sculptorandclay

You are the sculptor and the clay. 

This isn’t quite so impossible to understand as one hand clapping. You are the moon and the eye; without the eye to perceive and the moon to be perceived, none would arise.

Anyway enough of that. Practicalities.

What you do today makes who you are tomorrow. Edible food is the most obvious, and after only a few days of eating junk, I feel like junk. I know from personal experience that I feel better if I eat healthy, high fibre food, so it requires very little effort. I may deviate from time to time, but the fact that bad feelings follow bad food is as clear as winter following autumn, so effort is minimal.

I feel like the aripiprazole experience has shown me the same thing about craving and greed. I felt, on a purely physical level, the agony caused by craving. Again - I think because of the larger molecule and vipassana - I could feel the barbed wire of motivation being pulled through my spinal column and conscious mind. 

Now it’s time for anger.

Anger is a problem for me. Swearing doesn’t mean I am angry, but I have typically done the ‘manly thing’ and converted any negative feeling into anger and competitiveness, because that is what was encouraged of me and that was what was useful and bought results.

Don’t get sad; get angry.

No.

Why is that? It’s because you want me to be more productive. Because of fear about how being sad will be perceived; fear about lost time and missed opportunities; fear about being weak and ending the game of life on the bottom rung.

But I no longer have a reputation to maintain. I have earned my money, and nearly died doing so. That time spent angry was the time lost; the time spent running through endless permutations of conversations in my mind instead of being present in the moment. 

This is what I will remove next.

The way I will do it is mostly conscious mindfulness on a moment to moment basis, with daily meditation of one hour or more on the topic of anger, competitiveness, and how it has impacted my life.

You can be a force for good without being angry. I’d probably rather emulate the b-man than the crusaders. And I’m finally delving into his teachings for real. The man had a lot of practical day to day tips for people at all stages of spiritual development.

Anger is one of the three unwholesome roots, and I watered it in the name of false pragmatism. The others are greed, which is cut right back to a nubbin, and delusion, which seems to be falling away but was high while I carved out the craving. It was very, very hard when delusion was high, but probably not as hard as greed, and most of the world is drowning in all three.

Like the cowherd, prodding his cows away from the crops with light taps of a stick, I will prod my mind away from anger and competitiveness, and when there is none I will let it play. 

Greed, anger, delusion; they all feel like the same thing. We are deluded into thinking we have a lasting self and can acquire and retain things; both material objects and mental objects like ideas and moods. We become angry when we feel like we have been short changed, or like someone has more than us.

But those people who have more… all they have is more to worry about losing. More makes you less happy. The clutter, the eternal throwing away or fixing due to old age and degradation.

Well now I’ll turn that lens of throwing away and fixing on myself once more. Time to discard more baggage from a lifetime in a corrupted system, and become a happier and more open person, able to live life in an unfiltered manner.

Time for a knife.

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