R.I.P. 2016: Not-so-Simple Prayer for a Year of Upheaval and Colic, and Buddhist redemption…
…in a decade of displacement, in a century of subterfuge, in a brand new millennium of change and misfortune. These are the times that try men’s souls, if only we had souls and if only we had time, this in a world with limited space, but all the time in the world, or so they say. They say lots of sh*t, of course, but they just may have this one right. No one claims to have all the space in the world…
We live at the crossroads of time-lines and space-lines, defined by a moment and imagined as an eternity. After all, how do we really know that yesterday really existed and that tomorrow ever will? The waiting is the hardest part, of course. Every year is a little lifetime, defined on each end by celebrations of our suffering and humble Thanksgiving for our inheritance, wealth beyond description and complacency beyond comparison. Whatever has been born will also die, by definition…
Every day of modernity is a little war of attrition, a little death of the spiritual soul at the hands of the money-grubbing material one, the one that drank deep of the cup of the Industrial Revolution, in hopes of stardom and fame, all in the name of the game; and this world, too, will be destroyed, like all the worlds that have come before, each now dead and gone according to the fashions of the day and the ideas at play…
As I get older, I seem to be getting more philosophical, even religious, which seems age-appropriate, both for me and the world, a world no longer in its schoolyard infancy nor its junkyard degeneracy, a world now ready to soar in the flight of wisdom and knowledge, a world ready to leave behind its petty feuds and its petty feudalism, dog eat dog and every man to himself. We can do better than that…
… or so I’d like to think, all evidence to the contrary. But that’s politics. I’m quickly losing all interest in politics. Politics will always be about power, its distribution, and to the victor the spoils. I’m more interested in personal freedom, the ability to endure, and the ability to adapt, the ability to migrate, and the ability to create, until the meek can rightfully inherit the earth under feet and the sky overhead. Meek inherit the Earth every day in Buddhism. This does not have to be explained by prophets and profiteers, since it is intrinsic to the system and the grave you rest in, the fields you plow and the cotton seeds that you sew…
The powerful will all kill themselves eventually, one way or other, once they get thoroughly bored and restless, once they become thoroughly lifeless and listless, once they have no more cards to deal and no more deals to cut in a deck stacked and rigged, rigor mortis sets in unless they give back what they won, what they took without asking and consumed without blessing, as we all know it’s a crime and a sin to take more than you give, to take something out of the earth and put nothing back in…
This year is a turning point—they all are—so let it turn us towards the good and away from the bad; let it turn us towards sustainability not profitability; and let it turn us towards inner peace not outward aggression. Then we will have true peace on earth and good will to all men, amen…
streaming consciousness... 
davekingsbury 2:59 pm on January 7, 2017 Permalink |
Amen to this:
“Politics will always be about power, its distribution, and to the victor the spoils. I’m more interested in personal freedom, the ability to endure, and the ability to adapt, the ability to migrate, and the ability to create, until the meek can rightfully inherit the earth under feet and the sky overhead.”