Of Life itself - the root questions...

An excellent source of Buddhist scriptures

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index-sutta.html

Read the Sigalovada sutta yesterday. Finally I have found a sutta that is aimed at worldly and not monastic life... and what a difference there is!!! Walking through London yesterday I felt reconnected with "the people" because this sutta explains in very simple terms the "Way of the Householder" and it speaks a very ancient code that I recognised in my heart. Some of the contents are a little odd by modern standards but it holds together pretty well as a guide to worldly living.

Seeing what the Buddha said about the domestic life I realise that I have got a very great deal wrong. For example on desire:

It seems that in this sutta Buddha has not bad things to say about desire itself. The problem it seems is when desire is one of the 4 reasons for commiting evil -

"Whoever through desire, hate or fear, Or ignorance should transgress the Dhamma"

This brought me up short and made me re-examine my view on desire. Cycling over Waterloo Bridge I realised that I have had a wrong view on desire since the outset. Thinking back to the situation with "my muse" I saw that intrical to my view of desire was that desire should be stronger than the will. For some Romantic reason I felt that destiny could only lie in desires that were too strong to resist because otherwise it was tainted by one's own rationality. If one could chose a girl then one could also not chose the girl and so it was never a certain destiny. If "my muse" was to Be-The-One then it followed logically that I could not chose her. So the view of desire must be that the Ego is extinguished in desire so powerful that one is helpless and is killed - but from that conflagration one is reborn in a new self and a new destiny. This has been the Romantic dream for almost ever - my desire to stop thinking, my desire to self-destruct in desire and oblivion - so that I might be reborn in a New and Better Life ... this has been the ERROR all along.

From what Buddha says in this sutta "desire" is one of the 4 sources of Evil and therefore we must never let desire become stronger than "us". I knew this as a child and "my muse" was an attempt to break the strangle hold on this as well - to find some kind of Good Desire - what I called Irreason at the time.

It seems that "desire" itself is neither Good nor Bad and we must remain on guard to protect ourselves from actions generated by Bad Desire.

It is fair to say this entire journey has been in the wrong direction. It is wrong to seek annihilation and rebirth through desire and destiny - this is not the message of Christ. To lose ourselves is akin to walking away from the controls of a plane, a ship or a car. Being in control need not be an effort, but we do need to be there.

The path to salvation then is actually the other way. We simply need to become more and more skillful pilots. My suffering of the past 10 years has been a desperate attempt to regain control of a plane that I deliberately stalled in the mistaken belief that it would somehow magically be carried upon a wind of destiny. "My Muse" was such a coincidence and occurring of such good fortune that I believed that God might even pilot me to New Lands that I had never been able to dream of in my small and petty Ego.

There are no new lands for the whole universe already exists in our own soul. To arrive at those new lands we need only become the better pilot of ourselves.

It takes a great man to command an army:

But a greater man to command himself.

Of Hamlet? I realised at the time that I had become Hamlet - unable to kiss her because to do so deliberately would be to chose my new life and so always be haunted by the possibility that I might not have chosen her. What kind of certainty and security lies in a world that we have chosen? We could just as easily have not chosen it. The difference is because we "desired" it - so logically desire must be greater than our choice else what we do becomes arbitrary. I hate the arbitrariness of my life - the fact that so much could be otherwise. I could have been a vet, I could have been in the army, I could have been an explorer, I could have been in a band, I could have been an artist, a scientist, I could have been cool, I could have been in so many relationships, I could have been so many people: like Hamlet I have chosen nothing - I neither was and I neither wasn't. This space has fascinated me - the Costner character in Fandango. And while we wait we die.

Now Duty is a solution because we "have" to do our duty and this gives us a force outside ourselves by which our Life can be constructed. The Dao, Logos, Truth and Dharma are Duties and forces outside ourselves - altho it is our True Nature which recognises them. Doing Good is the Law - this way we Live a Good Life. This is what the Sutta above is about. So again I say that I was wrong to seek "destiny" in Desire. Destiny - if anywhere - lies in Duty. Ultimately when we attach no more to our Ego then we achieve the non-action of Divine Grace where all things arise because of Karmas and Happenings and we act only through Good Decision, Duty and Wisdom.

Yet while I've known what I just said since reading Kant in university and later from reading the Bhagavad Gita I still don't get it. Is marriage a Duty? Is "continuing the family line" - as it says in the ibidem sutta - a Duty? If they are then how do the Monastics "chose" a different destiny? There are 2 dharmas here - the worldly and the monastic with different Laws. How can that be - do we chose between them? And if we are free to chose then are we free to chose Evil as well as Good? These existential questions have terrified me since I was a child - how often have I voiced them in this Blog - Not Many! - they are terrifying. Yet are these not the root questions of this Blog - of Life itself?

The Dharma says that if we chose evil we suffer and if we chose good then we prosper. Yet to suffer is this something we "don't want"? in which case if it is then we are driven by desire and so are unable to chose Good over Evil. The arguments go around and around in circles but at least I'm voicing them coherently now - the nausea, the apathy, the suffering at the root of Life.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

Even as I agonised over the issue of a new life with "my muse" I used to quote this to myself. I am not Hamlet in that I am afraid of what is right and what consequences await me, I am Hamlet existentially in that I see no substance in resolution. Either we are not free and what we do is destined and solid or we are free and what we do is abitrary and in another universe we do the other.

A Life built upon nothing but choices is no more than a destination

arrived at a thousand tosses of a coin.

Unless we desire a certain path - in which case we are slaves to that desire and our only role is to succeed or fail our master.

As a society we adopt similar desires and believe they are universal - then we measure ourselves against one another by our favour with that global Master. Those who are rich, well housed, in happily families - these are those favoured by the Master of our society.

Yet my conscience has always been revolted with the idea of satisfaction, security and complacency if I was ever favoured by that Master. What of all the other people who are not favoured? I don't want a master who is so poor that He cannot favour All.

If the Jewish God for an example has one weakness in the eye of my conscience it is His lack of Magnanimity.

The True God loves All - for He is All. Why would He spite himself? Those who suffer and fall from Grace are simply those who cannot see He is All. We turn from the All, we turn from having God's Eyes and when we turn from having God's Eyes we end up not seeing the hurt we bring upon ourselves.

Father forgiven them for they know not what they do.

Such is the nature of all wrong doing and suffering. So The Good is easy for those who see the All. The Dharma is a road well signposted for those who have God's Eyes.

Yet again I've known this yet again returning to My Life, My Desire, My Destiny: What do I do? Must we not seek the Eye's of God before we do anything? Certainly this has been my first goal since a very young child. Yet I face death before even having started to attain such divine insight and wisdom.

So simple question. Do I get married and treat my wife dutifully and protect the family name and lineage - seek immortality in the eyes of a Lover. Or, do I become monastic and seek immortality in the Eye's of God. Buddha gives two Dharmas! Are we supposed to chose? And so it starts again... I have only one avenue that I think may resolve this and that is extinction of the Ego. But this sounds very like the path I took with "my muse". Here are the issues laid bare at least...