Conversation
"I'm thinking of getting a haircut," I said.
The buddha gave me an indecipherable look. "For months, you don't call, you don't write, nothing, and this is what you want to talk about? Just pick up the thread of a conversation out of nowhere, no greeting, no nothing?"
"Dude, you sound like a needy girlfriend."
"Any girlfriend you didn't talk to for months would be an ex-girlfriend. You couldn't just show back up and be 'Hey, show me your wisdom, baby.'"
"I hate that term. Ex-whatever. I'm not quite sure why. It just sounds mean."
The buddha sat on the my coat on the bed. "And you know, it's kind of insulting. A haircut? That's a great moral crisis worth asking a fictional construct of a great spiritual teacher?"
"Dude, my hair's longer than yours now. It'd be a hell of a change. Though honestly, long hair, at least this long, is a pain in the ass, and totally hasn't done anything to attract women anyway, so, y'know."
"Why are you asking me, then, since you seem to have made up your mind already?"
"Because I'm not quite sure. And because then I can blame other people if it looks like crap later."
He nodded. "Ah. Yes, I'm sure 'A hippie surfer buddha made me do it,' would be believed."
"You never know. And why not ask you? It's certainly more practical and more likely to affect my life than asking about the Hidden Secrets of the Universe, or the Fundamental Nature of Reality. What're those gonna do for me? Unless knowing them gave me magic powers, which could be cool. I'd be so much better at using them than Neo was."
"One would hope knowledge of the fundamental nature of the universe would inspire something more than kung fu superpower gymnastics."
"Maybe. But maybe the fundamental nature of the universe is Awesome, and those are definitely Awesome," there's an idea I could run with, so I started scribbling it down, "The Universe should be made of Awesome. And then those who can tap into the nature of the Awesome are capable of performing feats of Awesomeness. But to get a story out of it, there'd have to be an opposite. Something to drive conflict. What's the opposite of Awesome? Boring? Stupid? Lame? Cliche? Hmm. It could line up on the Discordian false dichotomy, with Greyface being for Boring Order, and Eris being for Awesome Chaos, except it's not the chaos and order parts that even matter in that, it's the creative and destructive, but Awesome and Boring don't match up to creation and destruction very well, so that's probably a dead end. But hmm. A theology of Awesome. That could have possibilities. Then there could be the false prophet of Awesome, X-Treme. Who's not really Awesome, and seeks to cheapen and deny the Awesome, and is really just a fake. Hmm. I bet it could sell in Hollywood, it'd be like a hipster version of Gnosticism."
"As the Man in Black said, you have a truly staggering intellect."
"I'm not sure that's quite the right quote. But whatever. What I have is a staggering ability to take something totally random and bullshit about it to no end, as long as I know at least a little bit of enough to make it sound good. At least to the right audience. I don't quite think the religion of Awesome would get any real play out in the real world."
Pandora switched music on me. "That's music?" the buddha asked.
"No, it's Awesome reduced to pure auditory form. Or the soundtrack to the totally Awesome party I SHOULD be having, except I'm not a very good vessel for Awesome. My hair's probably clouding reception."
"And the circle is now complete," man, he can do Darth Vader better than James Earl Jones.
"Something like that," I said, "Plus the original excuse I used for growing my hair out was to get it cut for one of those cancer kid things. At this point, it's probably long enough I could cut it and still have a little pony tail. Not one of those stupid yuppie lawyer ones, though. And my luck being what it is, then would be when all the women I know would go "WHAT! You cut your hair! I wish I had hair like that!" and I can go "Well, you never said anything. Besides, it was to feed starving kids." Chicks are suckers for charity."
"There's a saying. If you spend all your life looking toward the horizon, you'll miss it when you get there."
I stopped. And thought about that. "Okay, so... that's profound, I guess, but it doesn't really seem relevant. It woulda been better if you'd used something like... I dunno. About mirrors, or new wine in an old wineskin, or the guy who buys a cheap car and paints it up, but doesn't fix anything else or something, if you're trying to get at what I think you were. On the other hand, donating a chunk of hair could be good for my karma."
He sighed. "Karma doesn't work like that. It's not about finding a parking space, or helping an old lady across the road, or leaving pennies in the give a penny take a penny thing," he waved a hand when I tried to speak, "Oh, it is, but it doesn't affect those. It's a gradual thing over like a zillion lifetimes. Which you know. And you don't even believe in karma, anyway."
