Crossing Nebraska

“Well, this will just make room in your life for someone better to come along.” Those words closed around my heart like a fist. Better? Better than the woman I love? Better than my wife? Yes, I felt deeply hurt, and, yes, I felt more incredibly betrayed than I think I could possibly feel, but a love that’s real is not blown away by such winds of circumstance, is it? What did “better” even mean, anyway? Do we have some mental checklist of criteria, both conscious and unconscious, the satisfactory completion of which signifies love – with more checked boxes corresponding to a “better” love, and “best” corresponding to some theoretically perfect love in which all possible criteria are checked? If that were so then love would merely reside in the mundane realm of convenient transactions: I love you as long as your actions please me. I love you as long as you give me what I desire. I love you as long as you continue to fulfill my needs. If that is the true nature of love, I pondered, then...

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,...