For better or worse, I am a writer.
All my life, I’ve attempted to use the slippery, sloppity medium of language to convey that which cannot (and will not) be constrained by language. The end result of this quest, which by its own nature is doomed to failure, is none other than a series of short, arguably manic passages detailing my thoughts on the path of “spirituality.”
There is no particular order, trajectory, or even grand purpose within these writings. More often than not, they emerge as spontaneous, meandering attempts to navigate the chaos of insight and reality.
This receiving this, this craving self, this deluded self, aggregates atop what is real and weaves a trap from which it cannot escape. It is grinded down like sandpaper, reduced to nothing and reconfigured as that which is practical and wholesome. It is lag in the system, a bug that devours RAM, a feedback loop that is too tangled up in the frantic and ultimately futile search to be rid of its own fear. Before I wished to see, the eyes were useful. Before I learned how to speak, laughter was entirely natural. Resting in vigilant equipoise, this body and mind are pacified, having been revealed as fundamentally complete and equipped, possessed of steadfastness and directness that had merely been obscured, though one cannot locate a definitive point where this obscuration arose.
All this drama of seeking and striving to be a figure of renown and praise, and for what? One, many, both, neither? I refuse to deal in absolutes, for I’m not a Sith. All knowledge is provisional. All trajectories rely on points within a boundless matrix; to get there from here and here from there relies upon wise coordination and triangulation, sailing in a sea without end. I look upon myself in a mirror, and there is a Buddha. Aha. A course has been set. It is not a course toward the thing in itself, but tastes of it come and go. Notes of its song catch my ear in a busy crowd. Course correction, bit by bit. Though I can’t find your house by GPS, I will use a map and follow the road signs, narrowing down as I approach. And thus it goes for Buddhahood. There is no other vehicle than that orientation, the display of all that arises, this mind and body. Alas, alas, the course is set.
I’ve never played Chicken in a car, but I’m learning not to swerve.
The Primordial Void imagined something other than nothing. A dream of Mind arose. Mind dreamed of subject and object. The subject dreamed of a self. The self dreamed of X. From top to bottom, a series of distinctions that appear without ever coming into being. If one balances sufficiently, they can slice through the layers to the apparent core and glimpse the No-Thing from which the chain appears to stretch. In that instant, everywhere and every time is recognized to be held in the infinite and eternal. The dream blinks out for a moment, piecing back together in an echo of birth. Dao to the one to the two to the many. To touch the Living Void, however, is not to reach the end, for there is no distinction between one’s original face and the myriad appearances. To bring the wisdom of that which empty into that which is full… Here, just here, is Buddhahood.
I’ve long since learned to stop caring which way the wind blows, but at times, the world still feels like a runaway sled on a steep hill. There is nobody home, and yet the home degrades all the same. Energy and ambition that blazes at the moment of birth gives way to a protracted demise at the hands of rote banality.
How am I to navigate samsara, colored by decay, without complaint? There are few instructions, but many warnings. I should be wary of frenzies of joy, for these are states of false exuberance, of mania. I should be wary of entertaining depressing thought, for this will cause a perpetuation of grimness. I should even be wary of leaning against my boulder and staring up at the top of my hill, and in doing so, recognizing the nature of the exhausting tedium that is maintenance of the body, which demands so much yet awards so little, and is doomed from the very instant of its beginning.
In hearing these three well-meaning warnings, I find myself in a conundrum. I cannot move forward, go backward, or stand still. The only outcome gained through pondering this is a spell of madness. And from that madness springs sanity.
The repulsion toward thought and intellect has left so many seekers feeling cognitively dissonant and dissociated, corrupting all forms of logic and analysis much in the same way we might develop a blood clot from neglecting the body
Post-realization, reality is an effortless but highly engaged tightrope walking exercise of attempting to embody wisdom as a form mirror of empty clarity… without falling off either edge. One reifies concepts into a concrete reality, and one leads to apathy and bypassing and craving the void. It’s a perfect threading, as simple as unclenching the fist yet known to the wise as the flapping of a Buddha’s arms.
The nearer one comes to full Buddhahood in the classical sense, the narrower and narrower the path becomes, with the mountain falling away steeply on either side into ground no longer visible behind the mist. You’re too high up to jump now, and you can’t step backward without losing your footing. One wobble to either side, and you either regain your balance or take a brief yet harrowing tumble until you remember to get a grip. The effortful energy, the virya, still stirs like breath or blood. The only question is what it should be used for. How it should prevent evil and ignorance from arising, near and far. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, as they say. If not directed to that which is wholesome, it will seek out lesser pleasures, just as a fish in deep, dark waters glides toward the light of its demise.
James Wolanyk 