Interdependent Origination

Hola mi Gente,
I had an awful, almost crippling headache today. I almost never get headaches. I don’t know how I held it together.

Everything is Everything

The fear of letting go prevents you from letting go of the fear of letting go.

This is the doctrine at the heart Buddhism. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are a unstable collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center -- no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned debris floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA.

Your intellect, dear reader, is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your significant other leaves with the money in the bank account, the economy fails and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some village idiot’s war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this combination of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re a deluded species.

We are in a trance from birth to death. Burst the balloon and what are you left with? Emptiness.

It’s not only us -- this radical principle applies to the whole sentient world. Dependent origination is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, I admit. But it does have a compelling point: stop for a moment, still yourself, listen -- in other words, meditate just a little -- and you will find yourself on a planet you no longer recognize. Those needs and fears you thought were the very foundation of your existence turn out to be no more than bugs in your software.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…