The Oxford English Dictionary defines suffering as “the state of undergoing pain, distress or hardship.” Not sure if i understand why, but listening to Roy Orbison sing “Sweet Dreams Baby” causes me to suffer - a sweet suffering but like watching a chick crack out of its shell, or a child’s awe for fire, before the burn you know is coming. There is a painful vitality that comes from the cauldron of feeling our body’s senses provide. My stepfather described this feeling of anguish when listening to certain symphonies, i’d always confused similar feelings about music with drugs which oddly stifle such vividness - sort of. Daniel Odier in “Tantric Quest” likens the use of substance in service of heightened awareness as prompts, which after having prodded the persistence of certainty out of the path, becomes an impediment to clarity. What is useful in life’s quest for clarity is the deeper awareness with which Buddha peered into existence then described “life is suffering”. The capacity to endure the discomfort of great beauty, is no less important than that of great anguish, while the willingness to dwell in either enriches understanding of both. “Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.” -R.D. Lang. Is that to say seeking grief will make us happier - a logic leading to the fatuous argument that more death will preserve peace. Like a parent wanting a child to be unafraid of the harmful capacity of fire, short of putting the child’s hand into the fire, it is not possible to assume for that child the inevitable lesson which only fire may teach. Nobody can know what is fire for another, but we are all responsible for helping others with their lessons. While pain is a very useful tool to understand suffering, kindness seems the better prescription for healing. Buddhist faith holds the root cause of suffering as the three poisons: greed, hatred and delusion. Greed and hatred are not really such poisons, more like bad companions on an already too long journey - i’d just as soon leave them off at the next stop; but delusion, how do you lose something which by its definition “nonexistent”? Is that the foundation for the discipline of meditation - to see clearly into the abyss?
What then is the point of meditation, affirmation, or any form of compassionate existence if the net gain is deeper grief? “Yeah, i’ll take a side order of heartbreak with my poverty please.” . . What if that’s all there is, greater portions of decay, disease and death, broken only by firestorms searing your wretched hovel. What of it? Squirming won’t digest our ample repast of shit anymore than beating the snot out of an aggressor will render you safe, for there are always more and greater dangers. Lao Tzu - “If you rejoice in victory, than you delight in killing; that is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.” To prevail apparently is no path out, to vanquish every wrong, bad habit or even Bin Laden believer, by Lao’s logic, results in occasion for grieving. What has rejoicing the “free world’s” victory in the last two world wars bought us: only profits for the “military industrial complex,” while bringing us closer to armageddon than when John saw Nikita’s bet and raised him an “anonymous incineration.” Is it possible to be at peace with suffering; where’s the harm if Trump wants bromance with Putin - what business is that of mine. Is there an achievable state where the pigs won’t take back the farm? What if we missed it and George Orwell was the messiah - 1984; year of the rapture - same year i met my 2nd wife? What is enough? William Blake - “enough, or too much.” Clearly we have too much plastic, there are whales washing up on shore with so much plastic in their stomachs they starved to death, yet 8% of the fossil fuel pumped from the ground is diverted into the manufacture of “new” plastic; fame - do you hunger for fame? Open your screen and find how many keystrokes have acknowledged your unique contribution to the world; now do it again, and again, and again. . . Is your stomach empty? The amount of food worldwide lost or wasted every year is equivalent to half the world’s cereal crop (2.3 billion tonnes in 2009/2010); or are you without a home? In the United States the richest most powerful nation on the planet, there are 18,600,000 vacant homes: enough for every homeless person in this the last bastion of democracy to have 6 homes. Why is it in the midst of so much abundance, so many suffer hardship? I don’t know, i’d like to know; but i don’t.
I hate not knowing, sort of. Knowing is like calisthenics just before your warm back touches the cold floor first thing in the morning; it’s jarring, but you understand it’s good for you. Hatred not so much - the best thing said about hatred is when it’s gone; like that skanky 1st flu of the season, never sure exactly when it lifted, but thank g_d it’s gone. I wish it were that simple - i know how to hate, it’s a weakness i’m not proud of, not the sort of infirmity that comes from aging which you can’t do shit about, but the sort of frailty one encounters in others that is so scary you shrink from them only to hear that obnoxious voice inside snickering - maybe not at first, but afterwords while searching for justification as you try to process the hurt look in their eyes. You might be the sort that needs no justification, because the hatred you feel toward yourself is so deafening, you can barely distinguish another for the fear and shame of seeing yourself reflected in their eyes. Mahatma Gandhi said, “You think it’s hatred, it’s not - it’s fear.” Is it possible with fear as the only growth industry the yahoos in charge seem capable of growing - hatred is our lot - a lingering sickness you can’t shake 6 months later, or a resentment hardened into that lump in your gut which fat gloms onto and then grows geometrically? I am not afraid of you - what are you gonna do, kill me? I’m 62 fucking years old; that’d be a waste of good ammo which you’ll need more of when i’m gone. Nelson Mandela said something very interesting after 27 years of confinement when the South African regime released him from that imprisonment of his body, but not of his mind. “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” I feel a bitterness that haunts my steps when trying to comprehend how the same hatred which attempted to break this man and deprive the world of a voice for freedom continues to lead, seemingly unchallenged, using cowardice, connivery and what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described as “willful stupidity” as their only arsenal. This haunting is of my own creation and possesses a certain warmth for me, not unlike the feeling one gets when finding out just how weak a schoolyard bully can be - but that was then, this is now.
