A solution to all problems...

Through the window of my current pain I can see so clearly now the solution to all lifes difficulties and it is exactly as the Buddhists say. I do not have the strength yet, or have not yet unpicked to knotted fishing line in my heart yet, so it remains not fully tested - but it looks very convincing...

When my father died my sister and I drove the Brighton under cloudless morning skies. There was not a car on the 6am July road and we arrived at the shimmering sea in silence. I stripped off and dived into the cool blue waters in a bid to wash off away heart ache. Swimming out and then under the waters I hoped to return to the surface as a new self ready for the journeys ahead...

All around lay the gently rolling waves as far as the wide blue sky which arched vastly above me and within shone the gleaming sun - at that instant I saw that the sun cared not a bit for my suffering, the sky was large enough to hold any day that passed and the sea was gentle and unaffected by what to me was the most catastrophic day of my life - the day I knew I had to find my feet and live without the man who had created me and supported me all these years.

It became obvious that what was at the same time unsurmountable onstacle and grief was also of no gravity or importants at all. The seas, sky and sun gave me the strength that day to go on without real concern and to give birth to the thoughts recently...

Again that new year I went to the hill behind our village and looked at the houses pondering that in that house there my father no longer waited for new year. Looking at the other houses I wondered which have experienced losses like mine; all of them was the obvious reality. I imagined the small valley through time: a hundred years when most of the houses would not have been there; two hundred when the oldest trees would have been young and the estate house and grounds would have been intact; then 10,000 when maybe the first people camped by the small spring and under the huge canopy of oaks; then the future when even I am dead and new people live here; and so on forever. The turning wheel of peoples lives coming and going on this same valley of land made me see again the vastness of all existence and how the lives of the things in this world are simply brief turning of the endless huge wheel. That endless huge wheel, the vastness of the sky which can absorb any day of any gravity that is the end of suffering - the eternal.

So even today i see it. The two days of patience with the ex have taught me not to become angry so easily, and have taught me to rest instead of fight for my desires. I've not made much progress but its a small move in the right direction.

Even today this growing strength is developing. The sun was warm and I wanted to bathe in it as i walked to work... but the building were casting long shadows and I hated them for it. Same route walked every day for years but today its the buildings who are being nasty! Quite absurd I said to myself - it's not the building but because you want to sun that there is a problem. If you can not want to sun then no problem.

The stubbornness of us to let go of desires is the whole problem. "IIIII WANNA HAVE IT" go
the inner movements like a spoilt child - and it screams and fights and looks to get it and there is Suffering bounding onto the scene. See the huge sky looking down without judgementally, caring like a mother and we see how foolish we are to make such a big thing out of something so small. We let go the want for sunlight and we are at peace. It's simply inner movements, positive thoughts and a lot of very hard work and suffering!!

Newton was right with his second law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I wanted this girl very badly. Eventually jealousy took over and I punched a letter box - strange thing is it was I who got hurt! (Broken hand to this day - I like it, it reminds me not to make the mistake again.) Same with our whole self. We move out and the world moves out to meet us. Punch out and the world punches back. Need out and the world needs back. Give out and the world gives back. Love out and the world loves back.

That's as far as science goes in helping us tho. The belief that there is an immutable world of external substance which exists independent of us is the most destructive thought that persists in the world - along with the idea that the Natural world works by selfishness. Both are profoundly one sided for their opposite is equally important. The world exists within us, and the "selfish" individual is an expression of forces outside itself!

Whether material existence is inside or outside is unimportant. All we know is that when I punch a letter box there is an equal force backwards. Whether we existed before or after the punch is rather irrelevant!! It's in that moment of interaction between myself and the letterbox that things happen and the world exists. Abstract deductions from moments like this are interesting but profoundly unhelpful.

When we think of the world we need only know that "what you give, is what you get" and that is how the world will seem to you. Post a letter in the letter box and it seems a very nice thing. Punch it and it's a tough unforgiving adversary!!

So we must never think that problems come from outside us, and eventually do away with the thought that they come from inside us (altho this is the better of the two because it helps put away the unhelpful materialistic view). The solution lies simply in how we treat the world and that is a matter of hard work, deep consideration and care - in the face of the nuclear war of sufferings that we might be experiencing at the time.

Thus there is no unlucky me, sad me, abused me, hurt me because the solution to all our problems lies simply in treating "The World" in a better way. And very importantly I say "The World" because it is not any external thing in the world we are treating better, but the vast sky and endlessly rotating wheel of all existence that we must treat like our mother. Picking and chosing the things we treat well, will mean that the world becomes very picky about whether to help us or not!









Matrialism