“Cost of Living”

Found this paper blowing across a parking lot six years ago; scanned it front and back.  Story of the average wage slave, told better than I could.

Thoughts deeper than you

“Could any Hell be more horrible than now, and real?”
— Jim Morrison

I’ve been thinking about suicide lately with the same conclusion Sam Kinison had about wife-beating: I don’t condone it, but I understand it.

I won’t kill myself.

For one thing, at my age there’s very little left to kill.  (- Bukowski)

Life is painful, unpredictable and typically just plain fucked-up in both meaning and execution: it’s unreasonable to believe that suicide would bring an immediate end to suffering from such a warped existence; suicide is the gleaming cheese in a mousetrap.

Suicide means physical death, but I don’t want death, because death means MORE: more suffering and more pleasure. I want neither, in favor of annihilation.

I’ve been fortunate enough to experience this annihilation, which is not an empty void but The Void, filled with Everything which is really only One thing. I could only enter this state of No-Mind under the aegis of a meditation master capable of projecting spiritual energy. The meditation group I was with only got to experience it perhaps a dozen times a year.

One minute I’d be sitting in my folding chair, the next there was NOTHING, all the chattering noise and nonsense composing the modern mind wiped clean like a giant eraser swiping across a dry erase board. Other types of meditation had different effects but coming out of the No-Mind sessions I always felt oddly refreshed.

No-Mind has been called ‘the only true final Enlightenment’ and if you’re lucky enough to merge with it beyond death, you win, that’s all, no more suffering, no more anything. Compared to this state, a heavenly afterlife seems ridiculous. If you can have limitless pleasurable experiences in Heaven, it stands to reason one moment will feel better for you than another. How is that Heaven? You’ll still be striving for MORE, even if by definition, in Heaven you always Receive it.

Nothingness sounds scary, I know. To a 300lb co-worker I presented the choice between a guaranteed immediate merging forever into nothingness or a chancy afterlife. His answer was, “I like existing.”

I do not like existing. I am trapped here, with none to rescue.

Jesus Christ versus a pococurante

When I first saw him he reminded me of a failed auditioner for a boy band, mostly because of the his white t-shirt underlying a thin print-pattern shirt with open sides billowing as if underwater as he paced, seemingly lost.

When I saw him again he was loudly singing songs referencing Jesus. Those around him seemed disturbed by this, but he was in his own world. He was there because he had a problem with something, and because I was at work, it was now my problem and job to help. As I helped him he asked, “Have you been Saved?” I wasn’t looking at him when I answered, “Well, I’m working here…” Meaning “Fuck No”.

Up close, Boy Band’s face was smooth and fresh but his eyes were puffy and tired. He explained how he was now 25 and had done every drug possible and hit bottom before trying God. And lo, Jesus had Saved him!

While not technically a Christian myself, I believed that Christ Jesus had indeed helped Boy Band, along with the peer pressure of the church, but I didn’t think the experience made Boy Band any smarter or more lucid; whatever potential he had before frying his circuits with drugs would remain lost. Well shit, he was only 25. Why judge?

I was mildly insulted that a “ki-dult” (25 is the real beginning of adulthood) would preach to someone older (me) but Boy Band’s torpid joy seemed real enough, and those Saved early on have a much harder road ahead of them than those who convert later (after fucking and drugging, sins denied me due to hating people).

Being at work, I only offered grunts of acknowledgment. As a customer, Boy Band could say whatever he wanted, while I was a slave. No employee enjoys this imbalance but then, I really didn’t have anything to add to his sluggish exuberance. If I wanted to risk losing the job I would’ve told Boy Band my minority opinion, which as a fundamentalist/former-druggie-now-Saved he would’ve found unacceptable: Jesus Christ is the answer, but not the only answer, there are infinite paths to God.

Boy Band said he’d say a prayer for me that night.

That was yesterday and I feel no different. I hope the positive effects of his prayer are delayed because tonight is another lottery drawing and the pot is 37 mil.

** ** ** ** ** **

Christ alone will never do it for me. I’m personally offended that He would deign to heal broken hearts when He Himself never tasted the pain of a variety of human failures, including rejection from a woman loved.

Now older than Christ at the time of his exit, I await death with the curse of a healthy body. Suicide would just leave God with a way to change the subject for calling Him out on the many, many fucked-up and stupid ways things are run around here.

