Truth Will Out
I have started referring to every new year of age as a new place I've never been before. As a tourist learning my way around, I have no idea what to expect, no inkling whether what's happening is normal or peculiarly me. And by the time I figure it out, I'll have crossed the border into an entirely new place. We are all nomads crossing through life.
Last month I passed a milestone into the home stretch. In this uncharted territory where I am now tenting, I am seeing everything distorted by the wide angle perspective of experience, aka age. It's quite the fun house view. complete with the realization that I'm going to step outside soon. So what the hell. I laugh a lot more at life's ironies and peoples foibles, especially my own. It's hilarious how I've been trying to kid myself all these years with the same habitual come-ons and cons.
The world has been trying to kid me too, the man made world that is. But I am beginning to get wise enough to see through the cons and come-ons and comedy. The real world underneath is getting clearer so I'm seeing things differently.
Finally, a major miracle: my thighs look thinner. Alas, it's because my waist has disappeared.
Uncle! I give up. I can't change the world. It is even messier and nastier than it was in my youth--maybe even more so and without those shoulder pads sewn into everything. But I could change myself. And that did change the world around me-- into a more accommodating space. The world around me actually became peaceful only after I did.
Adjectives--like better and worse, good and bad, even up and down--are really judgment calls. Who am I to judge? What was horrific for the people of Tibet has been splendid for me; when the country was cracked open, I got their well hidden Dharma. From it I learned, if I put my pinkie and ring finger up, I'm going to swear the ring finger is "big". But when I put up my middle finger, I have to admit it's now small. I can't even be sure of a word like "green." Everyone sees color so differently, look how many colors we use just to describe ocean water: the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the White Sea, the brown Sargasso Sea, emerald waters, blue lagoon... . Last week I bought a cotton tunic whose stripes I thought were varying shades of gray but in the bright light of my apartment window, I discovered those stripes were shades of blue. When I tell someone the restaurant was good, I am making a judgment call, not speaking truth. Adjectives will get you if you don't watch out.
You may lose your mother but if you kept your first friends, those who liked you before there was any ulterior motive, you'll still have the feeling of being nurtured, guided, bonded and loved. Shared history makes family.
We all live in time zones not on the map. When I see the cost of medical treatment, theater tickets and restaurant meals these days, I feel like I've crossed a border into a zone my internal mechanism is not set for. I remember my grandmother screaming at me for being profligate when I told her a can of tuna cost me 27 cents; in her mind it was still .15. Now it's more than $2. I think we all get stuck in the values, culture and prices of our formative years, which become the time zone we continue operate in. I now feel jet lagged crossing so frequently from one zone to another. I want my warm, cozy familiarity back.
Sacre bleu! Charles deGaulle was right: cemeteries are full of supposedly irreplaceable people. By now, even those who were away on Mars and missed Celine Dion's song know the world does go on. It will without me too.
At least, I understand the only way I can live on when my body dies is to be missed enough to become an attractive example of how to live in this world, a memory so fond someone fiercely guards it in their heart and brings the example to life. I didn't invent this idea. It's actually in the ancient Kaddish prayer: "The good live on in the acts of goodness they perform and the hearts of those who hold them dear."
If somebody misses me enough to cry, that will be the real tribute, the award for my performance in this world.
I would like my epitaph to say: Here lies Sandy who never lied before.
Printing may be passé but imprinting is still huge. In so many hidden ways, we do become our mothers or our fathers, or else we marry them to keep the familiarity going.
Science has now confirmed that human beings require a lot of touching. Not touchiness. Just plain old hands on touching. Most people are starving. It's really funny to watch everyone thinking they're gonna be hugged by titles, awards, corner offices, nanosecond trades, lucrative contracts and twitter feeds. So much for the value of virtual reality.
Most little kids want to grow up to be firemen or fairy princesses. Why some kids dream of growing up to be total jerks beats me, but that is definitely what many do become.
Someone recently went viral saying there are no grownups. Yes there are. There are people who understand the entire world does not revolve around them, or end at the tips of their fingers and toes. There are people who can acknowledge their behavior affects others, that when someone doesn't respond the way you prefer, your own behavior may have something to do with that. In other words, adults are people who control their behavior because they realize it has consequences. In the inimitable worlds of the late Trungpa Rinpoche, they are mentally toilet trained.
Whoever said people don't want truth, they just want to be re-assured what they think is true was absolutely right. We all live inside a tent of our own thoughts. Our minds and actions get shaped by the beliefs we choose to grab and hang onto as we surf the waves of life. Truth is a cluster bomb that blows up our cozy home and the surfboard we store there, forcing us to flee as a displaced person into the lonely unfamiliar. You can see why most people don't want to go there.
Everybody is supposedly hunting for the meaning of life. It's the quest of quests: what is the meaning of life? Well, I have no idea...except maybe this new suspicion: taking some of that mean out of it.
