When Dorothy peered behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz her world fell apart. All that she hoped for, all her dreams, all her plans dissolved in the sudden awareness that no great and powerful being could save her, could rescue her from the suffering of loss or satisfy the cravings that beset her, and her companions.
I know just how she must have felt.
People dump on each other, or jump on each other in small ways, and over time it builds up. If those builds up go unexamined, and uncared for, violent outbursts can be the result. At an extreme level, people rape, torture, blow up things, and kill each other.
I’ve found it painful to read the news these past few years. Disasters, scandals, the hatred seeping from the headlines was more than I thought I could bear.
Abandonment from or by one’s muse can muddy the waters of a writer’s creative flow, but sometimes life’s eddies and deltas beckon us on warm inlets of tempting diversions. I’m grateful that over the years of my comings and goings from my commitment to writing the words have been generous in returning, much like the tide.
“Aren’t you that guy who goes to that Buddhist place?” I said I was and she looked at me, paused, and then said “I always found it funny that people would worship a guy who isn’t a God.” I smiled because it probably is funny from the outside, what we Buddhists are doing.
Billions of dollars have been spent across the continent in the futile war on drugs. In the U.S., we have prison cells filled with folks whose main or only crime is using and/or selling this plant.
I remember the feeling, as if the universe had stepped from the darkened wings of my life and escorted me on a new trajectory in the orbit of my existence.
Biking with Jizo has become a norm for me. Although I have to confess that I haven’t been so diligent in recent months and it’s starting to show. However, more often than not, I experience the like, don’t like, and neutral more clearly. Without a lot of getting lost in elaboration. Stinky alley. Don’t like. Fall leaves. Like. Dog in a yard. Neutral. End of story.
Ruth Ozeki’s new novel, “A Tale for the Time Being”, is a brilliant modern time journey, told across a landscape of ocean waves, quantum physics, Buddhist monasteries, and portend crows.
My assignment: cut 20% of extraneous duties out of my life. No musts, no have-tos, only to answer this question: what would two hours of beauty look like?
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