We discussed Buddhist principles last night.  That is, we worked at re-training our minds to process a way of thinking.  We’re habituated to think that life is basically problem solving, according to widely accepted principles of cause and effect logic.  Major principle, minor principle then the conclusion follows: problem solved.  If “the problem” presented is beyond the ken of common sense, one calls on a specialist.  The call goes to a trusted plumber, HVAC technician, or an oncologist.  More specialized education is needed under those circumstances.

Buddhist thought goes in another direction.

Buddhism offers the predicate that life is fundamentally unsolvable.  Fires are always breaking out, will unaccountably break out.  “Fire” is a metaphor for what we desire or dread, so deeply that we may not recognize the shape, the exact nature of the dissonance.  A fire is always “breaking out,” often inexplicably, irrationally, with no isolated cause or anyone to blame.

These lines from a short story by Merry Speece, about the emergency of childbirth, Speece describes the onset of labor as if waves of a grassfire…

Just like that.  No, I burned long for that child.  The flames of grassfire come in a wave across the field.  The only way to stop it is to cut the earth, but we just keep watching the wave of fire coming toward outbuildings and think someone else will get the plow.  Out of the fire of childbirth, I tore off my oxygen mask and gasped for ice.  He at my bedside rose up from the fallen ash he was, wasted as he was from my endless flame, the wave of flame, and he, the only person of the many who looked on at my nakedness and suffering, the only one who loved me, brought ice in a little paper cup and put just enough on my tongue.

excerpt, Fire Sermon by Merry Speece, Nixon Under the Bodhi Tree and Other Works of Buddhist Fiction edited by Kate Wheeler, Wisdom Press

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Today, in the morning iphone newsfeed I read the Republican’s in the Senate have enough votes to confirm whoever the President nominates for the Supreme Court.  That’s F___ed Up, to pledge to blindly vote for a yet unnamed candidate.  No greater conception of “a pig-in-a-poke” could be made.

Fire is always breaking out….

Would I have a modicum of sanity without music?  I doubt it.  This tune has been loved by many for years.  The song was featured by the 1985 John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club.

Don’t Forget About Me

By Simple Minds

Hey, hey, hey, hey
Ohhh…

Won’t you come see about me?
I’ll be alone, dancing you know it baby
Tell me your troubles and doubts
Giving me everything inside and out and
Love’s strange so real in the dark
Think of the tender things that we were working on
Slow change may pull us apart
When the light gets into your heart, baby

Don’t you forget about me
Don’t don’t don’t don’t
Don’t you forget about me

Will you stand above me?
Look my way, never love me
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down
Will you recognise me?
Call my name or walk on by
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down, down

Hey, hey, hey, hey
Ohhhh…

Don’t you try to pretend
It’s my feeling we’ll win in the end
I won’t harm you or touch your defenses
Vanity and security

Don’t you forget about me
I’ll be alone, dancing you know it baby
Going to take you apart
I’ll put us back together at heart, baby

Don’t you forget about me
Don’t don’t don’t don’t
Don’t you forget about me

As you walk on by
Will you call my name?
As you walk on by
Will you call my name?
When you walk away
Oh will you walk away?
Will you walk on by?
Come on, call my name
Will you call my name?

I say:
La la la…

Writers: Keith Forsey, Steve W. Schiff