The Path...

I was watching a BBC documentary on Buddha yesterday.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=185812058748112905&pr=goog-sl

This brings me closer to understanding both my own path and also Buddhism.

They teach Buddhism like it were a fitness/weight loss program. And they have glossy posters of people who have done well through the fitness program, and there are lots of stories of what it is like to lose weight.

Actually I'm beginning to realise this is all rubbish, and that like my opening realisation to start this blog - Buddhism is its own worst enemy.

My own experiences seem much closer to the subject matter of this BBC documentary than actual Buddhism!

When I was a child (like most children I imagine) I was deeply effected by the suffering of the world. Unfortunately seeing people as the cause of all the stupidity I came to hate them for it - so that was a big mistake.

While doing some homework one night I slipped into a meditative trance where i suddenly became aware of the contrast between the pool of light cast by an angle-poise lamp and the darkness of the rest of the room which engulfed me. Seeing that the mind stood between both darkness and light opened an awareness of an infinite awareness of space after which maybe I fell into a Jhana and when I came out was filled with blissful peace. I ran to my father to ask him what it was and I think he thought i was going mad. Somehow I then ignored the experience and pursued enquiry into the world with my new awakened consciousness. A second big mistake.

The enquiry that I was taking though and still take is the answer to a question which cannot be asked. It is like Hitch-Hiker's guide to the galaxy and 42 where the issue is the question not the answer. We cannot frame the question because it is the question of existence and life itself. If we ever did frame it - what would we have to be to do so? not-alive and not-existing?

In the documentary the understanding of the issue which Buddha pursues is not some abstract knowledge of suffering and the wish to help - as though we were left-wing NGO members with some political agenda. It is not an abstract issue of heavens and gods, of mystical practices and esoteric knowledges into which we must be initiated.

It is nothing but the deepest issues that effect our own life and the life of the people around us. We don't need to seek it - we have it already. An interest in being alive is what he pursued. What is this thing called life? and why is it so hard? What is its nature? and armed with that knowledge what am to do with it?

What is "life"? Unfortunately Science has done a lot of damage because in Science each question become focused upon a thing in the world. The issue of life is so vast however that we can't bring it within the scope of any telescope or science faculty. What the chemist, the biologist, the physicist, the mathematician, the doctor, the religious studies, philosophy, language, art, psychology, social-sciences, agriculture students are all doing is life itself!

Not just only down the lens of their telescopes, but with their very life they are pursuing this question. But unfortunately the box of scientific though limits their enquiry to what is within the frame of the research - it does not allow them to bring their own lives and relative existence into the equation - because that is considered "unobjective".

But deny it all we might - everything we do, even gazing at the stars lightyears away is all about our own life and the life that all beings share, right here, right now. Space is infinite because it is all here right now with our these very momentary minds that live.

So abstract enquiry is not the point, abstract belief in distant gods, in mystical legends, practices, schools, groups, teachers, places, languages is not the point. As they always do say in Buddhism the issue is one that is with us right now even if we try to escape it. That we REALLY are alive, that the world REALLY is there, and that we REALLY struggle against it.

In that sense everyone is a Buddhist, and for that reason the word is really quite meaningless, misleading and we shouldn't use it.

Better is simply to face life as it REALLY is. To forget about our allegiences and the things we are "supposed" to believe, and the people we are "supposed" to respect and follow. Better to just see things as they REALLy are, for ourselves even in the face of ridicule and rejection by our contemporaries, our teachers and the world itself.

Ridicule is what we will face, because the world has not yet liberated itself, because we have not yet liberated ourself. We are not face-to-face with REALITY and so we will face illusions and distractions all the way. I am learning that a humble boldness and refusal to accept what other people say, no matter how wise they are supposed to be, until I see it for myself is the only way - even unto rejection by the whole world.