Life is a Ball! Or is it?

Ask anyone that's enjoying good luck and engaged in a full, rewarding life how they are doing, and they will more than likely reply that they are having a ball! Their glass is not only half-full, it is overflowing! Then, when I clumsily come along and say that the Buddha proclaimed that we must acknowledge the suffering of our lives, they look at me as if I just landed from Mars! If what they are experiencing is suffering, let's hear it for suffering, they proclaim!

The Buddha was called the great physician. He insisted that if a person does not know that he or she is ill because they have no apparent symptoms, they will be very reluctant to take any medicine. On the other hand, someone who is very sick with severe symptoms will take their medicine willingly and without hesitation.

This analogy addresses the question as to whether someone who is well adjusted, and with his or her life progressing fabulously, should take the time and effort involved in meditating. It is a question that comes up all the time here in the west because we are relatively isolated from the severe poverty and difficulties that can be found in many other parts of the world. We have it pretty good.

Therefore the question is; can we be sick, even though we are feeling fine? And if we are, what will be the consequences if we do not treat this illness? If we are having a good time at the expense of others; if we shrug our shoulders at the rest of the world that is struggling, and simply say, "too bad for you," then we are severely ill, and although there are no symptoms yet, and may not be in this lifetime, sooner or later, our greed, hatred and illusions of being more special on this earth than everyone else will destroy us.

Many diseases show no symptoms at all, but if they are not caught early, they cannot be successfully treated. If the disease remains undetected, it might be too late once symptoms show up. It is akin to living in a fool's paradise where ignorance is bliss, but ignorance eventually leads to the opposite of bliss, which would be suffering a on a grand scale.

From a spiritual standpoint, the intricacies of spiritual development, or lack thereof, is so refined and delicate that the exuberance of material life overwhelm it, "If God is blessing me and giving me such a happy life, I must be special in His eyes! Why would I change anything that I am doing? That would be silly, and maybe even asking for trouble!"

Buddhism would call this foolishly burning up all of our good karma. In other words, we are squandering our treasure without replenishing it just as a foolish young man squanders his paycheck. Nothing goes in the bank, it all goes for fun, and soon he is broke. When no more paychecks come in (when he dies), he might find himself in dire straits! If we do not see through the illusion of "self," the basis of all self-centeredness in this world experience, then the next lifetime might be a replay of this one, except without a guarantee of what kind of situation we will be born into, because all of our good karma may have been used up.

Some don't wait until they become ill. Instead of waiting until the pain becomes unbearable and then going to a physician, they will seek a holistic professional who can recognize latent diseases while the patient is still feeling great. If the professional finds an organ that has the potential of disease, he or she will treat it with natural, unobtrusive herbs to strengthen the organ. If one waits for pain, then the physician has no choice but to treat the illness, that has become serious, with aggressive drugs and treatments that more than likely will weaken other organs.

Likewise, some people don't wait until their last breath to consider what's next! Of course, if you believe that there is no "next," or have been too busy with life to consider such a thing, or believe that you can handle any situation when it comes up, then the last breath might turn out to be a little dicey.

Let's say you are certain that there is no "next." You have studied it and as far as you can see, belief in an afterlife is only the opiate of the masses, wishful thinking with absolutely no scientific underpinnings and therefore must be false. Okay, fair enough. But what if you are wrong? What if there is more to this universe than meets the physical eye of scientists? How do you know for sure? Sages and saints, not famous for lying, proclaim that there is something else. Many rational people have seen things that they cannot explain. I have seen things that convince me absolutely that there is more to this universe than meets the eye.

But even if you cannot buy into an afterlife, or that what you do in this present life will greatly affect that afterlife, consider then that what you do on this earth will affect your happiness right now. Lasting happiness and contentment are internal things. We might have happiness now, but if that happiness is dependent upon outside circumstances, which involve using our sense organs when interacting with people and things, then that happiness can be taken from us. Therefore, even if we are happy now, adverse circumstances could make us unhappy if our happiness is based on exte
als. If it is grounded in internals, then regardless of what happens exte
ally, that happiness will remain intact.

If there is another world, will it involve human senses? Or will it be something so unique that we cannot think about it, and if we were shown it, perhaps we could not understand or describe it. There is a good possibility that this is true. That means we cannot take ourselves along. That means that although there is another world, it will be so entirely different that we cannot ever speak of it. Can you imagine yourself without senses? A meditator can. A meditator can touch that other world.

Imagine waking up tomorrow morning, opening your eyes and not being able to see. Your world would suddenly become much smaller, more claustrophobic, as your contact with the world becomes limited and dependent upon the touches and sounds of those you love.

The next morning, you awaken to find that you can no longer hear. Now your physical world is confined to only what you can taste, smell, and feel. This would be a small world indeed, as all communication would be through touch. You could still write and communicate, and read Braille, and maintain an active communication with your loved ones.

The next morning, you lose your sense of taste and smell, and one of the last pleasures left, is now taken away. And the next morning your sense of touch is gone. Now all communication with the earth is lost. You never thought about how this experience of life hangs on such a thin thread, how heavily it depends on your physical senses. And now you understand, but it is too late; you have not prepared yourself, and this is beyond what you can manage. The isolation is unbearable.

This is the end of any physical relationship with the world and its inhabitants. All you have left is mind. Your memories and thoughts are the extent of your consciousness, and soon you lose the reality of whether you are asleep, awake, or dreaming; alas, whether you are in fact alive or dead - there seems to be little difference now, as everything merges into a single point. Your entire world has collapsed. And there is nothingness.

Suddenly, there is a bright light, and your soul somehow flies higher than the universe itself, higher than you could ever even conceive of it flying . . . and suddenly, you are released. You can't explain what has happened because it has happened well beyond anything that you could have ever considered and beyond anything explicable. You could never explain this to anyone, even if you had the capacity to do so. They would never have the capacity to understand.

You have come face-to-face with God. Your little self and all its perceived problems have disappeared; even life itself, and life on earth now seems like "crumbs from God's table."

So when the great physician said that we are ill, he was not kidding around. He was very serious. This is serious business. What he meant was that we are lost in our illusions of happiness in a world that can never sustain our happiness for long, and the last breath approaches far too soon. Anyone who has been on this earth for some time will tell us that life passes as quickly as a flash of lightening. Fortunate are the ones who prepare, and foolish are the ones who squander their paychecks and blindly leap into the abyss at the end.

Being trapped in our world of senses keeps us from this tremendous realization, but our senses are all that we know, we become drunk in them, and short of dying to them how would we understand? This is why meditators practice; long before actual death and the disappearance of the senses, the meditator has the opportunity to bypass them and come face-to-face with God. Then, when death actually does come for the meditator, there are no surprises or fear, and this makes all the difference in the next world. nn