I scratched my head. "Well, yeah. I was going to say I was making a joke. It'd be too easy for karma to be about just doing good, it's about doing whatever the 'right' thing in a caste society was, for whatever caste you were born into. Seriously, the whole 'Your life sucks because you deserve it because you were bad in a past life' idea annoys me."
"I would never have been able to tell," he said.
"What are you, the buddha of Sarcasm? That doesn't seem a very buddha-ey word."
I looked up, he had dice orbiting his head. "There might be better places than RPGs to get your theology from," he said.
"Put those back with the rest in my trunk when you're done," I said, "And you want theology, I've got a question for you."
"I don't particularly want anything. That's part of the whole buddha thing. Well, except to borrow some nail clippers."
"I'm glad your 'no material possessions' thing lets you wear pants at least," I said, but would a pair of clippers really be breaking it?"
"I subsist on the natural bounty of the universe and the kindness of strangers. In a sense."
"Okay, so here's the thing I don't get. One of the songs at work, one of the multitude of various 'classical' singers that seems to have become popular lately has a song with the line 'beyond the veil where there are no tears' or something like that. And it made me wonder. How does that work?
"I mean, okay, I get it, they're talking about Heaven. Or I guess they mean once you're dead that's it, so it doesn't matter, but I kinda doubt it. So how are there no tears? Okay, there's the literal 'They're dead, they don't have tears since they don't have bodies sense,' but that's kinda a cop-out. They're using it as a metaphor for sorrow. Why wouldn't there be sorrow in Heaven? Bad things still happen."
"Why are you asking me this? Wrong theology."
I shook my head. "Universal Wisdom and all that. Besides, you know what I know, so you know what I'm talking about. And besides, there's sort of the same thing with Buddhism, with Nirvana and suchlike. Which probably doesn't map over exactly, but it's kinda the same thing. Okay, sure, nothing bad (in theory) happens to the people in Heaven or where ever. Great, fine. But most of them still have friends or family who're still alive. And bad things can happen to them. Or their however many descendants. Or just, you know, ordinary relatively innocent people. So what, do people in Heaven not get to see what goes on elsewhere? Or do they just not care? Or are they unable to be sad? That's kinda creepy to think about.
"Okay, sure death may not have any sting for people who're already dead, but there's lots of worse things that can happen than death. I guess there's the possibility for the Big Picture, where everything suddenly Makes Sense. But you know, even if it's Necessary, for whatever reason, bad things happening to people is still something to be sad about. And makes me wonder how Necessary it really is."
The buddha waited several seconds to make sure I was done. "That's a lot for a throwaway line in a song," he said, "The easy answer would be they're wrong. It might not be the right answer, though."
"What do you mean 'might be', Universally Wise One?"
"You're basically running into the Problem of Evil. And if wikipedia doesn't know, you expect me to? But it's not a problem if the whole question is wrong. Well," he reconsidered, "It's a problem, but then the problem is the bad things happening, not the faulty logic of an afterlife. Or the afterlife could be something weird that doesn't work with human logic. Monkey brains can only go so far."
I sat back down. "You know, you're not so good at this guidance thing."
"I'm just a catalyst and metaphor. You have to do the work. That's what the fortune cookie thing is all about. If you want wisdom, maybe you should try talking to some dead Greek guys. Like Epicurius. Or Heraclitus. Or Soc-rates."
"Not Plato. He was a twit. Besides, talking to ancient Greeks can't be passed off as religious, it'd just make people think I was crazy. Kinda like now, when I'm talking to empty air. Use a door once in a while, would you?"
For Those Just Joining Us:
Stories from the Rabbit Hole
Stories from the Rabbit Hole, Part 2
There's a Buddha on My Bed
A Discussion of Procrastination and Buddhism
Buddhablog
Haven't Seen Him in a While
The Illusion of Pain
Stuff that Binds
The Joy of Scrubdom
More About Failure
Book Reviews with a Buddha
Who's Afraid of a Little Enlightenment?
Special Guest Star Daily Drabble
The buddha gave me an indecipherable look. "For months, you don't call, you don't write, nothing, and this is what you want to talk about? Just pick up the thread of a conversation out of nowhere, no greeting, no nothing?"
"Dude, you sound like a needy girlfriend."
"Any girlfriend you didn't talk to for months would be an ex-girlfriend. You couldn't just show back up and be 'Hey, show me your wisdom, baby.'"
"I hate that term. Ex-whatever. I'm not quite sure why. It just sounds mean."
The buddha sat on the my coat on the bed. "And you know, it's kind of insulting. A haircut? That's a great moral crisis worth asking a fictional construct of a great spiritual teacher?"
