salvation

2011 and i sit with my contradictions.

my idealism these days is recorded on an old greasy paper - folded and tattered i carry it around everywhere... mostly private... and sometimes i will take it out its special hiding place in the midst of the everyday stream of thought, and i will pause within that moment's compromise and i die a little - the golden letters becoming a little more difficult to recall - their message becoming a little more obscured by the fold lines as the paper rubs against day to day living.

not brave to say - to hell with the job - instead - making my own hell - which is the place one lives when one has decided that the "best way" is not "the way it is".

i have sought to ease this discomfort and find justification for the breaths that i take, for the energy that i consume - so the story of me is not one of wasted skin and squandered time. and these days there is some refuge - back to the Vajrayana - and i understand better now - what refuge is and how i need it. and in the midst of it - of the sangha that i have done my best to avoid for ten years or more - stepping back into it last summer - and with it an experience of naked clarity seemingly independant of the ocean of stories of me and you and us.

although if it was not for me - i would not have recognized it;

and if it was not for us - there would have been no history of conditions to frame nor create the experience, no teaching, no practices, no prayer nor aspirations

and if it was not for you - i would not be writing right now.

a sangha of us - which now is broader and includes some women and girls in the Himalayan country called Bhutan... because while i was there - i was asked to take over a small charity in support of women seeking education within their own culture.

salvation - a nugget of worth to grasp onto - a way to see that perhaps, just maybe, the means of living in compromised idealism is at least partially justified by the end.... if i can just throw myself into it deeper...

in the meantime - making a wage through the suffering of many animals... via the hell holes of the "meat industries" ... taking the breast flesh of maybe one hundred chickens - skinned and deboned and wrapped in plastic and a waxed box - you open it and a raw scent wafts up - slimy white flesh is cut then breaded, or cut and fried or cooked with curry and cream...
and displayed with cut garnish - animals?? no animals here - just this beautified "meat". Look how nice it looks in the case.

Buy it and the store manager will be pleased and my hours won't be cut.

..... the paper with the gilded letters rips along the worn edges of the folds....

.... women in red robes recite prayers and eat simple meals of rice, barley and vegetables on the other side of the world...