Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Hola mis amigos. My sincerest apologies for keeping all y’all on the edge of your seats for so long.  I have no doubt that you’re nearly overwhelmed with anticipation by now for the latest episode of Gulliver’s Travels. Where did he go?  Why don’t he write?  You don’t think he got bitten by a huge and terrifying spider, do you?!?  Nah, they don’t have those in Chile… except this one.

Truth be told I avoided the spider and they’re not actually poisonous.  What’s kept me away for so long is that I just plain have no idea what to say about the second half of the Buddhist program I just finished.  Everything was chugging along swimmingly.   Lots of study and practice, increasingly delightful fellow participants, sunny days, and starry nights. Then something happened, even though nothing actually happened (hence my reluctance to try and explain).  At one point after week two I had a humdinger of an experience.  Or more accurately I felt the aftermath of an unidentifiable experience.  Like an invisible Yeti stepped on my head.  I didn’t see a Yeti, and I don’t remember getting stepped on, but boy did I have a footprint on my mind parts.

And what was that experience you ask?  It was my ego.  It was my pride.  It was an overwhelming realization of my own spiritual materialism.  Of the subversive view I had unknowingly developed that I’m better than because I’m a Buddhist.  That meditating, studying, compassion, Shambhala, and this Guru were going to save me. That I was going to get something that I could keep forever and ever. An unshakeable sense of equanimity.  An unchanging knowledge of the true nature of life – of reality.  Who knows, maybe even the ability to levitate!

I say experience because I felt all of the aforementioned in a way that nobody every could have explained to me. No words, no pictures, no stories, and no songs could ever have shown me what this experience showed me.  How had I missed this?  How could I still be so foolish, so conceited, so selfish, so naive?  And when I saw this, when I experienced this, I was furious.  I felt so threatened, so destabilized.  It was like this little kitten we adopted as our mascot at the program first seeing herself in the mirror.  She saw merely the truth of her own reflection.  Saw herself, as I saw myself, and frankly our reactions were about the same.

click here to see…  A Glimpse

Well my savvy readers, I’m sure by now some of you may be thinking – that’s just Buddhism, no?  You see where you’re stuck, you treat yourself with compassion, and you move on the best you can.  And of course you’re absolutely right insightful reader.  That was actually the very intention of this program. To look in the mirror – the big cosmic mirror – and see what I see.  I just saw more than I bargained for and got leveled as a result.  I got a powerful feeling of being destroyed and left absolutely groundless.  A feeling of being completely heartbroken.

So what now?  I truly don’t know.  I’m not really sure how I’ll continue on this path of spiritual awakening. Somehow though, deep down, I know that I will.  Maybe just not in quite the same way.  Maybe I’ll see if  I can somehow manage to avoid rebuilding the same house of cards that just came tumbling down.  And if I can’t avoid it, let’s just hope a strong breeze comes along a little sooner this time.

Last but not least, since you’ve been so patient in slogging through this perplexing monologue, here are some pictures to reward your noble efforts.  Just arrived in Pucòn yesterday – Chile’s own version of Vail Colorado.