“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon, in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.” – Lin Yutang
I finally figured something out. In order to remain in the experience of freefall one must give up being in freefall. Buddhists love freefall. They call it stream entry. And although they are very concerned about being really nice “wise guys,” they also have a sort of strange competition when it comes to swimming in said stream. So, if you’re a stream entrant, then you’re very special and win the prize. If not, then you still need to get to work. Another spiritual contest that involves the conditioned personality being something. (Stream entrants should have special buttons that say “Hi, I’m Bob, I’m a stream entrant, who are you? You know, just to keep the status straight.)
Sigh. But even if you win the prized label of “stream entrant,” there’s an egoic doer doing, and a knower knowing you are now streaming away. It’s another story told by ego to keep itself in the center of attention. “Oh look, now I’m a humble stream entry person, how wonderful, I wonder what everyone is doing on the shore today?” I’ll need an inner tube and a snack to keep my energy up.
Yesterday in discussion a person asked how one enters the stream. I told them I don’t know. But, I think it’s important to embrace the uselessness of being useless. The hilarious nothingness and emptiness of me. The absolute powerlessness of being, me. There’s a freedom to not being seen, or heard, of being absolutely powerless, and not being needy, and not caring to label oneself or need to present oneself to others so they like you.
And weirdness happens. Suddenly there’s an abrupt detachment from, worry, fear, anxiety, and living in the future and past. And this intricate comprehension and knowing that life is like a stream. Things are floating along with you, and sometimes you can hold on for a second. But sooner or later you have to let go and move with the flow, and things disappear into the wake of memory. And suddenly you’re a 73 year old wrinkled old man, one of eight billion humans, sitting quietly on a battered old wooden deck in Novi, uselessly communing with other feathered and furry beings. And that’s exactly who, what, and how you are, no matter what the stories say.
And I smile.
Sitting. Doing nothing. Being nothing, wanting nothing, expecting nothing, needing nothing, and just exquisitely being, with all attention possible focused on, being. Noticing the reds and greens and blues in a wildly erotic display of color, or sitting and hearing a thousand sounds like a motor cycle winding up, or the scolding of a squirrel. Or smelling lavender. The scrabble of little nails as the chipmunk skitters across the deck. And the warmth of the sun on my skin, and the soft breeze that excites tiny hairs on my arm, and the chuffing noise of a red bellied woodpecker, peeking from behind a branch, not wanting to be eaten. And a feeling of being part of something, woven into life in a way that can never be explained, form into emptiness, emptiness into form.
And it lasts forever, until ego remembers itself and attention returns to make the imaginary suffering me real again. And I whine, because somethings not right, somethings always “never quite right” in my world when I think it’s mine and I am a “Me.” The negative mind says, “Where are the Hummingbirds?” As though this would make or break my world, or worse, believing the universe owes me hummingbirds. I’m just visiting, the universe owes me nothing more than it owes all life.
I’m glad life is exquisite in it’s unfolding. I’m glad I’m uselessly here to embrace this wacky ride. I’m glad I’m noticing these things.
Hold today carefully and with joy, it’s one of a kind, in an endless universe.
Bryan Wagner