You are deluded, and you know it. You are muttering to yourself, cursing inanimate objects as if they were your sworn enemy, slamming doors, refusing to look at people, keeping your “opinion” to yourself, somehow thinking that all of this is noble behavior, while also realizing that you have been here before. You are familiar with this delusion. In fact, it was easy to slip into, like a cozy robe on a chilly morning. But what you must do is get dressed and step into the cold, dark day, like a runner, or a firefighter, or even a boy on his first morning at summer camp. Yes, you have been here before. The starting line. Will you cross that line? Or is this as far as you are willing to go? How fortunate you are to have such a choice.
You think about the TV show you watched last night with the man who cut his nipple off, and the job you hope to get, and that time your friend crawled out of a van baking in the morning sun, and whether or not it will rain, and your email signature, and an endless stream of apparent nonsense, and you think about how you cannot stop this flow, and how in the simple act of awareness you are finally living your life without gaps. It makes sense that your thoughts are so scattered. You have to practice more. You have spent your whole life ignoring the stream of consciousness. If you are dying of thirst and cannot see the well through all of your worried thoughts, you will die all the same, but carelessly.
The lesson you learned today is but a passing cloud. Whether pleasant or stormy, it will not last. You cannot count on it. You will not remember it. It will become just another cloud and then not a cloud at all. So it is the circulating air that you are left with, and the still sky shifting above you. In this moving empty space is the passing lesson of eternity. It is not one cloud after another. If you try to grab any one of them, you will come up empty handed. Keep at it, day after day, just noticing the uninterrupted stream. Then the lesson will not be lost on you.
What if you started each day with a commitment to end all suffering? For yourself, for others, for the world. Is this too tall an order? Why are you so afraid to make great vows? Is it the discomfort you anticipate, or the failure? Life is failing. It is a steady march to your inevitable demise. And this is why there is no time to waste. Suffering is the bell inviting your attention. Until you accept the invitation, you will always be stuck, splashing away in your kiddie pool, more stagnant by the second, too self-absorbed to step away from your plastic paradise. Do you vow to end the suffering of all beings?
You have anticipated this moment for months. You have wrapped it up with decadent expectations, like a Christmas gift. This is a mistake, and you know it. It is not the wrapping nor the receiving that make a gift. It is, and always has been, the giving. As soon as you lose sight of this, you have lost the moment in your craving, for what you crave is a world that bends to your will, and there is no place like this. When you find yourself wanting, first perform a simple act of giving—a small bow is enough—then look and see.
You are frustrated, lost again in your self pity, about who knows what, perhaps the water splashed out of the tub, and you’ll have to use a clean towel to wipe it up, and you’ll have to wash that towel and then dry it. You you you you. You are swept up like a leaf in a tornado, and your daughter, for no apparent reason, looks at you with a grin and says, “Smile,” and as you recognize wisdom for wisdom’s sake, the storm inside of you clears with the opposite of violence, and that same leaf floats back down to earth, washed in the radiant, cloud-clearning light of a fresh start.
Change. It is not so much a question of when, or how fast, or to whom, or how much. Change, like the unfolding of a flower in spring and the wilting of a leaf in fall, is the life source. Suffering is the resistance to change. Change is not the loss of what you love, just its transformation. If you love a thing, you will let it follow the path of impermanence, the path of liberation. If you love a thing, you will not possess it or stifle it or keep it imprisoned by your nostalgia. You will let it grow. And you will feel joy.
It is time for a walk, and you do not go. You find some excuses to put it off. I have too much to do. I can walk later. If I don’t get this done now, it will never get done. These excuses congeal into a kind of sludge, and you are stuck, even though it is time for a walk. You know the right thing to do. It’s not a big decision, as far as you can tell. All your life, you have heard that you must pay attention to details. You cannot sit here any longer. You are gumming up the works. It is time for a walk. But what about those details pressing upon you, cementing you to the spot? And then you step free of your sludge—you can almost hear the pop—and you are walking in the open air.
You hear a loon calling overhead. It is flying. This is hard work for a loon. So much unrecognized effort, but the loon does not waste a second lamenting or wishing for praise. Your work should be no different. Authentic. Spontaneous. Done with concentration and diligence and purpose. You must have the utmost faith in your actions. If you act correctly, with diligence and attention, you will make a beautiful sound. This benefits the world. You do not have to force your voice upon anyone. You are just like the lost thing found in a jacket pocket.
The counter needs wiping. The toilet needs cleaning. The dishes need washing. The clothes need folding. The recycling needs sorting. The floor needs sweeping. Your belly needs filling. Your teeth need brushing. Your body needs resting. The list could go on and on and on, for you, for the house, for the family. But it won’t. One day, the gifts will stop coming. Then what will you do? A life without gratitude is hell.