THE BUDDHA WAY IS UNSURPASSED/I VOW TO EMBODY IT FULLY – THE FOURTH VOW
First, don’t hang up yet. This will not be some dumb diatribe on the essence of Zen and why you can’t live without it. Somewhere in this genesis of a story barely begun, I will end up using it to make a point.
A couple of mornings ago, I was thinking, an ongoing shortcoming of mine. Before the sun decided to wake up so fucken early in the mornings, I could get out in time to watch the sun rise, cup of coffee in hand.
Speaking of cups, I don’t know if I told you that the cup I have been using for years and years, chipped on the safe side, finally started leaking on the bottom. I think it just got tired of holding its breath, with all that hot liquid trying to get out. I now have a Godzilla themed one, compliments of my dinosaur lover.
Back to the sun, already wide awake by the time Godzilla mug and I get out to sit on my mini-stoop on the side of the house. Out of nowhere, I was hit with, “Why am I here?” Don’t freak out, this was not some pre-suicidal, slap in the face, sucking the life out of my lungs, leaving me despondent and a serious threat to my continuation. However, it did kind of throw me, because of its suddenness.
For those of you who have courageously suffered through my weekly diatribes, you’d probably guess there is a story birthing itself somewhere in there. Over the last couple of days, I have been thinking about that question and taking a mind ride on such a simply worded question.
I suppose you could take any question and ask it of yourself throughout your life and track how it changes with time and experience. However, that one is really a beauty. Any answer other than “I dunno”, means you think you have some understanding of the meaning of your life and more broadly, the meaning of life in general. The only answers that qualify are ones that come from a state of sobriety, otherwise we’re on a rollercoaster ride, where the first car continually bumps into the last one.
I wish I had the foresight to ask myself this question throughout my life and record my answers. However, this is the kind of shit you think about when you’ve been around a long time and that is not an automatic qualifier either. Honestly, I have no idea why the idea of the meaning of life is something that matters to me. Who the fuck thinks about this stuff? Oh, right, I do.
It is mathematically to correct to estimate that at least 100 billion people have lived here up until this time. I don’t want to split hairs about what names our species have gone by, but that is a conservative number for us two leggeds. I know this may shock you, but I’m no goddamn genius and I know this question has dogged some of our relatives.
I know I bring up age too often, but, when you get to be my age, it gets in the way a lot. So, I do wonder, was I put here for any particular reason, some greater purpose? Then, I think about a guy my age, living in Rwanda and what the fuck could he possibly be thinking? When I approach it from that direction, I realize it is such a luxury for me to be even able to think that way. It’s not that it’s upsetting, it’s that it is very humbling.
At the same time, this is the hand I’ve been dealt. I can’t call a misdeal. Somewhere in that thinking, starting to write figures into all of this. I am pretty sure I have led a more interesting life than many of you, not because of any great accomplishments, that’s for sure. I think a better word is probably more colorful. I suppose to some, my twenty years in the NYC world of broadcast advertising would qualify in there somewhere. I started in the late ’60’s, when the media world was far less complicated than today. It was cool to say you worked “in the business”, code for being a part of such a high profile industry.
When I moved to Santa Fe, NM in ’87, any semblance of conventionality went flying out the window. I lived in a little adobe house, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Suits and ties were gone from my life. I even became a volunteer fireman with the Turquoise Trail Vol. Fire Department and had a red light to slap on my roof. In the course of my 15 years there, I did so many different things to make a living, sometimes I even forget one or two.
When I left NYC, I felt I was beginning a journey, with fear and insecurity left somewhere behind me. I ended up out on more limbs than I can count, but regret and I never met and we still haven’t. I came here, because Kauai wanted me to be here. In some ways, it has kind of felt like a reward for having taken so many chances and this place has asked me to spend more time looking inside myself for the true journey.
The night before I was supposed to fly here from LA, my mother passed away and that rocked my world. Way back in Queens, NY, when I was only nine years old, my father suddenly died. I remember that first night, alone in the dark, terrified that if my mother died, I’d be an orphan and it never left me. So, I came here all alone. I am speaking strictly in the metaphorical sense, like a childhood ghost coming back to haunt me. In a way, it took me a little deeper inside myself.
I definitely can’t leave out bumping into the Buddha, even before I left NYC. My world of predictability started to unravel and I guess that was the first time I began to wonder what it was all about. I read some books and dabbled a bit in the practice, but didn’t get really into it, until moving to Santa Fe. Since then, I have been sitting on a cushion, nearly every morning, for around 35 years and there’s just no way you can avoid yourself with that discipline.
I included that Fourth Vow for a reason. If something is unsurpassable, why the hell should you waste your time, vowing to attain it? Ah, there’s the rub and the answer for Alfie. The very act of never stopping to seek that invisible treasure is the richest reward you could ever ask for. The map to find the meaning of life is a circle and, in a way, the question becomes the answer.
That’s what it’s all about, Alfie.
Here’s the audio version: