Two Hundred and Eighty Nine

We know, if we know anything, that we’re part of something greater than ourselves—something we call the world.  We don’t know what the world is, any more than we know what we are; but we know we’re part of it. 

We used to think we’re an important, even the most important, part of it—that whoever or whatever created the world created it for us.  Why, then, does he allow his creatures to suffer?

Life is miserable for most of us most of the time.  Nevertheless we struggle to go on living.  Some of us go on as an object in motion remains in motion unless and until it meets an immovable object.  Others do it because even the most miserable of us can remember at least one moment of peace, and even joy.  That moment felt so right that we assume it must be what our creator intended life to be at every moment.  Why, then, isn’t it?

Wise men said we suffer because we don’t live in the real world, but in its shadow.  We left the real world, which is illuminated by god’s truth, as our ancestors left their hearth fire and ventured into the forest.  Forgetting the way back, they became lost in the dark forest of illusion that we call civilisation.  Why, then, didn’t our creator rescue us from that forest, as any loving parent would rescue a lost child? 

Westerners said our ancestors disobeyed their creator.  He therefore banished them from his garden.  Ever since then we, their descendants, have wandered the world, trying to find our way back.

The creator tests each of us to see whether we, too, will disobey him.  Those who pass his test are rewarded with an afterlife of everlasting bliss in his heaven.  Those who fail are punished with everlasting torment.

Some Easterners also said we’re being punished, for sins we committed in a previous life.  Buddhists said the miseries of life are as illusory as its joys, and we must free ourselves from both to find peace.  All Easterners agreed that the only escape from this world of illusion is the peace we Westerners call death.

Despite their differences, Westerners and Easterners agreed this world of change is an illusion, a shadow of the real world, which is eternal. But if scientists can find no proof there’s any world other than this world of change, then nothing is real because nothing is eternal.  It's real to us because we ourselves are what we call illusions.

Not only the world, but the universe, will one day end, scientists say—perhaps to be succeeded by another, just as it presumably followed another.  Perhaps the multiverses of Western science are as illusory as the kalpas of Eastern religion.  We don’t have, and may never have, sufficient evidence to prove either.     

Neither can give us proof, so most of us have lost faith in religion, and are losing faith in science.  But we still believe in gods.

Those who still believe in a heavenly god can no longer believe he’s merciful and loving.  The world has taught them he can only be a god of wrath, who punishes those who dare to disobey him.  But even those who no longer believe in heavenly gods still believe in earthly gods.

Those who have wisdom, riches and/or some other power often think they’re gods on earth, free to do as they choose.  But only fools believe they’re powerful enough to master those who can't or won't master themselves.  

Human society consists of masters and slaves.  Politics is a game they play, the former pretending to command and the latter pretending to obey.  Both know, if they know anything, that it’s only a game

Our powerlessness keeps most of us free from the delusion that we're gods on earth.  But most of us want to believe some people are, or can be, gods on earth, who could right all its wrongs if they chose to do so. 

Some of us do want to make the world better.  But we can’t do it alone.  And we’re always alone.

We’re told to obey our masters because they’re gods on earth—wiser, stronger and/or more powerful than we are.  We all know that, far from being our superiors, our masters are more often than not our inferiors.  But we obey them anyway—or pretend to—because we’re powerless.   

We’ve lost all hope for justice, so we settle for order.  But we know, if we know anything, that it's an illusion.

Two Hundred and Eighty Eight

 I am self-isolating, as most people are, or should be, during the pandemic; but I’m more isolated than most because I have no family or friends with whom to share my isolation. 

Most people find living in such intimacy with their family and/or friends stressful because their relationships are as competitive as they are co-operative.  Siblings compete for the love of their parents, and the more friends have in common, the more they’re also rivals.  Isolation exacerbates these conflicts, constantly reminding people of things about their friends and/or family that they usually ignore or overlook. 

I don't have enough in common with other people to make us competitive or co-operative.  Other people always deferred to me, and asked me to tell them what to do; but they never did what I told them.  So I went for weeks without seeing or speaking to another person long before the pandemic.

Aristotle said a man who’s unable or unwilling to live in society must be either a beast or a god.  But we must live alone, because society's an illusion.  We pretend we're all fundamentally alike, and there's a society to which we all belong; but we're alike in that each of us is unique.

The people with whom I had the most in common were never my family and friends.  They were people I knew only through books or other works of art.  But I never made Holden Caulfield’s mistake of wanting to know their author.  I knew the person who the creator seems to be from his creation is never his real self, but the self he’d like to be and/or imagines his readers would like him to be.  We all imagine the person we’d like to be; then we either pretend we already are that person, or we love someone who seems to be that person, or believes we are that person.  Our best companions are always imaginary.

