My wife almost stepped out in front of a speeding car this week.
We think we know what will happen, that from day to day we will continue, that those around us will too, that life as we know it will carry on. But we don't know. Accidents, divorces, finding out something that entirely changes your way of thinking of someone you thought you knew--any of these can seem to explode the world we know.
Telling me about this near miss, Kathy said, "The whole day would have looked entirely different." Yes, for so many people. For the driver of the car, for his family, for me, for Mitchell, for her sisters, niece, nephews, my parents, all of their children and their children's children, concentric circles of relationships with people we have never met and will never know. Our lives would have changed forever because of one moment of negligence on the part of a driver, one second of inattention on Kathy's.
We try to make everything that happens fit into a predetermined frame of reference. I think perhaps this is what people are doing when they say that a tragic event is "God's will". There has to be, so the logic goes, a frame of reference in which all of this can be encompassed. What is beyond bearing is bearable if there is a box big enough to hold it in, and that box can be God. (Though if God wills some of what is going on in this world, I frankly want nothing to do with the guy). Life is more like "The Matrix" than we care to admit. Not that literal kind of explanation for what goes on behind the scenes, but something much more mundane. Life is an uncertain and constantly shifting kaleidoscope. Our impression of a solid reality must be vigorously maintained; this requires a great deal of energy, and if we let our concentration on this task waver for even a moment, it can feel like we are insane, that the whole world is falling apart.
One night I was sitting alone in our house and felt what I assumed was someone coming up the back stairs. The house vibrates just a little when someone comes up those stairs, so that's what I thought I was feeling. Then the vibration became a little more intense, and I thought, "Huh, that's a bit much for anyone I know". Then, as it became yet more vigorous, rather than move on to other possibilities, rather than admitting the possibility that it was an earthquake (which it was), I thought, "Man, that must be some enormous guy coming up those steps". It's not that I was in denial or afraid (I rather like earthquakes). It's just that I had a reality I was not going to let go of easily, no matter what the evidence.
Language is part of the problem. It delineates, measures, defines, limits. We think we agree on what it is being said, but even that is an illusion. What you envision when I say "Buddha" is not what I envision, nor what the next ten people you meet would. We project on to that being whatever we need for him to be. Even with a word less fraught, say the word "apple", there is no agreement. There is a story of a young boy in an elementary school class who, when asked what color apples were replied, "white". At which (so the story goes) his teacher scoffed (though one would hope she would be more skillful than to actually do this). But the little boy insisted. When asked to explain, he asked the teacher to cut the apple open. An apple is, after all, far more white than it is anything else, but that is not what most of us see when we speak of one.
So, every word I put down here has a panoply of meanings, some of which are easy to agree upon ("upon" is not very controversial), others of which might cause us no end of problems (what if I were to bring up "faith", for instance?). And each step away from impression to idea to concept to picture to description obscures rather than clarifies what it is we mean.
As a species, we also have a tendency to recognize only what is present. Our ability to project with any accuracy into the future is extremely limited. This is not just denial (though that certainly is part of it); it is a practical way of dealing with the world. We see what is in front of us, for the most part, and that is plenty for us to deal with. Take global climate change, for instance. We know that humans are largely responsible for this phenomenon, at least the preventable part, and we know further that limiting our use of fossil fuels will go some way toward ameliorating the problem. We are also aware that the urgency of the situation is, as one scientist put it, much as if a meteor was hurtling toward the earth on a collision course. Yet in the day-to-day of our lives, we need to drive to the store. We want electricity when we flip the switch. We want the grocery shelves to be stocked with goods that can only get there with the expenditure of enormous amounts of fossil fuel to process and deliver it, to keep it cold or hot or warm. We want to visit our distant families, no matter the cost in airplane fuel. This is not a criticism of us, but a recognition of our limited ability to do something different today that will have an effect in decades or centuries. We are mammals in survival mode and, to our reptilian brains, tomorrow only matters if we survive today. Thinking into the future, as an integral part of our reality, is not a skill with which we are well-supplied.
Believe it or not, this is all good news.
Noting the intricacies of the web of what truly makes up our lives is the end of suffering. Suffering is trying to close the curtain that shields us from that reality. Not that we can afford to check out of the real world; we do have to shop and drive and cross the street, make love and die and grieve and persist. But there is a substantial difference between living in the world and believing that this is all there is. You have only to begin with yourself. What of you is you? What piece of you makes you who you are? How much could be cut away and have the remainder still contain your essential "youness"? Could a brain, kept alive and thinking in a jar, ever be you? The heart alone? Your finger? Your foot? And even if you could identify what makes you uniquely you, what would happen in the following moment, when that had changed, no matter how minutely? Then who would you be?
What if Kathy had stepped in front of that car?
One of the reasons that films like "The Matrix" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Abre Los Ojos" hold such appeal for us is that we know somewhere deep in our souls that this is the truth of things, that no matter how substantial we believe our day-to-day lives to be, we still from time to time feel as if we are living a fraud, that the other shoe will drop anytime now.
The Buddha holds the other shoe (though many spiritual traditions speak to these truths). And the great news is that all we have to do is stop trying so damn hard to do the impossible.
