“Life is about trying things to see if they work.” – Ray Bradbury
This, in my view, is a very deep “teaching.” Try it and see if it works. Although this is the sticking point in meditation circles. Mostly we want to endlessly talk about it to see if it works. Doing it, well, that’s asking a lot. To try means to follow through on being curious. Asking, “How does this fit? How does this work? Does this do that? Can I?”
But in order to see “if it works” I must also, in some way, attach to what I do. To become emotionally involved with it, to be, can I say, obsessed with it. In a very precise way, to “know” anything requires attachment, time, and effort. And just to annoy everyone who has decided they are not a self, there needs to be something existing through the process in time, in order to hold the process together. If I’m deadly interested in Aardvarks today, someone or something needs to remember and be deadly interested in Aardvarks tomorrow. If I remain detached from Aardvarks, my attention wanders, and then tomorrow I’ll probably attach to something else. Maybe a Bearded Dragon.
What seems to be keeping track of my life as it unfolds? You know, so this second has some continuity from the last, and into the next, it may not be permanent, it may not last more than a few seconds in attention, but something feels, something knows, something remembers the second just before this one and anticipates the next. In that moment of attention, I, am a whatever in attention. More coffee, please.
I have to be slightly obsessed with an activity or interest if I want to hold my intention to engage with it. If not, my attention will wander on down the road.
Do you think that someone who sits in formal meditation all day, “trying” and obsessing about being something better, knowing more, and achieving some goal, being more compassionate, and being “a good person,” isn’t clinging and attached? Conditioned spiritual ego clings to meditation, spiritual memes, and the stink of spiritual superiority like a life raft. Typically shallow human behavior, we all secretly want to be, and appear to others, to be “more spiritually successful” than the next guy. It’s why everyone want’s to cling to the next big teacher coming down the pike, giving endless verbal extrapolations on 3,000 year old thoughts. It’s like wanting to see the latest big show or entertainer before anyone else.
I can preach non attachment all day, but if I’m not attached I’ll realize that I have the option to drop the bald head and robes, the expensive retreat center, writing shallow popular books that are intended to sell, and $2300 price tags for retreats. Those are all egoic functions. Ego builds a monastery. Ego judges “Students.” Ego writes a book on being H-A-P-P-Y. (All books that intimate that you can construct a state of happiness are full of shit and are designed to sell, not resolve. How many people are still 10% happier because they read some book? If anyone remembers they read the book. Happiness Happens, that’s it. Be prepared.)
I still see a lot of men and women with bald heads, beads, and robes suggesting that in order to be happy we need to quit clinging and attaching. While they obviously cling and attach to who they think they are. Bikku Bob or whatever. Guru Grace. Pied Pipers all. Selling endless supplies of water right by the river. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How naive are we? Or desperate?
If I want to be an Olympic athlete, I’m going to obsess and cling and want and desire so much it might end my existence. Or if I want to be a “spiritual teacher” I might spend endless hours in intensive study, reading, talking, going to centers to learn, to know, to possess. Humans worship people who obsess, cling, suffer, and become that discrete singular very special someone.
Somehow, it’s all OK. I don’t have to worry about obsessing or not obsessing. Or be concerned about being a self. Or being spiritually correct. I can simply pay attention to what unfolds. And do the best I can, as kindly as I can in the moment. And watch it all unfolding as I experience the bittersweet ride, attaching and letting go, then attaching and letting go. Life unfolding in the bittersweet.
Hold today, cling to it, it will flow on impermanently perfect, no matter what.
Bryan Wagner