EVERYTHING IS EXACTLY RIGHT
There is the true story of a Vedantist who moved in alongside the swimming pool at his apartment community. He was so happy. There were a dozen other apartments all around the pool and he could only imagine that those tenants were just as happy as he was. How lucky they all were.
This was due to the view. When the pool lights were on at night, for example, the pool glowed an ethereal blue. Then there were the palm trees, elegant and towering, and the shrubs covered in pink blossoms bright as pearls, and then the long beds of crimson, amber, and azure hibiscuses everywhere, so that, well, it looked like paradise on earth.
What the Vedantist did not anticipate, though, was how many residents would be using the pool, now that it was summertime, and it wasn't just the residents. It was also all their family members and all their friends, and so many little kids, they couldn't all be from the residences, surely.
The adults, drinking their beer, laughed loudly, shouted, and jumped wildly with huge splashes into the pool, while the little kids shrieked their heads off, running around here there and everywhere, playing their games. Was this what was in store for him now for the next five months of summer? Was he so naive as to think that it would be other than this way?
As he thought about it, however, he had a different view. His initial reaction of, "how dare these people ruin my paradise," changed to the question of what exactly it was that they all, including himself, wanted.
Life was suffering, the Buddha taught, and so what everyone wanted was a respite from it, however elusive and brief it might be. This was the fact of it.
Yet, there was more to it than this. What everyone really wanted, as only he, a Vedantist, could appreciate, was moksha. It was with moksha, final liberation so-called, that suffering ended completely, permanently.
And, as it happened, this moksha was what everyone, including all of these people down there at the pool, little kids as well, would achieve one day.
He and all these folks were, after all, all one life, were Brahman. Everything was exactly right.
The pool looked wonderful to him again.
This was due to the view. When the pool lights were on at night, for example, the pool glowed an ethereal blue. Then there were the palm trees, elegant and towering, and the shrubs covered in pink blossoms bright as pearls, and then the long beds of crimson, amber, and azure hibiscuses everywhere, so that, well, it looked like paradise on earth.
What the Vedantist did not anticipate, though, was how many residents would be using the pool, now that it was summertime, and it wasn't just the residents. It was also all their family members and all their friends, and so many little kids, they couldn't all be from the residences, surely.
The adults, drinking their beer, laughed loudly, shouted, and jumped wildly with huge splashes into the pool, while the little kids shrieked their heads off, running around here there and everywhere, playing their games. Was this what was in store for him now for the next five months of summer? Was he so naive as to think that it would be other than this way?
As he thought about it, however, he had a different view. His initial reaction of, "how dare these people ruin my paradise," changed to the question of what exactly it was that they all, including himself, wanted.
Life was suffering, the Buddha taught, and so what everyone wanted was a respite from it, however elusive and brief it might be. This was the fact of it.
Yet, there was more to it than this. What everyone really wanted, as only he, a Vedantist, could appreciate, was moksha. It was with moksha, final liberation so-called, that suffering ended completely, permanently.
And, as it happened, this moksha was what everyone, including all of these people down there at the pool, little kids as well, would achieve one day.
He and all these folks were, after all, all one life, were Brahman. Everything was exactly right.
The pool looked wonderful to him again.
posted by Donald L. Simons at
3:49 PM
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