you never know when

Hello Robert! I read The Ten Thousand Things a few months ago, and now I've just started Depending on No-thing. Thanks for bringing clarity to these existential questions. Who does not have them? Once you are well-fed, have a family, and are essentially "happy,” you still need meaning, right? I am happy, Robert, but I still feel “I don't get it,” as if something were missing.

I wanted to know your opinion about Tony Parsons. I'm sure you are familiar with his content, but just in case, what he says is essentially: "This is all energy which is apparently having this form, but all there is is this. I am not a person anymore. I have no relationships. Responses from this body-mind just happen. What do you think about that, Robert?

In your case, it seems that the old Robert is not there anymore, but you still feel love—say, for your wife? If something goes wrong, will you (the person that these eyes can see) be sad?

Thanks a lot! Carl.

Sunday Morning, 2018

Hi, Carl.
To begin with, what your eyes see is not a “person” but a body. What I am cannot be seen with your eyes since it includes perceptions, feelings, and thoughts that are entirely invisible to you and always will be. All you know about me is your projections and assumptions based on my words and other behaviors. The same is true of what you think you know about Tony Parsons.

I have seen Tony Parsons on video. He seems like a friendly sort. He talks about one big idea that works for him—“I don’t exist.” That idea would not settle anything for me, but if he’s happy with it, mazel tov.

You say that you are essentially happy but still need meaning because even though you have all the ingredients for contentment, you still feel something is missing. That seems to be a common human experience. It is the first of Buddha’s four noble truths, often mistranslated as: “All life is suffering.”

A fair translation of the word “dukkha,” which is the word he reputedly used, is not “suffering” but “unsatisfactoriness.” So, he was not saying that all life is suffering but that something about our lives feels unsatisfactory no matter how good we have it.

Speaking personally, I may be sitting beside my beloved wife and feel great contentment because she is here to share this moment with me, but in the next moment, I might remember that she will die, and I will have to go on without her, or vice versa, so this contentment cannot grasped and preserved, but can only be felt when it arises and enjoyed while it is present. Like the wind in the trees, contentment just comes and goes regardless of what I might want. And that is dukkha.

Dukkha is like a hayride. You are rolling around in the hay with a bottle of wine and a pretty girl, having a fine old time, but one of the wheels has a flat spot that keeps coming around as the wagon moves forward. So it all seems like a smooth cruise until, suddenly, clunk! That’s life, amigo, and “finding meaning” won’t fix it, for even “meaning” is time-bound and temporary and has its flat spots. What may feel meaningful right now might seem meaningless five minutes from now. And what if there is no meaning apart from living until one dies? Then, if you keep searching for “meaning,” you might be overlooking the only meaning there is: this right now.

Of course, I will feel sad when something goes wrong for someone I love. When I had to put down my old German shepherd, Tuki, I had a pain in my chest around my heart that lasted for many weeks. Later, as these things go, the pain subsided, and I was left with memories and an appreciation for the depth of the love she and I shared. That’s pretty normal, isn’t it?

In my view, the idea that “awake” means that one feels less, cares less, or is made immune from grief and sadness is a complete misunderstanding and a denial of one’s humanity. My experience of “awake” is that one feels more human, not less, and so the pain and suffering of this world—this vale of tears—feels more present, more real, not less real. With that in mind, if you feel happy, you are lucky. So many of us humans are not only not feeling happy but are oppressed, enslaved, born into unremitting poverty, perpetually hungry, without clean water to drink, and without even a safe place to lay our heads and sleep.

Enjoy what you have while you have it. You never know when it will be taken from you.

I wish you well.


Sterling Doughty: My experience of “awake” is that one feels more human, not less, and so the pain and suffering of this world—this vale of tears—feels more present, more real, not less real. Robert is correct here. That is how it is. More real, more intense, more total. Sometimes wonderful, often not, but when you are awake, reality does not go away. Of course, it doesn't mean you always have to like it.

Righto, Sterling.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
―Philip K. Dick

View the video record of The Gathering At Todos Santos