (think the final scene of Hamlet). But Wagner was telling a different kind of tale, one full of allegory and intended more to assert a point of view than to entertain: no matter what our status in life—hero, lover, god, or mere mortal, stumbling along to our measly destiny—we are fated to encounter our mortality and the frustration of our desires. The Buddha was explicit that the problem in this scenario is not the frustration but the desires, not the death but the expectation of ongoing life, not the change but the thought that life can be anything but change.

This feels like cold comfort today. I want security and certainty and the warm, cozy feeling of knowing my role and doing it well. I work hard and deserve a reward. I have earned a certain position in the world and expect to be acknowledged as such. As the saying goes, good luck with that. One of the primary problems with this system of belief is that everyone else is asserting their own right to be considered and treated in a light that is complementary to them, too, so that our day-to-day existance can begin to feel like a constant jockeying for position rather than just living our lives.