Two Hudred and Eighty Seven

I’ve seen too much, and not enough. 

The good was like sunlight glittering on the water's surface, the bad like smoke from a distant fire drifting across the water. 

I’ve seen the surface, but never dived beneath it, into the maelstrom.  If I had, I would have drowned. 

I should have drowned. 

Two Hundred and Eighty Six

Who am I?  What am I?  I no longer remember.

I know I once had the potential—was born with the potential—to become more than who and what I was.  Why did I fail to realise that potential?

Most of us fail because we’re born in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But has there ever been a right place and time?  Perhaps there was, before we became what we call civilised. 

When I was young, I wanted to be and do everything—writer, composer, singer, dancer, musician, actor, artist—because I did them all well.  Or so others told me.   

Most people are multitalented—probably we all are—but they become successful only by limiting themselves, and focusing on their most marketable talent.  I didn’t have to read Marx to know capitalism’s division of labor forces us to become machines performing one and only one task.

I wished I lived in Marx’s ideal society, so I could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and philosophise after dinner without having to become a hunter, a fisherman or a philosopher in order to earn a living.  Like Whitman, I contain multitudes.  But I had to be one and only one person, so I chose to be a teacher.  A bodhisattva.     

The moment I became aware of the world, I knew it was broken.  I never imagined I was the only person who could mend it, but I believed I was one of them.

Others thought so, too.  As soon as I was old enough to read and write, other children gathered around me, sitting on the porch steps and listening as I read to them.

Later, in school, some teachers resented me because other students came to me instead of them for help.  Others have always come to me for help—not only other people, but lost and/or wounded animals—but although I helped other animals, I could never help other people.  They thanked me, but kept making the same mistakes, like children who never grow up.  I finally got tired of telling them what they already knew.

All we know, we knew in the beginning.  But we forget what all animals know in order to become what we call civilised.

I always felt more at home in the company of other animals than other humans.  We’re both prisoners in the world humans made, and call civilised.  

When I was a child, other people’s dogs jumped their fences and followed me as I walked home from school.  When I sat down, birds and butterflies perched on my head and shoulders.  Now I seldom see birds or butterflies in the city.  I am alone.

The failure isn’t mine alone.  We all took a wrong turn at the beginning, and now from the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can be made.

I know I still hear them in my dreams, because I’m aware of a sudden silence when I wake.  But I no longer remember my dreams.

Two Hundred and Eighty Five

Fear makes them do what they do.

We all come into the world helpless and vulnerable.  If we’re welcomed, it’s usually because those who welcome us hope we will help them—will be their allies in a war that began before we were born. 

If we serve them well, they reward us with what we agree to call love, even though we know it isn’t.  We know what love is, even if we never experience it, and it isn't payment for service rendered.   

He tried to kill me because he saw me as his rival for her.  But I knew he also loved me because I knew him better than he knew himself.  I knew he loved us both, and wanted both of us to love him as a father and a mother love their child.  And I tried to, for her sake.  That was the problem.  It was for her sake, not his.

They're all frightened children, and I tried to love them all.  Now I’m tired of them all.

Two Hundred and Eighty Four

I’m nearing the end of the book, just as I’m nearing the end of my life.  And what have I learned?

All we know, we knew in the beginning.  We all know that life is misery for most people most of the time.  But we make ourselves forget what we know in order to go on living, hoping our life will be different. 

The moment I knew the world, I loved it and wanted to know it better.  Even when I no longer loved it, I still wanted to know it better in order to make it better.  But I also knew that knowledge is not power.  Only power is power.  In order to know the world—to know why it is what it is, and how to change it—I'd have to become the world.  I am finite and it is infinite, so the lover’s quest for knowledge of his beloved can only end in his death.

We used to pretend that not only did we want to live, we wanted to live forever.  But we know nothing lives forever. What we pretended was a desire for immortality was in reality a desire to be nothing, to forget what we know.

Two Hundred and Eighty Three

As I continue to read the book, it becomes less difficult for me to read.  Or rather I become accustomed to the way it’s written.

Most authors write this way now, not only authors of schoolbooks.  They assume they must explain ideas to readers who’ve never encountered them before, so they describe them several times in several ways, hoping their ignorant readers find something in their limited experience to which they can relate them.  No author seems to know there are no new ideas.  All we know, we knew in the beginning.  What seems new to the ignorant, the wise know is a revival and revision of old ideas.

The ignorant are ignorant because they see things as facts, separate and unrelated.  Teaching them how to think doesn't consist of making them memorize these isolated facts, but of showing them how things that seem isolated are actually related.

We’re taught to think of knowledge as isolated facts, and memorize them, by teachers who don't themselves understand how they’re related.  Fortunately my childhood experience with mysticism taught me that everything’s related because we’re all parts of a greater whole.