But it's nothing personal.
Sankharas
Whichever direction thoughts turn there is the poisoned arrow of aversion.
I try to feel serene, but feel overwhelmed with dull fatigue. Blocking thoughts of love, like unwelcome concrete.
Today I failed.
Got stressed. Lost my composure. Wrong thoughts and speech spewed out before I could stop them.
Said things I regret.
I should know better.
The saintly Buddha-self disappeared in a golden wisp. And in its place the arsehole.The self I'd rather not see.
'Śāsana this.' Mara chides rubbing his hands with glee.
The worldly winds sink my little ship.
How to fail well? To fall successfully?
How do I get back to metta?
To the noble shore.
This world so complicated.
I find it hard to understand at times.
I try to navigate the council website to pay the tax; like trying to navigate a hall of mirrors, and when I finally found the right place, the payment was rejected.
Huge energy bills leave huge holes in the bank.
Expensive food and no peanut butter on the shelves.
This human world governed by leaders who support and encourage greed. Who think that it's okay to lie.
To cheat, to steal, to kill.
In some countries they tell you its your duty to kill. To break the precepts.
I yearn to escape.
Long for solitude.
Some peace.
My back hurts.
So tired.
I must abandon this unwholesome state of mind.
I meditate.
A feat of extraordinary endurance that pays off in the end.
The involuntary movements of the mind begin to settle.
The body melts into the sign of air. Into the beautiful sound of coastal breezes outside.The cool light touch of it on the skin.
This stillness feels like bliss.
The joy of an unhindered mind. Where love naturally arises.
- Asoka
I stare blankly at the mess in my room,
Stare empty at the sky outside,
At the failed paintings on my wall,
And at nothing in particular.
I stare forlornly at this computer screen.
Wishing I hadn't said what I said to you,
Wish I could turn back time and stop myself;
but alas I do not have that power, noone does.
So I live now with regret and an aching heart,
A sad unhappy mind,
And another lost friend.
I miss you.
Having another crack at this assignment, only two days left to complete it in, and I feel like I am getting nowhere, my head is just going round and round in an unhappy loop of constant misery. I just cannot seem to get anything done at the moment. I will persevere though. Once this assignment is done I will then concentrate on tidying this place up a bit as I have been neglecting it of late and the mess is getting me down.
My mind is in so much pain just now, sometimes I wish there was some way to switch my emotions off, but then if I did, I would just be like a robot or a zombie and what is the point in living if you don't feel anything, you might as well be dead, it is the emotions that create art, that appreciate the beautiful, that feel compassion and empathy, that colour our existence. There are times when I do feel nothing, where I become a cold apathetic spineless sludge of unfeeling, but it is not a satisfactory experience living like that, it is empty and doesn't feel like relief. So being emotionless isn't a solution; we need our emotions, I just wish mine would shut up sometimes and stop torturing me.
Abandonment is hard. I have trouble with communication and human relations. I make friends only for them to abandon me because they can't handle my mood swings and delusions. This has happened to me numerous times with people I thought were good friends. I think they have to cut me off for their own sanity, because I can get a bit intense sometimes. I feel regret for that. I don't judge them, although I did judge them at the time, hated them for it in fact, being cut loose and abandoned by others feels cold and painful and just reinforces all the negative beliefs I hold about myself. But I also understand why they did it and there's nothing I can do to change what happened, it sucks, but I have to let it go. I can't force people to like me or be my friend.
I wish I didn't lose friendships like this, it hurts a lot. So I think for my own sake, I need to practise some self-care and just not bother making anymore connections. I'll stay solitary I think, it is less painful that way, rejection is unpleasant and triggers me, makes me go on a downer, and I get depressed and I start feeling the self-loathing and wishing I wasn't alive, and that isn't a good way to be. I figure if I just keep myself to myself from now on and avoid connecting to others then I will avoid that trigger (I hope). Although loneliness is hard, but one is only lonely if they think they are lonely. And I am making friends with non-human beings, both seen and unseen, so I am not completely alone, just alone in the sense of not having many human friends/companions.