So I wait, while somewhere out there Boy Band plans to be a counselor helping drug addicts. I am confident God has a few surprises left for both of us. It’s why I own a gun.

Book Review: What the Buddha Never Taught

What little I know:

Siddhārtha Gautama, aka The Buddha, started out life as the ancient equivalent of Hugh Hefner and whittled his desires down until he became One with Everything (the state of bliss; Nibbana or Nirvana).  After becoming Enlightened the Buddha traveled and spread his teachings, inadvertently forming a world religion that honors no God but demands adherence to highly moral precepts, including friendliness and compassion towards all beings.

He later died of food poisoning.

A fairly entertaining BBC docu called The Life of The Buddha can be found on youtube.  (Apparently if the Buddha were alive today, he’d be an underwear model.)

While not a Buddhist, I crave what the Buddha promised: the end of suffering. If this could be done by suicide you’d be reading Meatlights40’s shit instead of mine.

Reading Tim Ward’s What the Buddha Never Taught didn’t bring me Enlightenment, but it brought me a tad closer.I’m glad I found it when I did; it helped me answer what might happen if I moved to an austere Thai Buddhist monastery like Ward did.

The Answer to those seeking to get away: you’ll still suffer, but with a shaved head, scorpions and cobras under your feet and robes that will expose your nuts if you sit the wrong way.

Quite a few farang (mildly derogatory term for foreigners) like Tim inhabit this book, including a fellow that looks just like him (creating the duo of Tim and Jim, “The Twins”).

By monastery standards, the monks have a rich, if spartan life: the local farmers, seeking good kamma (or karma) fill their begging bowls with rich foods, giving offerings to the symbolic robes, not the monks per se.  Each monk gets his own kuti (hut) in the woods in which to meditate.

Ward has many lively conversations with the other monks about every manner of topic, reaching the conclusion that whether you stay in the forest or return to modern civilization, you suffer.

LIFE IS SUFFERING is the Buddha’s First Noble Truth.  (I wish Burger King would create a Noble Truths Collect-All-Four set of glasses or tumblers like they made in the old days).

Suffering is everywhere, it’s massive, it shadows life.You can’t escape it.

Except by your own mind.

Maybe.

The challenges to still the mind are relentless, endless:  if you desire something, that’s Attachment. If you avoid something, Aversion is equally bad.

People who dislike organized religion may also find insight here.  Any organized system will be fraught with human flaws, and the monks and their order are no different.  Tim is disgusted the Arahant (an Enlightened spiritual super-leader) of the Thai monks is very old and nearing his end in another monastery, yet is being kept alive so that donations keep flowing in for more monasteries to be built.  Jim is an even greater cynic, disgusted with the laxity and sloth he’s found in other monasteries during his travels.

A fine cast of characters rounds out the monastery, including a Chicago millionaire who gave up everything and (as of 1985) had been a monk going on 12 years.

I was happy to discover What the Buddha Never Taught.It’s highly accessible, straightforward and entertaining, one of those books you’ll want to read every few years.

While you suffer.

May all beings be happy.
May they be joyous and live in safety.
All living beings, whether weak or strong,
in high or middle or low realms
of existence, small or great, visible or invisible,
near or far, born or to be born,
Let no one deceive another, nor despise any being in any state;
Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another.
Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over
and protects her only child,
so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things,
suffusing love over the entire world, above, below,
and all around, without limit;
so let one cultivate an infinite good will toward the whole world.

The Metta Sutta

Is Satan the Father? Find out after these messages.

I vacillate between believing God or Satan runs the Show. If Satan is the True God, then the rare comfort of religion and the kindness of a few souls is the true victory. If God is the Real, it means all of the horror has His approval. God laughs at the grand illusion while for us it is absolutely terrifying and real, with less than 50 living souls able to see the underlying green code of the Matrix.

To God, the evil that men do is simply a debt they shall pay later. He doesn’t hate the wicked nor especially love the good. It’s hard to accept this concept, maybe impossible, while alive.  Abstain from judgment! Of everything! 

I really need to get off the fucking internet, just blank it out for a week at a time (minus meatlights and email). The web is worse than alcohol and TV. Hard drugs may kill you, but all that means is you won’t live to suffer the consequences of your mistakes, unlike if you watch 2 Girls, 1 Cup (I haven’t and never will, if I can help it).

I’m afraid to imagine what life will be in 50 to 100 years when the Matrix is real and we’ll click through entire worlds like ghosts who feel everything as if living.