Buddhism is Weird - embracing disorientation

Alarm goes off..

We get up in the morning and fight through that little bit of confusion, that little bit of fog that is left over, that's still there as the remnants of sleep. If you notice, there is usually a little bit of anxiety there as well, a little bit of doubt too.

Then, we put it all together. We have to. We organize our thoughts and plans for the day and we begin to move. The "confusion" [that is really an openness or an opportunity] has to be relegated and ignored in order to function, to not appear "weird".

You solidify your identity and your mission. You have to.

"This [you tell yourself somewhere inside] is life. This THING is what it all is, and this THING is the meaning behind it. These THINGS are my beliefs. This THING is my purpose."

It's not like it takes much time for this to all go through your mind, it all comes to pass in a second or two of habit. That openness, that doubt, that question? You'll deal with that later, maybe when you're old.

Buddhism seems weird to us mostly. It seems unrealistic and detached from reality - from what we THINK is reality. Buddhists seem weird. My daughter thinks I'm weird. I'm sure my family in general probably thinks I'm a little odd. Even I see some of the Buddhist teachers Ive known as kind of strange in their behavior.

When it comes down to it, when we compare the profoundness of life to it's more mundane appearances I think it's fair to say that yes, it is weird. The ultimate truth looks very weird to a conventional gaze.

But what is truly weird [to me anyway] is that we would take something so profound, something so precious and so filled with absolute meaning, that we would take THIS [our present experience] so for granted, that we would form it into little idea packets of psuedo-meaning as for instance in the pursuit of wealth, control, ideology and short sighted achievements for the sake of status.

There is a little bit of all those, all those "inclinations toward THING-NESS" in our morning wake-up routine and yet we don't notice the weirdness in that. We don't notice the weirdness of ignoring the very basis of our experience.

Im not saying that we should be without goals - far from it. But how weird is it to spend a lifetime [or even a single moment] trying to ignore the openness, the unlimitedness of THIS very moment? Yet that is what we almost always do. We make reality, we make experience into a THING.

THINGS are limited!

The experience of taking reality and making it into a conceptual THING is an experience of limitation.

If you notice what is NOW you don't need Buddhism.

If you are here in YOUR life, fully, presently, you don't need a THING called Buddhism.

Buddhism is just a name for the path back to your present experience. If you take this path you are a Buddhist.

But to others, you might look a little weird.

Why? Why do we think Buddhists are weird? Why do we think of those who look into THIS as "weird"?

We fear openness. We fear voidness. We fear reality. It's weird to us.

Remember, "reality" is not a THING, it is undefinable as a THING. All THINGS are made of everything else except themselves. And when those THINGS are seen in their nature, they are also not there as THINGS. This can seem disorienting from a certain angle.

In order to deal with that disorientation [which we could also label as weirdness] we orient our experience around THINGS, around idea-THINGS, material-THINGS, principle-THINGS, emotion-THINGS, meaning-THINGS, people-THINGS, relationship-THINGS. This makes THINGS "grabbable", not weird.

This THING-NESS gives us reprieve from the openness, reprieve from ineffable voidness-interdependence. But it also smashes the very preciousness of this moment.

To a certain extent, that's unavoidable because we are still a work in progress. But if we don't stop and notice what this all really is in it's most profound sense, if we don't at least occasionally notice the true nature of this experience we are having right NOW and not just the surface appearance of it that becomes our ideas 'about' it, then in that case you have to wonder, who really is weird?

Are Buddhist practitioners weird when they give up material pursuits to live fifteen years in a cave or is it weird that us ordinary scientifically minded folk once considered the possibility of building a 'doomsday bomb' to destroy all life as we know it?

Is it weird that people follow the Dalai Lama around listening to him talk about the importance of compassion or is it weird that we normal people casually give support to wars that slaughter whole innocent families?

Is it weird to look at this situation and try to understand the nature of THIS present experience or is it weird to go about our lives and ignore this question as much as we can?

Weirdness is relative - like anything else. I embrace my weirdness.

This reminds me a little of climbing [there are a lot of things about climbing that correlate to Buddhism BTW]. Many people don't understand climbers or mountain climbing in general. Climbers are weird at best to non-climbers and they are even selfish, risk-taking dirt-bags to others.

But there is something really deeply precious in climbing. Climbing inspires. Climbers inspire. They inspire themselves and through themselves others around them as well.

There is something pretty deep that sometimes happens when you complete a difficult climb and there is a view at the top that is often described as a religious experience by many climbers. But to many non-climbers, climbing will always be just something weird.

Yes I am weird. Sometimes I spend my time writing this blog or reading Buddhist texts that I could other wise spend making more money or building shelters for the homeless. That makes me weird by normal standards.

But reality is actually kind of weird also, if you look at it.

How weird is it to see THINGS when things do not exist? "Experience is" now THAT is a weird statement! And yet, it more closely describes something that is not a THING.

And yet, if you were to stand somewhere with a big view, you might also describe the experience using weird terms.

Just go to that big view, you don't have to climb a mountain to get to an overlook with a view. Just have that viewless view, that openness.

I embrace my weirdness.

Please embrace yours.

Life is too short not to.