Now - even the bullies are running scared, because bullying has captured the imagination of our “higher angels.” You know the ones - the sanctimonious amongst us, myself most especially. I am not fond of those who rely on advantage to make their case - be it anarchistic capitalism or the thug talking shit loud enough for his closeby homies to hear. Fair Dinkum is an Aussie expression meaning equal exchange, or in the vernacular of these holidays from our shared humanity - “do unto others before they do unto you.” I do not, quoting Leonard Cohen “pretend to understand at all.” The way the Aussies explain this transaction makes perfect sense - when you fuck around, you get fucked-up, or words to that effect. How is it with all this aged wisdom and historic precedent favoring, please pardon the pun - liberality - is our world at such a loss to accept the very real possibility we have cut off our noses to spite our faces. Why such denial about what is clear to even one as obtuse as myself (don’t believe me? ask any one of my three wives - dense as fencepost). In the past 80 years we humans have lost 93% of the variety in our food seeds. Chew on that for a moment; then gag it down with this little “info” morsel, or what our valiant writers in the news refer to as byte in a shot glass: the same people responsible for that willful stupidity are feverishly developing the “terminator seed,” (single generation plant - devoid of the capacity to regenerate itself). These same titans of commerce, using no small measure of taxpayer subsidies, are as we speak, inundating the world with its own labor saving liquid - “Glyphosate.” The hitch with this 21st century DDT is it has now been conclusively linked to autism in children, actual persons which are our police forces are shooting at will. Autism is a disorder within the growing, not shrinking spectrum of behaviors deemed abnormal. I find this infliction of pain and suffering by our leaders as delusional, not crazy that they would be so audacious as to believe a handful could steal 90 pennies out of every dollar earned on the planet, but insane that we as human beings would allow it to happen - then try to blame some other body - that is goofy.
I could suffer about this idea until the cows come home and change nothing; so i write - i draw, sometimes i even get to paint and carve stone - writing is suffering enough for now. If things get real bad, and i need more travail i can always drink too much whiskey - that’ll fix everything . . . until the next day. However, our kind may not have that next day with which to wake up to its “Oil Hangover.” The fossil fuel whores (my apologies to sex workers everywhere) are desecrating what, for all we know, may be of the last sacred sites in our world which attest allegiance of our kind to its inherent nature - Water. Is it irony this engineering sacrilege is being done for the “greater good,” but in reality solely and exclusively for pelf, lucre, jack, moolah, money - the only actuall holy grail at the pinnacle of our civilization. I suffer to think that the most pristine, clear and unequivocal fantasy ever imagined by our species has become so blindingly bright in fakery that its very lack of meaning is entirely lost to 99.999% of the population - a population that is so great in its suffering and denial that it feels no recourse but to blame a handful of human ciphers amoral enough to achieve its plunder and then charge us to watch it do so. There is no blame, them or us. We had a good run - got some nice threads, drove some fine ass machines and kissed lots of pretty woman. How much more do you want from any world, this or the next ever-after? I’m hedging my bets as a devout christian, islamist hebrew, zoroastrianized, renegade buddhist bornagain pagan, so even with all that spiritual feeling having my back, i find it a necessary comfort within this vale of tears to at least quell what vestiges of fear i can find through “bitter searching of the heart” and to enjoy a little of all this wonder while passing through.
“When you think you’re screwed, remember we’re all on a big wet ball floating in the dark” - A. Nonymous
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happiness / the sonnet
Happiness may follow like a shadow
in the absence of any suffering-
Greed, hatred and delusion make grief grow.
Why are these planted by they who’d be king?
Yet, we be farmers - the crops are our own.
I don’t grow grief, but seen fields of that shit.
I dig weed - and love, when i see it’s grown-
once infantile - then juice looking to fit.
Light may illuminate much - what’s behind
in that darkened corner beyond the bright rays?
Is what blocks our view, demons in our mind?
Could pain be desire from earlier days?
what would “enough,” feel like - not being afraid?
Is joy as simple as making a child’s braid?jts 6/9/2016
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