Hardcore Zen_ Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality - Brad Warner [57]
A bit later I noticed my feet were starting to get sore from all the walking. The thought occurred to me, “I wish I were home.”
THIS HAPPENS TO ALL OF US all the time. The only special trick a Buddhist has is to avoid being sucker-punched by these thoughts when they come up—as they always will. A Buddhist learns that his thoughts are just thoughts, nothing requiring any response. But most of us feed into them: a little spark of a complaint appears and instead of letting it die out, we stoke it up. If we work really hard at it, we can make a tiny spark can turn into a raging blaze in no time at all. Then we get upset because it’s getting too hot. Once the blaze has gotten that big, though, it’s hard work to put it out. What’s worse is that we have no idea how to put it out. Our efforts just end up making the flames bigger and bigger until it’s completely out of control consuming every moment of our lives.
Reincarnation is all very much tied in with this. We’re just trying to establish for ourselves the existence of something that has no reality. We’re trying to preserve that something that makes us miss out on a beautiful day in the country by telling us we’d really be much happier back in the city, and makes us miss out on the beautiful chintziness of a Muzak® rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at the dentist’s office wishing we could be at home listening to Kurt Cobain. We try so hard to preserve the very thing that’s making us miserable. We cling hard to our pain because we mistakenly think that that pain is who we really are. We define ourselves by what we don’t like or we define ourselves by what we like. Either way we miss the truth. We harbor some inexplicable fear that if we start to enjoy everything about life without picking and choosing we might cease to exist.
THE DENIAL OF REINCARNATION might sound like a terrible thing, a promise that nothing’s waiting for you at the end of your life but bleak, black nothingness. In fact, I don’t know what’s waiting at the end of our lives. No one does. But it’s not the future that matters. Right now is what counts. If you want to believe in reincarnation, you have to believe that this life, what you’re living through right now, is the afterlife. You’re missing out on the afterlife you looked forward to in your last existence by worrying about your next life. This is what happens after you die. Take a look.
You can get hooked on afterlife ideas just like a drug. The reason to avoid ideas about life after death isn’t because they couldn’t possibly be true. Maybe they could. How would I know? It’s because ideas like that promote a kind of dreamy fantasy state that distracts us from seeing what our life is right now.
“The question doesn’t fit the case.”
Look at your life as it is right now and live it, right now.
THAT’S ZEN MASTER KNOW-IT-ALL TO YOU, BUDDY!
I’m a cop. You will respect my authority.
ERIC CARTMAN ON SOUTH PARK
DHARMA TRANSMISSION is a very controversial subject within Zen circles. Back when Gautama Buddha was alive there was an incident in which he stepped up to give a talk. As was customary in India, flowers had been strewn at his feet before he began to teach. Instead of speaking, Gautama just picked up one of those flowers and held it silently aloft—and a guy named Mahakashyapa, one of his long-time students, smiled.Then the Buddha winked at a him, called it day’s teaching, and walked away.
This little scene is viewed by Zen Buddhists as the moment when the Buddha recognized that one of his followers had attained the same level of understanding as he had himself. The Buddha’s silent wink was taken to be the start of the formal acknowledgment known today as Dharma Transmission.