Like any religion, it has its believable moments and its hogwash, though I find its believable moments to be somewhat more believable than most. As far as I can tell, it seems to be less about self sacrifice and living for others than most religions and more about finding inner peace so you can be a guiding light.
Then again, that sounds an awful lot like Christianity, doesn't it? Hmm...
Well, anyway, I came across a passage today that struck me in a peculiar way. It's talking about a man who was preparing for a solitary meditation retreat with a mind to record his epiphanies on a notepad and turn them into haiku. His mentor was not too keen on this idea and snatched the notepad from him:
He exhorted Ginsberg simply to be aware of the ongoing process of transparent awareness itself, rather than getting caught up in collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the mind and continuously rearranging its contents in the display cases of artistic ambition.
This one sentence was a serious jolt to me. I was particularly bothered by "the display cases of artistic ambition," having always been of the impression that creating art is an incredibly valuable, spiritual experience.
He goes on to say that you need to experience each moment because the joy of living life is "inexhaustibly rich" (a point with which I agree wholeheartedly):
Not like those little thought bubbles we are always trying to collect so that at least we have something to show for ourselves - a whole pile of little thought bubbles on a pad, big deal! Is that all we shall have at the sunset of our lives, a big, frothy pile of foam?
Is that really what art is? A big, frothy pile of foam? Isn't it the collective catalog of human ambition, desire, pain, and joy? Isn't it the one thing that separates us from animals, our ability to imagine the world not only as it is but as it could be? Isn't it the greatest gift we can give the world?
Thinking I must be mistaken, I waited for the sentence I knew was coming - the one in all nonfiction immediately following a bold idea, which softens and partially repeals the bold statement, providing great comfort to those whose worlds had just been upturned - but it didn't come.
Those words are just sitting in my brain like a heavy meal sits in your stomach, and the same questions linger. Will I be able to digest this thing and turn it into something useful, or will I have to expel it from me by force?
On one hand, I agree that experiencing individual moments is a source of pure and instant joy. Have you ever stopped in your tracks to notice the way a streetlamp illuminates a tree's leaves against a late evening sky? Have you ever noticed the very first breath of autumn? Have you ever reveled in the sublime comfort of finding exactly the right position on your pillow?
Moments like these are joyous and transient. They punctuate our lives with deep connections to our immediate present.
But I like to think these moments are made more powerful by the running inner monologue - the one that's constantly noticing, recording, remembering the thought bubbles, the flotsam, the jetsam. If it weren't for this acute awareness of our thoughts, would we be so in tune to our senses?
Isn't it the very desire to create art that leads us to lucid awareness of what we're experiencing at any moment?
If I had no desire to record my thought bubbles, would I even notice them? Would moments just pass me by as I wandered aimlessly through a sensory life?
Surely centuries of human artistry cannot be wrong; there is great value in art. Most certainly, there is.
Yet I wonder, if so many Buddhists appear so happy, do they know better? Is art a distraction from life rather than a celebration of it?
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