SANITY - vs our usual way

It's insane that we humans destroy so much, so many of each other. We have no clue about how to respect those and what is around us. Now we are killing a whole ocean. Sad, pathetic, painful. It doesn't have to be this way.

Although I know I get "preachy like", it's really not that I'm trying to convert you to a "religion". I'm not even sure if Buddhism qualifies as a "religion". It has been called a "science of the mind" by the Dalai Lama. But I have to admit that it also addresses some of the same points that "religion" addresses, some of the same questions.

So in a way it is NOT a religion, and in a way it IS. But really, the important question that it addresses is "does it help?"

Yes, it does. And you should NOT be satisfied with it until it helps YOU.

How does it help?

It benefits [you and me] by releasing us from the need to grab onto things that don't exist.

Grabbing onto things that don't exist is tat amount to insanity and that is the world we live in...usually. It's painful and frankly, it often sucks.

Usually, when we say something "exists" we also understand that to mean a thing is "real", also and more importantly, that the thing has a quality of permanence aka an "essence" to it. This is almost always how we look at the world and how we look at our own lives.

When we learn the alphabet we learn that the letter "A" exists, but does it?

/ is a line. And \ is a line. Also - is another line as well. Put them together and we get a shape that looks like A. But do these lines or does this shape contain some THING really there that we can call the letter "A"? Is there an "essence" in this THING we call the letter "A"?

If things really do have this "essence" to them [in them] then we really SHOULD be grabbing onto them. Then it aught to really be a big deal when we lose them.

In fact, if things really had this aspect of "realness" in them, we should just accept that life is filled with sheer agony because we can never really possess this sort of "permanence" within anything.

Thankfully, this is not the case.

I remember one moment when this became clear to me. One Halloween, my daughter and I had carved a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern. After a couple days it was time to get rid of the rotting jack-o-lantern. I went out into the back of our apartment where there was a creek and some woods to "recycle" the rotting gourd. I began to break up the jack-o-lantern into smaller pieces and toss them around.

Then it hit me really strongly.

If this thing REALLY existed as it SEEMED to exist, then how come it is now becoming non-existent? How could this THING which we called a "jack-o-lantern" [or pumpkin or anything what-so-ever] "exist" as a real THING with it's own independent THINGNESS in one moment, and then in the next moment NOT exist that way???

It couldn't!

It NEVER existed in the way it SEEMED to exist - as some THING with it's own being, it's own essence, it's own realness. In fact, that is exactly why I COULD see it one moment, and then not see it. That is exactly why I could touch it, and then not touch it.

THE ONLY WAY SOMETHING CAN EXIST IS IF IT HAS NO PERMANENCE TO IT AT ALL, NO ESSENCE, NO "THINGNESS".

If that pumpkin existed the way we all usually THINK it exists, then it could not be destroyed, it could not change, it could never rot.

Yet, THAT is precisely how we look at the world - as though there is some-THING there that has an essence, a center, a "permanence" quality.

Because we look at the world this way, we suffer. We cause harm to the world, to everybody in it. And we cause ourselves to be full of stress, anxiety, ambition, greed, hate, ignorance.

If we could only learn to see, learn to understand, to calm down, to relax, allow, observe. If we could do that much we might be able to live another way - a way that's not so insane.

We are greedy for THINGS that don't exist, that don't have any essence to them.

We fear THINGS that are not real, that are impermanent and cannot be described accurately as some THING existing.

We are ignorant because usually, all we see and try to deal with is the surface appearance of things and events which are only appearing as one thing but are actually not that way at all.

If you say, "What about death, we should at least fear that!"

I'd ask you to analyze that. What is "death"?

Is it some THING you can separate from life? Can you distinguish it completely from anything else? Really? Not even science can explain death in any meaningful way.

Are there mountains? What are mountains? Do they exist as some individual THING completely distinct from the sky around them, from my observing them?

So you may have an impulse to fear death - I sure do - but what is that impulse based on? What is any greed or fear based on? What is our deep ignorance in dealing with reality based on?

Not much as it turns out.

When you see that every "THING" is actually "everything", when you see that this really means no "THING" exists as a "THING" and that this applies to every aspect of your experience, then and only then do you find that there is nothing to be greedy about, nothing really to base our fear on.

Then we are no longer so ignorant in how we approach others and the environment.

When you know THIS as a reality in a very robust way, you can then make use of that knowing by just chilling out a bit.

Just be here, let go of all THINGNESS and just be present with the no-THING that is everything.

That is releasing. That is sanity. That is respect. That is meditation.

That is the benefit of Buddhism.