Today's cafe rants are probably going to have a theme. This theme was inspired by an old friend saying with a straight face on another Internet forum that "exclusive aim of human existence" is to "break free the from the repetitive phenomenon of birth and death."
On one level, I feel for this friend. I used to parrot this crap myself once, and actually believed it. I now look back on the being who believed that as incredibly narcissistic and incredibly lazy and incredibly self- serving. I too once preferred the silence of meditation to the noise of the streets, and thus bought the "teach- ings" of recluses who were so afraid of noise that they withdrew into ashrams that the ultimate goal of life was to eliminate life entirely. By withdrawing from life and living the life of a recluse until one realizes enlight- enment, and then ultimately by withdrawing from life entirely so much so that it never happens again. All that would be left is the silence. That was perceived as the "goal." Some here perceive that as the goal still. I do not, and in this particular cafe rap I'm going to rap a bit about why. Caveat emptor. Much is said in traditional Eastern spirituality about realization of the "Self." Capital "S." As opposed to that awful lower-case "s" word, "self." But if you analyze what most of the spiritual teachers you revere actually said, most of them were teaching that self and Self were exactly the same thing. Meditation -- meaning eyes-closed, withdraw-from-the- senses-and-the-world meditation -- is the *easy* path to realization of the Self. You shut everything out, and if you're lucky you manage to "transcend" the noise and experience silence. And you call that experience "Self." Capital "S." If you bought the dogma that the teachers revere taught you, you hope that someday this silence will be 24/7 and that you will experience it all the time. Nothing wrong with that, IMO. It's just the belief that self is something *different* than Self that I don't buy. Self is just self realizing what's really going on. And a self can do that as easily in activity as it can with eyes closed in meditation. If this were not true, then enlightenment could not exist. So why do so many *rag* on self, and talk about "eliminating the self," or "becoming Self," as if the latter somehow left self *behind* like a snake shedding its skin? That's not how I see things, or experienced them during my personal enlightenment experiences. I always saw -- and experienced -- enlightenment as an *additive* process, not a *subtractive* one. Perception of everything as silence with eyes closed in sitting meditation was not any different than perception of everything as silence in a traffic jam. My experience was always the "200% of life" that Maharishi talked about. And 200% was always perceived as more interesting than 100% -- on *either* side of the equation. That is, "24/7 samadhi in activity" tended to be more fun and more fulfilling not only than 100% lost in the relative with no samadhi, it *also* tended to be more fun and more fulfilling than 100% lost in samadhi, with eyes closed. So I find it difficult to comprehend why so many profess the latter as their "goal" in life. They claim to be working towards "200% of life," but the actual "goal" they speak of is to have the relative half of life GO AWAY, so that they are left with only the silence of samadhi. They wish to become the "drop merged with the ocean," Self with *no* self component. Seems to me that what they're hoping by believing this is that *after* having realized 200% of life by realizing their enlightenment, the *payoff* for this is reverting to 100% again. For all I know I may be the only person on this forum who thinks this is REEEALLY REEEALLY STOOOPID. But then I believe that that First Noble Truth indicates that Buddha was somewhat of a Wuss. "Life is suffering" as the basis of all of his teachings? Give me a fuckin' break. Life is cool. If the teachers we revere are really to be believed, relative existence is not only not "lesser" than the Absolute, it *is* the Absolute. "200% of life" is being able to realize and appreciate both simultaneously. And yet thousands if not millions strive for enlightenment *so that* they can theoretically eliminate one half of life. They set as the *goal* of their spiritual path "getting off the wheel," and ending incarnation entirely. They *look forward* to leaving 100% of the relative behind, *rejecting* the accomplishment of "200% of life," and becoming 100% of the Absolute for all eternity. Go figure. I do not share their goal. My goal is not to transcend the relative but to experience it as *both* relative and Absolute, all the time. And then to *continue* experiencing it as both, as long as that continues. I do not seek a "cessation of life" or a "cessation of self" or a "cessation of seeking." I hope that life is set up such that seeking continues eternally, and that I -- as self or Self -- never tire of it.
