Alone In The Machine

Air Becomes Breath

I wake up with last nights stale cigarettes on my breath. I go downstairs to boil the kettle and my cat is licking his paws. There is something i envy and admire about him. He is self contained and implanted nowhere but where he is. His yawn is like a zen koan. He sits there like the Buddha staring at me. He has no words, no ideas or concepts. He wont say good morning or ask me what I'm doing today, he wont judge me if i pull down the shades and go back to bed for a few hours. There's nothing to do anyway but stroll around leisurely with grace.

Its as though all of human culture, all our striving, means absolutely nothing. There is nothing here but the present moment. He doesn't preach it, he is it! Don't go to work today, his look seems to say. I need little convincing. I drink my tea, roll my first joint of the day, and sink back guiltlessly into the couch. Today, like many other days, will be a day in which there will be very  little outward movement.

I envy and admire him because he needs so little. He doesn't have a job, doesn't need money, he doesn't watch TV, doesn't read books. He doesn't suffer under the weight of abstract human thought. There isn't much he seems to need, other than some food, to chase the odd blue bottle or mouse, and an ungodly amount of sleep. Isn't that admirable? Isn't that what the Buddhists seem to be chasing after? To act in the moment, to not crave, to not suffer? My cat achieves it all by simply being a cat.

I crave, i suffer, i am rarely located in the present moment. Thought is wondering what to do next, and the moment after, thought is telling me to light another cigarette. Do humans act in such destructive ways because they are aware of the inevitability of death? We are such odd and unnatural creatures. We want more time, yet we are always trying to escape time. Chronos walks hand in hand with Thanatos, and we are always pushing death into some abstract future. It is the shadow of life, it is always around the corner, but never here. Like fools we doubt the one thing we know is certain! Expanding on the thought, exploring the brutal facts, one still finds it impossible to believe it will happen to oneself. It remains a thought, it remains something that will happen to others.

I see no harm and no sense in denying oneself pleasures that do not harm others. I see even less sense in condemning pleasure in general and calling it a sin or an obstacle to the spiritual life. Isn't it our pleasures, isn't it the little things that get us through the day? One can ask why pleasure is pleasing, and how much will be enough, but one might as well ask why air becomes breath, and how many breaths will be enough.

One simply wants more, one day it will cease, but in the meantime one goes with it. There is nothing to fight, nothing to conquer, it will simply lose momentum and cease of its own accord. Wasn't it Oscar Wilde that said, i can resist anything but temptation? Similarly, if one desires to get rid of desire, that also is a desire. It is a drive, an ambition, an act of will. It is your two hands fighting each other. Any victory, any pain, and any defeat, will be simultaneously manufactured and experienced by yourself.

I'm not into sadomasochism, i don't repress myself, i don't fight with myself. One day I'll get off this wheel, but in the meantime i want to enjoy the ride.