Sisyphus Revisited

  This morning as I was preparing the cushions for the group meditation practice, I was reflecting on the idea that life is often consisting in many related processes, and sometimes it can feel as though there is no progress. I set up the cushions, then the cushions have to go back in the closet again, and so on into a kind of temporal infinity! There is a certain sameness about what people do, and one often wonders if this is a kind of mental cage or prison. But in fact, all of it is very much like a kind of mental training in seeing that our worlds are constructed moments, and there is a continual cycle of moments arising and falling. To know what part of the cycle one is on is in essence part of the process of being liberated within the cycle itself.
   It helps to know that time itself is only a construction of the mind. For instance, I can either see the meditation as a single moment in time, or I can project infinite moments. It's like taking a picture and multiplying it to endless lengths until the image itself appears ridiculous. If I think this latter way, then nothing has much meaning or purpose. On the other hand, if I only take this moment the way it is, then everything is already complete and contained within it, and I can enjoy inhabiting that space, rather than getting nauseated at how 'similar' it looks to other moments. I am not endlessly abstracting from it to the point of 'everything looking the same', but I am taking that moment simply on its own terms, exploring its contours as it arises. This is a kind of skill, to let go of the tendency to form abstract bundles out of discreet experiences.
   The other point goes back to the story of Sisyphus, who some interpret to be a kind of cautionary tale. Sisyphus apparently angers the gods/goddesses to the point of being punished by having to endlessly roll a rock up a hill, over and over again. But there is this point in between the rolling of the rock that Sisyphus learns that he has a bit of freedom in his drudgery--that little space where he is allowed to get his bearings and know where he is in the moment, rather than trying to accomplish his impossible task. Perhaps this 'moment' symbolizes what is being done in the sitting cushion, but we hopefully try to extend this practice to our everyday toils as well.
  While Sisyphus seems to represent the mundane efforts required to make a life, people rarely mention the figure of Tantalus, who I feel is the converse. While Sisyphus is condemned to eternal drudgery, it is Tantalus who is punished with endless desire of having to reach up to grab a fruit that is always exceeding his reach. For me, Tantalus represents the life of endless desire---an eternal 'vacation' where one is left to imagine endless pleasures without cease, and without boundaries. Can Tantalus ever stop and realize that what he is imagining as real is only illusory, and can he simply stop rejecting the frustration he feels, and embrace frustrated desire as a part of his vulnerable being as a person? Is it possible to enjoy frustration rather than trying to exceed it through the satisfaction of desire? I leave these questions to ponder and to bear in silence.