"Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove." - Ashleigh Brilliant
I'm not quite sure who or what Ashleigh Brilliant is, or was, but I catch his meaning, and I approve. One of the main differences I perceive between the TM view of life and its possible "meaning" or "purpose" and that of other spiritual traditions I tend to prefer is that TMers -- on the whole -- seem illcontent with Life As It Is, whereas many other spiritual seekers do not. Strong Buddhists and Taoists I've met seem content with Here And Now, and do their best to make the best of what Here And Now presents them. In contrast, if you look even at the sampling of "TM thought" we see on this forum, many if not most of the things said about the world by its adherents are anything *but* content with Here And Now. They're more about long- ing for "someday" and all that mythical "someday" promises. If they're more blissed-out, "someday" becomes "Any day now." But it's still not Here And Now...it's always off in some theoretical future. And the import of "Any day now" is that things are "not right" Here And Now. There is an assumption that the world they perceive around them is *broken*, "not right," and that they must do something -- anything -- to CHANGE that world, or change themselves, to make both of them "right." This early morning in Sitges, watching the street cleaners do their thing from this cafe table, I find myself underwhelmed by this tendency to view the world as something that "needs work" because it doesn't live up to their fantasies about what it should be, and to disapprove of it and reject it as beneath them *until* it lives up to their fantasies. Sitges is a tourist town. Tourists -- especially young tourists and even more especially English tourists, of whom we get more than our fair share -- tend to get rowdy and drunk on a Saturday night. Thus if one wakes up early on a Sunday morning and strolls out to find a cafe in which to have a nice cuppa java, one finds the street full of crap. Litter, bottles, paper fast-food wrappings and occasionally even real crap. The streets look as if thousands of people had been so wrapped up in having a good time that they just threw their crap anywhere they felt like throwing it. And, of course, looking at the streets, there is no doubt that this is litter-ally true. And then the street cleaners spring into action. Sitges has the best street cleaning crews in the world. At 08:00 the streets are a mess; by 09:00 they are clean and pris- tine and scrubbed as clean as if no one had ever walked on them. There is no question that the world *appears* better after the street cleaners have done their thing. It is aesthetically more pleasing. But is it really any "better?" Does the street have more Buddha-nature or Tao or Brahman or God to it after a good sweeping and scrubbing than it did before? I think not. I think that God (if I believed in such a fictional entity) was as present in the dirty streets of Sitges on my walk to this cafe as it will be in the clean streets of Sitges as I walk home. Superficially, the streets look "better." Superficially, Fairfield, Iowa looks to some like "Heaven On Earth." Superficially, if you bounce on your butt with other butt- bouncers before reading the morning papers, the world is "better" as a result of you doing so. Superficially. But the world really doesn't give much of a shit about your puny notions of "better" or "worse," of "right" and "just not right yet." The world just is. It's been my experience that the people who have gained some sense of comfort with *how* it is in the Here And Now are happier than those who have not, those who are always seeking some mythical Then when things will all be "better." That does not mean that these people do not spend some of their time as metaphorical street cleaners, trying to make Here And Now more pleasant for themselves and other people, only that their sense of self and their sense of "meaning" DOES NOT DEPEND on that mythical "better." They are them-selves in the litter of post-Saturday night reveling, and they are them-selves in the pristine clean- liness of a tourist town pretending that it's always litter-free. They have the ability to appreciate the Buddha-nature of Here And Now *in* the Here And Now, and not constantly live in hope of some mythical Then. Life as TMers wish for it might be neat, although I suspect that their vision of "Heaven On Earth" would be (in the words of Leonard Cohen) "as boring as heaven on a Saturday night." I suspect that the real heaven, if one exists, has a few street cleaning crews of its own, and that they're as busy Sunday mornings cleaning up after night-before revelers as the street cleaning crews of Sitges are. I *hope* that the denizens of heaven "party down" from time to time, and don't just sit around playing harps and polishing their haloes. And I *certainly* hope that the residents of the real heaven, if one exists, have gotten over that infantile wishing for something "better," some future life that has more "meaning," or that better fits their fantasies about Then, fantasies that keep them from appreciating Here And Now -- Life As It Is. Because really...what are they going to fantasize about once they're in heaven, eh? A "better" heaven? Heaven, release 2.0?
