Buddhism and the Philly Eagles

Well, whaddaya know? The Eagles blew it again! And so did the Ravens, making way for a Super Bowl not worth watching. I was convinced that the Birds would pull it off this year, especially since I won't be able to watch the big game in two weeks. I figured not watching the Super Bowl might be my role in breaking the Eagles cycle of playoff anticlimax (the Phillies won the Series just before I last returned from India, and just before I was born in '80)--and a way of turning my back on one of the things that gets me most worked up. This all reminds me of Buddha's second Noble Truth, which says that suffering is caused by attachment. This applies to anything really: attachment to life, which will inevitably end; attachment to pleasurable experiences (also impermanent); attachment to a particular philosophy bound to be disproved or regarded as irrelevant in time. Attachment yields disappointment is what Buddha meant. The Eagles playoff run (and all the others) was impermanent, bound to come to an end. Even a Super Bowl win would produce only a 'temporary ultimate satisfaction.' Take Giants fans, less than a year after their championship--did they not suffer when Philly eliminated them from the playoffs this time around? But even attachment to detachment will yield dissatisfaction. Denying oneself of life's little pleasures altogether will not work either, for that is sad within itself. And that brings up Buddhism's Middle Path (everything in moderation). Maybe I'll write about that another time, in terms of the Flyers or the Sixers.

Viva Philadelphia!

Home for the Holidays & Gone Again

Okay, here we go again. I am thankful to have had some time back in the states to relax and reflect, but really it's unsettling to be a couch-surfer. I'm ready to crawl up in my little greenhouse cell room in Phey village. Then I find myself talking about hitting the American road when I get back in the summer. I guess I'm trying to get settled in very very slowly. This whole thing has been a stepping away from American life to take a look at it from elsewhere, enter it again with a fresh perspective and frame of reference. It's been a reminder of how much money is the main factor behind so much stress. They say a fool and his money are soon parted, but I don't know. The less money I've had to speak or think of, the more I've committed to thinking and speaking with actual purpose, to looking out for opportunity, to finding out what true happiness is. When food and company are enough to warm the soul, happiness is never far off. Now I'm heading back out to Ladakh at the end of January and will be gone this time for a longer stretch. After the program ends and our students return to the U.S. May 13th I'll meet friend Susannah in Kathmandu and she'll show me what's what over there after she having volunteered at a non-profit healing center and then we'll feel our way through the monsoons in Burma Thailand Cambodia and maybe Bali and then I'm back to India for intense Hindi course and returning end of July with a whole hell of a lot of fresh perspective and frame of reference but no job and no money. But friends and food and shelter--a tent even if it goes that way, summer a good time to camp, go out west or northwest whatever. Or maybe I'll stay in the city and work in someone's brother's or aunt's restaurant or coffee shop, rent a tiny apartment and read a bunch. How could that be a bad thing, as long as there's every moment a breath and a smile from the inside, an awakening, awe.