If we look around, we can see so much time, energy, money, life, ecology, etc. wasted.
So much in life seems wasted. The time we spend on projects that don't work out. The time we spend on failed relationships. The times when we work all day and yet at the end of the day don't feel we've accomplished anything.
The universe seems beset by waste. There are millions and tens of millions of species that have gone extinct at various times in earth's history, never to be seen again. Whole galaxies have been destroyed.
And so often, it seems, when we succeed in doing something, we have to go down dozens of blind alleys first.
The waste in human life. The Holocaust. The First World War. The Second World War. Wars in general.
The loss of loved ones. Wives and mothers, husbands and fathers, innocent children, friends.
The pollution of nature, indeed, of the entire earth. Forests denuded, water and air polluted. The list goes on and on.
Why? Why does there have to be so much waste?
In order to look at that, I have to tell you how the greatest secret I ever discovered is a little like Groucho's question about Grant's tomb.
If a contestant on his show wasn't getting any answers and winning any money, Groucho finally would ask: "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?"
The contestant would usually look a little puzzled. Who's buried in Grant's tomb? "General Grant?"
At that point Groucho would shout, "That's right!" and the little birdie would come down and the contestant would get a hundred dollars. Smiles all around.
Well, the greatest secret I ever discovered is kind of like Groucho's question. And it's this: That everything just is the way it is.
It can sound trivial or naive. "Boy, you must have done some real searchin' there, Jim, to find that one out."
It can sound trivial because it's so fundamental that it's like the air we breathe. What I discovered is that reality is far deeper, vaster and more mysterious than any conceivable set of stories or laws or explanations about it.
Minds endlessly construct stories. That seems to be their job: Who should be president. How so-and-so should change. Why there should be no such-and-such. Why this-or-that is or isn't right. On and on it goes, stories upon stories, beliefs upon beliefs.
And stories seem to usually have a dualistic nature: This is "good," that's "bad"; this is "right," that's "wrong"; this is "valuable," that's "wasteful."
But perhaps what we call "valuable" simply isn't possible without the possibility of what we call "wasteful."
Let's take a simple example: We enjoy having a car and going conveniently where we want to go—that's "valuable"—but that very thing also opens up the possibility of being killed or injured in a car accident. But notice that we can't have the one without the possibility of the other.
Another example: We enjoy the pleasures that a body makes possible—swimming in a lake, eating good food, making love, and so on—but the existence of the body also means the possibility of pain and disease, and the certainty of death. They seem to be a package deal; we can't have the one without at least the possibility of the other.
Another example: The existence of "up" economic cycles means the possibility of "down" economic cycles. "Down" cycles couldn't occur if "up" cycles didn't occur first.
Many other examples could be given.
Perhaps we and the other species are here precisely because of all those millions upon millions of species that lived and died and went extinct. Perhaps nature in its wisdom tries many possibilities so that life can have the best possible fit with its environment.
And perhaps all these dualities—"good" and "bad," "valuable" and "wasteful," on and on—only really exist as a creation of the mind. Perhaps all such dualities are themselves just stories.
And perhaps beneath every conceivable story about reality is just reality itself—shimmering in its unfathomable mystery and perfection through every flower and rock and atom, and through "you" and "me" too.
In the Diamond Sutra the Buddha said to Arjuna that even if countless bodhisattvas through numberless eons saved countless beings from suffering, that no such beings or bodhisattvas ever actually existed. Hmm. What could he mean by that?
Such language of prajnaparamita, as it's called, and echoed by the sayings of many other awakened masters, is using concepts to destroy concepts. Why?
Because when all the concepts are gone, even just momentarily, perhaps what's left is the ungraspable reality behind the stories, the One behind the many, the mystery behind the beliefs and concepts.
Buried in this unfathomable mystery, which permeates the very fabric of our life, which is the very fabric of our life, is the awesome infinity of that which cannot be put into words—shining its awesome and hidden light recklessly like the sun, and of which the great sun and the sublime stars themselves can be only the merest symbol.
—jim sloman, 6/10/01 for Jun 10
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