Still there are some good people whom I do still have a strong heart connection to, who haven't abandoned me or misunderstood me, and they have seen me at my worse over the years, and they still want to know me and be my friend. I am grateful for those people, they warm my heart and make me want to carry on living. And although some of them don't live close by, it doesn't matter, the connection I have with them in my heart is strong and cannot be broken. They help me feel fearless and remind me that I at least matter to some people out there.
My inability to connect with others is painful.
A playlist about sadness, enjoy:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ_OuDCKlduVJ5RGQQzV8FKxBfKfc1B
I find melancholic music can be strangely soothing at times, like sonic therapy.
As Suzuki Roshi famously once said: 'What's wrong with sadness?'
It is a horrible experience being alive. One is just born in a body with whatever genes one is given, and this body just grows by itself and life gets increasingly more complicated and one is stuck with whatever personality and DNA they are born with and expected to just get on with living in a cold and often cruel world. Noone gets to choose who they will be, what they will be good at, what kind of body they will get. No-one can help being who they are; and yet we get judged for it and made to feel guilty if we aren't up to the task of fitting into this bloody difficult world. Being a human sucks. Being any being on this planet sucks. Being alive sucks.
I can only seem to meditate when I feel good. Meditation when depressed is not helpful at all. It just makes me feel worse. I am trying my best, but I keep failing catastrophically. I can't generate any joy at the moment, I am trying but it is like an engine that has run out of fuel and won't kickstart.
I am also feeling broken hearted as well. Particularly for the local wildlife. So much life has disappeared at the local beach. Tangled up in the seaweed are the bones of seabirds that have starved to death from lack of food. The beach here used to be teeming with life of all different kinds, it was magical, but now it is like a watery graveyard, an oceanic desert. The sea here is dying and nobody else seems to notice or care. I read that now one in four species of bird in the UK are on the endangered list, and insects have been steadily disappearing, every summer there's fewer and fewer.
Then there's refugees drowning at sea escaping all kinds of different horrors in the world caused by the greed, hatred, and delusion of the West; while the super rich just compete to be the first to reach outer-space so they can colonise dead planets, their rockets like penis extensions, ignorant of the poverty and environmental destruction their greed has caused.
And the government is determined to vaccinate everyone, is obsessed with it; but if they really cared about saving people's lives why don't they help those who are now homeless in the freezing cold of Winter after been kicked out of their houses by banks who repossessed their homes after lockdowns destroyed their incomes. And why don't the government help the old people abandoned and dying alone in care homes and hospitals? I thought all this pandemic and vaxxing was to save their lives, but it seems to be more about destroying them.
I am sorry for the rant dear reader. I feel so unhappy just now, sometimes writing it out of my system is the only relief I get. (Albeit temporary.) I wish I could feel hope and write something uplifting, but I feel there is something terribly wrong with the world just now.
Feel the pain and grief.
And let it give you power.
The momentum to move forward.
To go beyond this empty world.
Beyond the tears of Samsara.
On to the other shore. To higher things.
To the deathless, and the freedom of nibbana.
Use the sadness to break the illusion.
To see through the delusion.
As Mara crushes your heart and mind.
Smile with equanimity at the rain, the pain.
Strength through adversity.
The first noble truth.
Is there a way to generate joy that doesn't depend on anything outside oneself?
Without it I feel like a bird with a broken wing, who longs to fly but can't take off.
Held down by the gravity of a crap reality.
The pain of separation, of living in a world that doesn't give damn.
A dream within a dream within a dream.
What is real anyway?
Is it the world out there? Or the world within?
Internal combustion broken beyond belief
Opened up the heart but still no relief
Pain, and a feeling of disconnection
Alone, but don't feel like conversation
So me go deep inside
far far within
away from this place
to another space
where I forget who I am
and that's the best
to forget my self.
I don't care for your selfish corporate greed
animals are going extinct
seven times three
this is the 21st century
lose your last century crap
and self-centred ideology
World can't take no more fossil fuel
concrete jungle invasion
grey bleak city cruel
no more poison
sprayed across the land
killing birds and insects
to satisfy supermarket demand
disinvent the trawler
sink them to the depths of the sea
scooping up all the fish
while sea-life goes hungry
and orcas go sterile from pvc
stop cutting down trees
leave the forest alone
open your hearts to one love
Altruism is better
for our survival
All life is interdependent
we are one
Aye-man
This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.