Crossing Nebraska

When we’re young and healthy and happy, and flush with the enjoyment of our vigor and our physical and mental prowess, it might be hard to recognize the merits of spiritual practice. Such is the purview of the old and weak, the timid and the sick, and those who for some strange reason choose to focus on the negative aspects of life when the golden ring of youthful pleasure is theirs for the grasping; or so we might think, anyway. The Samiddhi Sutta touches on this issue, among others. It tells of how one of the Buddha’s followers, the youthful Samiddhi, was bathing in a hot spring one morning before going out to beg for his daily meal. A beautiful deva appeared and hovered in the air before him. They bantered for a time in verse, and then she descended and spoke: You are young, bhikkhu, to have left the world, black-haired, with the bloom of youth. In your youthful prime you do not enjoy the pleasures of the senses. Get your fill, bhikkhu, of human pleasures. Don't reject the ...

Whether we think of it as having arisen from a different mother or from the moment before last, giving consideration to our past life provides us insight into what makes up this present moment. More important, however, is what we choose to do with this moment now that we are living it. Will we proceed with awareness, in a way that reduces suffering, or will we act without awareness – propelled forward by the kamma (karma), the habit energy that has brought us here? What we have in this present moment is consciousness (or at least the capacity for it), a storehouse of habit energy (formations, volition, and will), and an inaccurate understanding of the nature of reality. With just this much we dive into the swirling waters of samsara (the continuous flow of life, death, and rebirth) to sputter and thrash around and get pulled under and fight our way back to the surface – over and over again. Oftentimes we think that the solution is as simple as learning how to swim. But, you know,...