- Apr 17, 2005
- 7,277
- 672
- Country
- Korea, Republic Of
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Eastern Orthodox
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Republican
As time passes, the act of living is becoming more and more fluid and lucid; I am going through a series of motions and ups and downs, and everything seems to become more and more irrelevent.
Normally, whenever someone besides a 65 year old monk or a dead guy says the word 'zen' I want to vomit. Sometimes, while intoxicated, I can hear someone say the word zen and it does not sound absurd and over my head. But in a moment like this, I think I have slowly begun to understand the big words like 'zen' and 'tao,' but not in any way that one can put them into words; more along the line of... I feel an existence of as much. I feel there is a certain way of things, but I do not mean this in any way of understanding of it, but rather in the sense of understanding my own position. I am beginning to learn what it means when the ancients said,
Keep to simplicity,
Grasp the primal,
Reduce the self
And curb desire.
It sounds pretentious and sounds like it belongs on the backpack of a 23 year old college graduate who is making the world a better place by not eating meat. But I think it makes a lot of sense...
I have stopped wanting some things in my life, and I have stopped fearing certain repercussions; I am beginning to understand and come to peace with primal deficiencies, and I am trying to reduce myself to my urges... I cannot stress enough how utterly retarded I must sound to someone, a 21 year old white kid talking about 3,000 year old philosophies practiced by much more wiser fools,, but it registers with me on a level...
When I drink, when I eat, when I shower, when I exercise, when I walk below the beating sun on a hot day or hear the crunch of snow under my feet, when I am being yelled at or more embarassingly being publicly commended... Things are starting to break down.
I am becoming an Anarchist. But not in any sense is it a political or even moral step, but I am becoming an Anarchist out of necessity of understanding: I am breaking down structures and notions of authority in my head, and I am following the general flow of things.
I no longer care. I only desire to live and to be free, everything else is secondary. I no longer have illusions about who I am -- I do not kid myself so much, and I accept fact as fact.
I am trying to break things down more, and I do not think a lot of people fully understand what I mean unless I bring up the notion of Anarchist again.
I have spent my life inside of a system, evaluating where I stand and competing for recognitions and for honors, for promotions and pieces of paper noting qualifications... Now I have a general apathy. I am doing everything I can to avoid a system and to avoid these social circles, these series of printed papers and computer files that try to express your worth as a human. And I think I understand that the only things that matter are the base sensations of the positive that I can have -- the good sound, the good touch, the good sight, the good feeling. As men, to hope for anything more than the simple and primal feelings of goodness is foolish -- honor, wealth, these are all overvalued concepts that do not directly speak on the worth of the positive feelings.
Things need to be simple -- so simple that there is no system. One has to abandon systems and authorities perhaps to understand the nature of happiness.
I feel like giving up. By giving up I mean being a gas station attendant or a carpenter or a menial laborer, who works a daily schedule with nothing ever changing and never being promoted or elevated higher. I want to hold onto the spirit of life, enjoy the feelings of being alive, and to live completely in the moments I have. The way I get food and lodge is irrelevent.
I always remember one of the Koreans who was helping me learn back in California. I off-handedly asked, what is the most important thing I can learn from Buddhism? Mr. Na Geunyoung replied without thinking, simply, "to live in the moment."
It did not really make sense, and does not really register fully, but perhaps that is a lesson I can understand one day -- never in the context of Buddhism, being that this idea to me is not so interesting, but more in the context of living:
We have a past, but the past is not going to chain us or keep us down.
We have a future, but the future is not going to prevent us from enjoying the moment.
For now, I am tied up in a future and cannot live freely because of systems and authorities demandign from me.
In order for me to be free, I have to destroy my future. I have to destroy any system or authoritive figure that can dictate what I do in the moment.
Why?
Because it all comes back to the sensations of happiness and joy.
It all comes down to turning life into a fluid action of constant movement, like swimming in water, so that one is constantly exposed to the water that is the sensations.
The future threatens to pluck you out of your water, to interrupt your flows -- it is the future that must be destroyed.
Because of your future, you save money, you quit smoking, you quit drinking, you quit fighting and quit feeling and quit flirting with life. Because of your future, you live like a slave. I do not want to be a slave.
I do not want to have a future beyond the bottles of soju in the fridge or the friends I am going to see in a few hours or tomorrow, I only want to have a Now, a very real moment to live in and to learn from. I want to be surrounded in the Now, and I want everythin to exist as a fluid movement, never there is a future, just a simple series of steps being taken without pause in water -- a long, slow swim towards whatever happens when our brains no longer function.
