The Way

Yesterday I re-read part of one of my favourite essays, Jonathan Franzen's Why Bother?  It's something of a manifesto about the writer's responsibility to protect the literary tradition of tragic realism.  It is not the writer's responsibility to weigh in on whether or not the world is doomed, simply to remind people that death, loss, poverty, destruction aren't going anywhere soon. We still have a lot of work to do.

So the writer spends a fair amount of time contemplating change.  Contemplating the difference between natural suffering and self-created suffering.  The writer spends most of her time in the first of the noble truths: there is suffering.

There's this other place, however, that is a little harder for the writer to stay in.  The belief that there is a way out of suffering. Maybe this  is where comic realism comes in.  Comic realism kicks us in the butt in a different way. It looks at our tragic lives and sees where we get stuck and helps us laugh at our vulnerabilities.

Last night I had a stroke of good fortune.  Aziz Ansari decided the Just For Laughs comedy festival would be a good place to try out some new material.  So he flew up from New York, and tweeted that in an hour he'd be at a children's theatre not too far from where I live.  I found out about this on FB, from a guy who I've had a bit of a thorny relationship with lately. I wanted to see the show, but I wasn't sure if it would be comfortable seeing it with him.

I risked it and it was great.  I saw a master comic from the middle of the third row. He was practically talking to me. It's interesting to see a comic in the draft stage of a routine. To see those moments of discomfort before he's got it seamless enough to charge $100 at Madison Square Garden.  To realize how much work goes into a good comedy routine. How it literally left him short at breath at one point because he wasn't in good enough shape for the physical comedy.

I need a lot of energy to do and be all the things I want to do and be. I can't muck around anymore getting stuck in these bad cycles. I need to learn how to manage my energy, so that I can turn it into the power that the world needs from me.

This next week coming up.  I set out on the way of accumulating that power.

Nectar of The Path

I'm now into my second week of this cleanse.

The plan this week is to start replacing my compulsions--food, and emotional--with Ngondro purification rituals.

Yes, this means chanting.

I am very, very self conscious about adopting spiritual rituals of any kind. Last night I was convinced that the Ngondro audio tape I was listening to was disturbing the neighbours, and of course if I chant they will hear me. Or will they? I'm not that loud.

But I imagine that they will than then what? They will think I'm a Buddhist. That's a very vulnerable feeling, because having a religion of any kind leaves you open for persecution.  It doesn't make me feel safe. The whole point of Ngondro practice is to find refuge.

And yet, the starting point of refuge is that feeling of vulnerability. Without acknowledging our vulnerability, there is no motivation to seek refuge.

Paradoxically, it's this vulnerability that prompts us to seek refuge, and the refuge that keeps us safe and, thus, less vulnerable.

So, perhaps the key is to take refuge in this feeling of vulnerability.  It keeps us open, it means we are learning, It keeps the compassion flowing. It keeps us strong. It is courage. And it takes courage to set out on this path.

But it's the way