~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.
Yours In The Dharma 2001-2010, Sandy Garson Copyright 2001-2010 Sandy Garson
Last month I passed a milestone into the home stretch. In this uncharted territory where I am now tenting, I am seeing everything distorted by the wide angle perspective of experience, aka age. It's quite the fun house view. complete with the realization that I'm going to step outside soon. So what the hell. I laugh a lot more at life's ironies and peoples foibles, especially my own. It's hilarious how I've been trying to kid myself all these years with the same habitual come-ons and cons.
The world has been trying to kid me too, the man made world that is. But I am beginning to get wise enough to see through the cons and come-ons and comedy. The real world underneath is getting clearer so I'm seeing things differently.
Finally, a major miracle: my thighs look thinner. Alas, it's because my waist has disappeared.
Uncle! I give up. I can't change the world. It is even messier and nastier than it was in my youth--maybe even more so and without those shoulder pads sewn into everything. But I could change myself. And that did change the world around me-- into a more accommodating space. The world around me actually became peaceful only after I did.
Adjectives--like better and worse, good and bad, even up and down--are really judgment calls. Who am I to judge? What was horrific for the people of Tibet has been splendid for me; when the country was cracked open, I got their well hidden Dharma. From it I learned, if I put my pinkie and ring finger up, I'm going to swear the ring finger is "big". But when I put up my middle finger, I have to admit it's now small. I can't even be sure of a word like "green." Everyone sees color so differently, look how many colors we use just to describe ocean water: the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the White Sea, the brown Sargasso Sea, emerald waters, blue lagoon... . Last week I bought a cotton tunic whose stripes I thought were varying shades of gray but in the bright light of my apartment window, I discovered those stripes were shades of blue. When I tell someone the restaurant was good, I am making a judgment call, not speaking truth. Adjectives will get you if you don't watch out.
You may lose your mother but if you kept your first friends, those who liked you before there was any ulterior motive, you'll still have the feeling of being nurtured, guided, bonded and loved. Shared history makes family.
We all live in time zones not on the map. When I see the cost of medical treatment, theater tickets and restaurant meals these days, I feel like I've crossed a border into a zone my internal mechanism is not set for. I remember my grandmother screaming at me for being profligate when I told her a can of tuna cost me 27 cents; in her mind it was still .15. Now it's more than $2. I think we all get stuck in the values, culture and prices of our formative years, which become the time zone we continue operate in. I now feel jet lagged crossing so frequently from one zone to another. I want my warm, cozy familiarity back.
Sacre bleu! Charles deGaulle was right: cemeteries are full of supposedly irreplaceable people. By now, even those who were away on Mars and missed Celine Dion's song know the world does go on. It will without me too.
At least, I understand the only way I can live on when my body dies is to be missed enough to become an attractive example of how to live in this world, a memory so fond someone fiercely guards it in their heart and brings the example to life. I didn't invent this idea. It's actually in the ancient Kaddish prayer: "The good live on in the acts of goodness they perform and the hearts of those who hold them dear."
If somebody misses me enough to cry, that will be the real tribute, the award for my performance in this world.
I would like my epitaph to say: Here lies Sandy who never lied before.
Printing may be passé but imprinting is still huge. In so many hidden ways, we do become our mothers or our fathers, or else we marry them to keep the familiarity going.
Science has now confirmed that human beings require a lot of touching. Not touchiness. Just plain old hands on touching. Most people are starving. It's really funny to watch everyone thinking they're gonna be hugged by titles, awards, corner offices, nanosecond trades, lucrative contracts and twitter feeds. So much for the value of virtual reality.
Most little kids want to grow up to be firemen or fairy princesses. Why some kids dream of growing up to be total jerks beats me, but that is definitely what many do become.
Someone recently went viral saying there are no grownups. Yes there are. There are people who understand the entire world does not revolve around them, or end at the tips of their fingers and toes. There are people who can acknowledge their behavior affects others, that when someone doesn't respond the way you prefer, your own behavior may have something to do with that. In other words, adults are people who control their behavior because they realize it has consequences. In the inimitable worlds of the late Trungpa Rinpoche, they are mentally toilet trained.
Whoever said people don't want truth, they just want to be re-assured what they think is true was absolutely right. We all live inside a tent of our own thoughts. Our minds and actions get shaped by the beliefs we choose to grab and hang onto as we surf the waves of life. Truth is a cluster bomb that blows up our cozy home and the surfboard we store there, forcing us to flee as a displaced person into the lonely unfamiliar. You can see why most people don't want to go there.
Everybody is supposedly hunting for the meaning of life. It's the quest of quests: what is the meaning of life? Well, I have no idea...except maybe this new suspicion: taking some of that mean out of it.
~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.
posted by Sandy Garson @ 4:04 PM
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