Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Life as a Joy in Spite of...

  I think that when a person realizes that there is nothing to lose, there is an opportunity for joy. There is this parable I have heard in many Buddhist stories, in which a person on the throes of death is dangling over a tree-branch. Realizing that they are about to fall to their death, they take a strawberry from the tree and eat it, savoring it fully.

   I am not exactly sure what the parable means, but I suspect it is something like: true enjoyment comes from realizing the inevitability that we will lose everything. This is no reason for despair, because despair always contains a false hope that things will be better if we are sufficiently sad. When we are children, we likely develop the idea that our parents punish us for doing bad things, and this gets processed as "if I endure the sad things, happiness will come out like the sun emerging from a cloud". But over time, I start to realize that this is a false comfort, and really we should just grab the strawberry, whatever that happens to be in the moment: a sip of coffee, a walk, a tree, a song, a book. 

    There is no reward for doing the "good", or at least appearing to be good to appease others. Instead, it's in letting go of that illusion that the joy becomes within reach because everything is a joy: everything is fleeing like a passing dream, and just like children we can enjoy the kaleidoscope when we know it is not ultimately real; they are just episodes, even the painful ones.

1 comment:

  1. "kaleidoscope" symbolises ever changing and endless possibilities and I told myself it is what happens in my head, which is I select and make it while delusions are more like human experience: real but bubble

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