We think we know what will happen, that from day to day we will continue, that those around us will too, that life as we know it will carry on. But we don't know. Accidents, divorces, finding out something that entirely changes your way of thinking of someone you thought you knew--any of these can seem to explode the world we know.
Telling me about this near miss, Kathy said, "The whole day would have looked entirely different." Yes, for so many people. For the driver of the car, for his family, for me, for Mitchell, for her sisters, niece, nephews, my parents, all of their children and their children's children, concentric circles of relationships with people we have never met and will never know. Our lives would have changed forever because of one moment of negligence on the part of a driver, one second of inattention on Kathy's.
We try to make everything that happens fit into a predetermined frame of reference. I think perhaps this is what people are doing when they say that a tragic event is "God's will". There has to be, so the logic goes, a frame of reference in which all of this can be encompassed. What is beyond bearing is bearable if there is a box big enough to hold it in, and that box can be God. (Though if God wills some of what is going on in this world, I frankly want nothing to do with the guy). Life is more like "The Matrix" than we care to admit. Not that literal kind of explanation for what goes on behind the scenes, but something much more mundane. Life is an uncertain and constantly shifting kaleidoscope. Our impression of a solid reality must be vigorously maintained; this requires a great deal of energy, and if we let our concentration on this task waver for even a moment, it can feel like we are insane, that the whole world is falling apart.
One night I was sitting alone in our house and felt what I assumed was someone coming up the back stairs. The house vibrates just a little when someone comes up those stairs, so that's what I thought I was feeling. Then the vibration became a little more intense, and I thought, "Huh, that's a bit much for anyone I know". Then, as it became yet more vigorous, rather than move on to other possibilities, rather than admitting the possibility that it was an earthquake (which it was), I thought, "Man, that must be some enormous guy coming up those steps". It's not that I was in denial or afraid (I rather like earthquakes). It's just that I had a reality I was not going to let go of easily, no matter what the evidence.
Language is part of the problem. It delineates, measures, defines, limits. We think we agree on what it is being said, but even that is an illusion. What you envision when I say "Buddha" is not what I envision, nor what the next ten people you meet would. We project on to that being whatever we need for him to be. Even with a word less fraught, say the word "apple", there is no agreement. There is a story of a young boy in an elementary school class who, when asked what color apples were replied, "white". At which (so the story goes) his teacher scoffed (though one would hope she would be more skillful than to actually do this). But the little boy insisted. When asked to explain, he asked the teacher to cut the apple open. An apple is, after all, far more white than it is anything else, but that is not what most of us see when we speak of one.So, every word I put down here has a panoply of meanings, some of which are easy to agree upon ("upon" is not very controversial), others of which might cause us no end of problems (what if I were to bring up "faith", for instance?). And each step away from impression to idea to concept to picture to description obscures rather than clarifies what it is we mean.
As a species, we also have a tendency to recognize only what is present. Our ability to project with any accuracy into the future is extremely limited. This is not just denial (though that certainly is part of it); it is a practical way of dealing with the world. We see what is in front of us, for the most part, and that is plenty for us to deal with. Take global climate change, for instance. We know that humans are largely responsible for this phenomenon, at least the preventable part, and we know further that limiting our use of fossil fuels will go some way toward ameliorating the problem. We are also aware that the urgency of the situation is, as one scientist put it, much as if a meteor was hurtling toward the earth on a collision course. Yet in the day-to-day of our lives, we need to drive to the store. We want electricity when we flip the switch. We want the grocery shelves to be stocked with goods that can only get there with the expenditure of enormous amounts of fossil fuel to process and deliver it, to keep it cold or hot or warm. We want to visit our distant families, no matter the cost in airplane fuel. This is not a criticism of us, but a recognition of our limited ability to do something different today that will have an effect in decades or centuries. We are mammals in survival mode and, to our reptilian brains, tomorrow only matters if we survive today. Thinking into the future, as an integral part of our reality, is not a skill with which we are well-supplied.Believe it or not, this is all good news.
Noting the intricacies of the web of what truly makes up our lives is the end of suffering. Suffering is trying to close the curtain that shields us from that reality. Not that we can afford to check out of the real world; we do have to shop and drive and cross the street, make love and die and grieve and persist. But there is a substantial difference between living in the world and believing that this is all there is. You have only to begin with yourself. What of you is you? What piece of you makes you who you are? How much could be cut away and have the remainder still contain your essential "youness"? Could a brain, kept alive and thinking in a jar, ever be you? The heart alone? Your finger? Your foot? And even if you could identify what makes you uniquely you, what would happen in the following moment, when that had changed, no matter how minutely? Then who would you be?
What if Kathy had stepped in front of that car?
One of the reasons that films like "The Matrix" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Abre Los Ojos" hold such appeal for us is that we know somewhere deep in our souls that this is the truth of things, that no matter how substantial we believe our day-to-day lives to be, we still from time to time feel as if we are living a fraud, that the other shoe will drop anytime now.
The Buddha holds the other shoe (though many spiritual traditions speak to these truths). And the great news is that all we have to do is stop trying so damn hard to do the impossible.
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