Death and Grammar

So it started with Buddha.  In Chopra's novel of the Buddha's life, which is very entertaining, he graphically describes the struggle the Buddha went through to become "enlightened."  And when the Buddha surfaced as a buddha, he surfaced completely without attachment, to anything at all.  As I was contemplating this, I believe I realized that I am not only attached to an enormous amount still in my life, but I think I am still attached to the attachment.  I don't think I am ready to give up all attachments like the Buddha did, and perhaps Byron Katie has done, even it is far easier than what the Buddha went through to do it.  Even if someone offered me a pill to give up all my attachments, I'm not sure I would take it.  

For example, my face.  I like my face.  And I make decisions that are perhaps dishonest to myself to save my face when it is threatened with a fight.  I like what my face does for me.  I like looking at my face in the mirror and noticing how unbelievably attractive I am.  I like that people are more interested in talking to me because I am ridiculously good looking.  I like that it's easier for me to get a job, make friends, attract ladies.  I don't take any credit for my perfect bone structure, and so I have no pride in it really, I just like that I have it, and I find myself quite attached to it.  It's not that I believe I would not be happy without my awesome appearance, it's just I prefer it to, say, being homely.  Or at least I think I do, because in the times when I am not as attractive, I feel less happy.   

So, that's just one example, and it's a clear preference and an attachment that limits my freedom.  Because I prefer to look the way I do, I fear losing the way I look, and that fear limits the decisions I can make.  I would guess I have billions of little attachments.  My intelligence, my ability to see, walk, hear, talk, skip, surf, smell, feel.  Certainly less attachments than before, but still billions.  And here's the kicker.  I think I might like them.  I am actually even starting to enjoy the negatives of these attachments.  The pain, the anger, the longing.  As I was talking to Kris last night, it occurred to me that becoming enlightened seems to me to similar to death.  It is, in a way, overcoming the human experience, which I believe we will do when we die.  So here's the question, why speed up the process?  Why not enjoy the human experience as it is: human. Why not be human in the short time that we have to be human?  With attachments, with anger and pain and suffering and love and pleasure and jealousy and lust and passion and infatuation and heartbreak and lies and manipulations and theft and generosity and selflessness and charity and return and cars and houses and money.  All of those attachments and preferences and cares that we'll no longer experience, perhaps, when our human experience ends.  

But perhaps that is just it.  Perhaps that is exactly what makes a buddha.  Perhaps that what enlightenment, if that's what you call it, really is: being okay with with it all.  Maybe my understanding of it was WRONG, and what the Buddha and Byron Katie found wasn't actually overcoming the human experiencing.  Maybe is was about enjoying the anger.  Enjoying the pain.  Enjoying the suffering.  Enjoying all of the human experience.  Accepting. Enjoying our short human experience knowing that it's not really real.  Highs and lows that we won't experience when we return to the universe.  

Last night I was reading Buddha a bit more before bed, after my conversation with Kris, and the Buddha says, after becoming a buddha, that the more he struggled to become enlightened, the further and further he got.  The harder the struggle to be holy, the more the ego was strengthened.  He said something that hit me very hard: it's not a war that you can win.  Becoming a buddha is not about war with your ego, your body, the human experience.  If you go to war with you as a human, you can't win because no matter how hard you try, you can not bring your human experience with you into heaven.  It can never fit through the gates.  I was too tired to read much, but I'm fascinated how this plays out.  I'm not even sure if I read it as it was intended, but I'm fascinated by it.  Our human experience will always be a human experience, filled with the human roller-coaster.  Trying to force our human experience to be attachment free, to be holy, is impossible.  In fact!  That would actually cause it to no longer be a human experience!  The harder we try, the further we get from actually freeing our souls because we actually mistake our souls for this part of our human experience that, acting like our souls, tries to free our human experience from being human!  Awesome.  If it WERE possible to win that war, we WOULD die!  Our humanity would no longer be human.  What a waste!  

So, maybe my direction will change.  I don't know.  It feels pretty good.  The Buddha spent 15 years of self punishment, pain, and suffering trying to kill himself without dying, and perhaps came out realizing that it's impossible.  You can't kill your human experience and still be human.  Perhaps he realized that it would be so much easier to just kill yourself if you want to end your human experience.  So where does enlightenment lie?  Lay?  I've never been good with those.  And how do you refer to a cat that belongs to both me and Jerry?  "Jerry's and my cat?"  Is that right?  Sounds funny. I wonder if that is what those girls were laughing about.  And who's Jerry?

Even if it were possible to kill myself without dying, I don't think I'd want to.  It would hurt a lot, and I kinda want to enjoy being human for as long as I am human.  Whatever that may bring, for as long as it does.  Now where did I put my swimming pool?

Isn't this journey fun?  DAMN this is cool.