I am a fish, and I can only live in water, I can only be in the sensations -- each moment I spend out of water is a moment close to death, a moment of suffocation.
I must be put into the water -- being plucked from it is as being slowly murdered.
Normally, whenever someone besides a 65 year old monk or a dead guy says the word 'zen' I want to vomit. Sometimes, while intoxicated, I can hear someone say the word zen and it does not sound absurd and over my head. But in a moment like this, I think I have slowly begun to understand the big words like 'zen' and 'tao,' but not in any way that one can put them into words; more along the line of... I feel an existence of as much. I feel there is a certain way of things, but I do not mean this in any way of understanding of it, but rather in the sense of understanding my own position. I am beginning to learn what it means when the ancients said,
Keep to simplicity,
Grasp the primal,
Reduce the self
And curb desire.
It sounds pretentious and sounds like it belongs on the backpack of a 23 year old college graduate who is making the world a better place by not eating meat. But I think it makes a lot of sense...
I have stopped wanting some things in my life, and I have stopped fearing certain repercussions; I am beginning to understand and come to peace with primal deficiencies, and I am trying to reduce myself to my urges... I cannot stress enough how utterly retarded I must sound to someone, a 21 year old white kid talking about 3,000 year old philosophies practiced by much more wiser fools,, but it registers with me on a level...
When I drink, when I eat, when I shower, when I exercise, when I walk below the beating sun on a hot day or hear the crunch of snow under my feet, when I am being yelled at or more embarassingly being publicly commended... Things are starting to break down.
I am becoming an Anarchist. But not in any sense is it a political or even moral step, but I am becoming an Anarchist out of necessity of understanding: I am breaking down structures and notions of authority in my head, and I am following the general flow of things.
I no longer care. I only desire to live and to be free, everything else is secondary. I no longer have illusions about who I am -- I do not kid myself so much, and I accept fact as fact.
I am trying to break things down more, and I do not think a lot of people fully understand what I mean unless I bring up the notion of Anarchist again.
I have spent my life inside of a system, evaluating where I stand and competing for recognitions and for honors, for promotions and pieces of paper noting qualifications... Now I have a general apathy. I am doing everything I can to avoid a system and to avoid these social circles, these series of printed papers and computer files that try to express your worth as a human. And I think I understand that the only things that matter are the base sensations of the positive that I can have -- the good sound, the good touch, the good sight, the good feeling. As men, to hope for anything more than the simple and primal feelings of goodness is foolish -- honor, wealth, these are all overvalued concepts that do not directly speak on the worth of the positive feelings.
Things need to be simple -- so simple that there is no system. One has to abandon systems and authorities perhaps to understand the nature of happiness.
I feel like giving up. By giving up I mean being a gas station attendant or a carpenter or a menial laborer, who works a daily schedule with nothing ever changing and never being promoted or elevated higher. I want to hold onto the spirit of life, enjoy the feelings of being alive, and to live completely in the moments I have. The way I get food and lodge is irrelevent.
I always remember one of the Koreans who was helping me learn back in California. I off-handedly asked, what is the most important thing I can learn from Buddhism? Mr. Na Geunyoung replied without thinking, simply, "to live in the moment."
It did not really make sense, and does not really register fully, but perhaps that is a lesson I can understand one day -- never in the context of Buddhism, being that this idea to me is not so interesting, but more in the context of living:
We have a past, but the past is not going to chain us or keep us down.
We have a future, but the future is not going to prevent us from enjoying the moment.
For now, I am tied up in a future and cannot live freely because of systems and authorities demandign from me.
In order for me to be free, I have to destroy my future. I have to destroy any system or authoritive figure that can dictate what I do in the moment.
Why?
Because it all comes back to the sensations of happiness and joy.
It all comes down to turning life into a fluid action of constant movement, like swimming in water, so that one is constantly exposed to the water that is the sensations.
The future threatens to pluck you out of your water, to interrupt your flows -- it is the future that must be destroyed.
Because of your future, you save money, you quit smoking, you quit drinking, you quit fighting and quit feeling and quit flirting with life. Because of your future, you live like a slave. I do not want to be a slave.
I do not want to have a future beyond the bottles of soju in the fridge or the friends I am going to see in a few hours or tomorrow, I only want to have a Now, a very real moment to live in and to learn from. I want to be surrounded in the Now, and I want everythin to exist as a fluid movement, never there is a future, just a simple series of steps being taken without pause in water -- a long, slow swim towards whatever happens when our brains no longer function.
I am a fish, and I can only live in water, I can only be in the sensations -- each moment I spend out of water is a moment close to death, a moment of suffocation.
I must be put into the water -- being plucked from it is as being slowly murdered.
