In the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the human life cycle is just that: a cycle. An individual soul is born, dies, and is reborn over and over again until it achieves liberation from all future rebirth. At that point the cycle ends. Until then, however, the cycle consists of six bardos or "transitional states." The first three bardos occur "between" lifetimes (from the moment of death until the time of rebirth).
* The Chi-Kha Bardo - this state occurs at the moment of death, when the dying person has the potential to perceive The Clear Light of Ultimate Reality, and recognize it as his own ultimate being. If the soul does this, it merges with the light and no longer has to be reborn. This encounter, however, is quite an overwhelming experience, to put it mildly, and the individual may shrink back from this Light in fear. If it does so, then the weight of its own karma will pull it into the next bardo.
* The Chhos-Nyid Bardo - this part of the journey is where the soul encounters "Peaceful Deities" and "Wrathful Deities," which are outer projections of its karma, or past experiences over innumerable rebirths. The soul is counselled not to become attracted or repulsed by these deities, but to regard them as emanations of its own illusory self. If the soul can do this, it achieves liberation. However,
if the soul ends up getting "caught" by one of these entities, it may end up hanging out in one of six possible "lokas" or "worlds," including those of the hungry ghosts, the warrior demons, the devas (or angels), the hell dwellers, the bestial world of animals, or back into the world of human beings (see next bardo).
-
http://thehumanodyssey.typepad.com/the_human_odyssey/2007/04/maps_of_the_hum_1.html A sane person in America today finds himself care-taking a cultural Alzheimer's patient - a society that is mentally slipping away. The body is still there, but the mind is far gone. The cities and highways and shopping malls are still there; so it looks like the same old country. But the media and the ruling class are delusional - babbling insanely about stuff they remember from years ago, while ignoring the house burning down around them right now. As the higher functions of consciousness fade, childish impulses are no longer under control and violent acting out creates dangers for those nearby, even if they are loved ones.
The body - our country's physical infrastructure - is falling apart from neglect. Similarly, the civic soul of America is a distorted wreck of its former self: the right to bear arms de-regulated into an never-ending rash of mass killings/sucides, which disfigure our social fabric like herpes sores; a morbidly obese state of childhood - prolonged into the third decade of life by terrified, soon-to-be-ex-middle-class, "helicopter parents"; an ethic of fair competition twisted into the deification of increasingly violent sports and talentless celebrity; freedom of religion morphed into theocracy, teen-age harems, and apocalyptic cults.
Scientists still don't understand the origins of Alzheimers; but they can chart the progression of its pathology. Those remaining conscious of our societal breakdown, like Naomi Klein, recognize not only the symptoms, but also the origins, of our societal de-cerebration. This is media-induced Alzheimers - the deliberate destruction of our collective memory of what real democracy and real society look like by a corporate propaganda apparatus. Bush is the sub-human face of our collective dementia; Cheney, the alter ego of snarling de-repressed violence.
This induced dementia has been immensely, obscenely profitable for the corporate elites who tipped the balance of communication in our society's thought processes into a self-fueling, self-destructive cascade of toxic ideas. Best of all for the corporate predators, their victim still has power of attorney. So our government is busy giving away our children's inheritance to con-men who cold-call from no-bid boilerrooms around the country. Our dementing society has sold our birthright as citizens for a pile of shoddy Chinese trinkets and a failed war of aggression.
Like July 1914 or August 1939, you can feel that something very bad is coming. But, as a society, we are not prepared to face it, much less to deal with it. It is not the circumstances that doom us, but the obscurantist reaction of our society's leaders that make us the walking dead. When some random chain of avoidable circumstances pushes this ravaged society beyond its capacity to cope, it is clear that this incarnation of American society will die. Given our propensity for violence, it is highly likely that the next incarnation will be populated with "wrathful dieties". Karma is a bitch.
Still, as we sane folks keep the death vigil, there are moments when a flash of the country we love shines through the crumbling, ranting husk of a culture. And, we are reminding of its prior greatness and magnanimity. And, we hope against hope that there is really a thinking being left inside the lobotomized maniac we are care-giving. We hope that Obama or Hillary is a savior. We hope that some brave person will stop the war abroad and the looting at home.
----
I, myself, am beyond hope. This has given me a new apprehension of the world around me. I am healthy and would normally expect to live decades more, so I have not begun to grapple seriously with my own personal mortality. However, the impending death of our society has made each normal day, each everyday miracle, into a moment of meditation on the good life we have had in America.
Buddha told a parable in a sutra:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
Hanging from that branch, menaced by those tigers, watching the crooked bankers chew threw that vine, I eat the strawberry in the fading twilight of middle class America.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
