Content Warning: Everything
In my local news, in international news, it seems people are more afraid, more confused, more agitated than ever.
It seems the politicians are fascists, r*pists, murderers, who would’ve thought? The elite want to control the masses? Surely that never happened before. We’re making the world uninhabitable for our species! Surely we’ve never pillaged the natural resources to the point of self-harm? Like, we’ve never had plagues due to out rampant urbanisation before, have we?
“But never before at this scale!” some argue. I don’t even want to entertain such comparisons - but for example, in WW2, roughly 40.000 people died per day. I don’t think we lose about 40.000 people a day to war nowadays. Black Plague killed roughly 1/3rd of human population in 1340s. Just random perspectives.
But I dislike even these little comparisons, because it takes away the main point.
Saṁsara was never any better than what it is today, and it never will be. This is why we seek a way out of it.
Today is no different on the fundamentals that matter. News were horrible yesterday, and it’ll be worse tomorrow. Perhaps some days, for a few weeks or years, it’ll look like we’ve made it. Economy will be blooming, newspapers will be flashing with dazzling smiles, people in the streets will be happy.
Those days are the hems of the dancer’s skirt. They’re a mirage, a bubble foam, an illusion. R*pists will conquer the earth, murderers will feast on the graves of their enemies, thieves will cackle in glee.
I do not post these to be edgy or shocking. I post this because this is liberating - to be free from expectations of a “better future”. Expectations and hopes will kill us worse than anything. Our inability to cope with the terrors of Saṁsara has nothing to do with what Saṁsara fundamentally is - a prison.
It seems we’re too busy complaining that the prison food is bad, the inmates are rude, the guards are terrorising us, etc, forgetting that this is what a prison is supposed to be. It couldn’t have been any other way around.
Every day I see someone water their plants, kiss their children, do a good deed, it melts my heart. Because it breaks the norm. This is a brilliant prison we’re living in, a delightful hell - precisely because on a superficial level, it only makes sense to kill & steal, and yet some people don’t do it. It only makes sense to be a liar (it seems), yet some people refuse to steal!
This is a hell where people hug and console their children. Where people donate their food to monks. Where people build monasteries. It is a most fortunate hell indeed.
Practicing the dhamma doesn’t depend on our situation getting any better. Ironically, if things could get any better, we wouldn’t need a way to escape Saṁsara to begin with. We would concentrate our efforts to reform Saṁsara and enjoy the bliss of our heavens. This is unrealistic though, isn’t it? Even the greatest heavens, the realms of utmost pleasures, are in fact a prison, isn’t it? So why bother trying to make earth more like those prisons?
Practicing the dhamma doesn’t depend on our situation getting any better. Lord Buddha starved for weeks, got cold, got sick, ate his own faeces and endured even worse calamities before securing his salvation.
Things weren’t any better in those days. Most children died in the first few years. Most mothers also died with them. War was a daily occurrence - not like reading news about Palestine or Ukraine, but actually for the vast majority of people.
Buddha wasn’t reading the news in his warm house, full belly, pretty clothes. He was drinking his own urine and watching the terrors of war in real time. He was starving, he was cold, he was dirty. He didn’t have the internet to make scriptural researches at the tip of his fingers.
He didn’t have or need anything but his conviction to secure his liberation and guide the way for us. This should be a liberating thought, if we think our condition is pitiable in 2024.
Every day we can find reasons to feel afraid. Every day we can find reasons to be blessed.
Which one do you choose?