"Dude, my hair's longer than yours now. It'd be a hell of a change. Though honestly, long hair, at least this long, is a pain in the ass, and totally hasn't done anything to attract women anyway, so, y'know."
"Why are you asking me, then, since you seem to have made up your mind already?"
"Because I'm not quite sure. And because then I can blame other people if it looks like crap later."
He nodded. "Ah. Yes, I'm sure 'A hippie surfer buddha made me do it,' would be believed."
"You never know. And why not ask you? It's certainly more practical and more likely to affect my life than asking about the Hidden Secrets of the Universe, or the Fundamental Nature of Reality. What're those gonna do for me? Unless knowing them gave me magic powers, which could be cool. I'd be so much better at using them than Neo was."
"One would hope knowledge of the fundamental nature of the universe would inspire something more than kung fu superpower gymnastics."
"Maybe. But maybe the fundamental nature of the universe is Awesome, and those are definitely Awesome," there's an idea I could run with, so I started scribbling it down, "The Universe should be made of Awesome. And then those who can tap into the nature of the Awesome are capable of performing feats of Awesomeness. But to get a story out of it, there'd have to be an opposite. Something to drive conflict. What's the opposite of Awesome? Boring? Stupid? Lame? Cliche? Hmm. It could line up on the Discordian false dichotomy, with Greyface being for Boring Order, and Eris being for Awesome Chaos, except it's not the chaos and order parts that even matter in that, it's the creative and destructive, but Awesome and Boring don't match up to creation and destruction very well, so that's probably a dead end. But hmm. A theology of Awesome. That could have possibilities. Then there could be the false prophet of Awesome, X-Treme. Who's not really Awesome, and seeks to cheapen and deny the Awesome, and is really just a fake. Hmm. I bet it could sell in Hollywood, it'd be like a hipster version of Gnosticism."
"As the Man in Black said, you have a truly staggering intellect."
"I'm not sure that's quite the right quote. But whatever. What I have is a staggering ability to take something totally random and bullshit about it to no end, as long as I know at least a little bit of enough to make it sound good. At least to the right audience. I don't quite think the religion of Awesome would get any real play out in the real world."
Pandora switched music on me. "That's music?" the buddha asked.
"No, it's Awesome reduced to pure auditory form. Or the soundtrack to the totally Awesome party I SHOULD be having, except I'm not a very good vessel for Awesome. My hair's probably clouding reception."
"And the circle is now complete," man, he can do Darth Vader better than James Earl Jones.
"Something like that," I said, "Plus the original excuse I used for growing my hair out was to get it cut for one of those cancer kid things. At this point, it's probably long enough I could cut it and still have a little pony tail. Not one of those stupid yuppie lawyer ones, though. And my luck being what it is, then would be when all the women I know would go "WHAT! You cut your hair! I wish I had hair like that!" and I can go "Well, you never said anything. Besides, it was to feed starving kids." Chicks are suckers for charity."
"There's a saying. If you spend all your life looking toward the horizon, you'll miss it when you get there."
I stopped. And thought about that. "Okay, so... that's profound, I guess, but it doesn't really seem relevant. It woulda been better if you'd used something like... I dunno. About mirrors, or new wine in an old wineskin, or the guy who buys a cheap car and paints it up, but doesn't fix anything else or something, if you're trying to get at what I think you were. On the other hand, donating a chunk of hair could be good for my karma."
He sighed. "Karma doesn't work like that. It's not about finding a parking space, or helping an old lady across the road, or leaving pennies in the give a penny take a penny thing," he waved a hand when I tried to speak, "Oh, it is, but it doesn't affect those. It's a gradual thing over like a zillion lifetimes. Which you know. And you don't even believe in karma, anyway."
I scratched my head. "Well, yeah. I was going to say I was making a joke. It'd be too easy for karma to be about just doing good, it's about doing whatever the 'right' thing in a caste society was, for whatever caste you were born into. Seriously, the whole 'Your life sucks because you deserve it because you were bad in a past life' idea annoys me."
"I would never have been able to tell," he said.
"What are you, the buddha of Sarcasm? That doesn't seem a very buddha-ey word."
I looked up, he had dice orbiting his head. "There might be better places than RPGs to get your theology from," he said.
"Put those back with the rest in my trunk when you're done," I said, "And you want theology, I've got a question for you."
"I don't particularly want anything. That's part of the whole buddha thing. Well, except to borrow some nail clippers."
"I'm glad your 'no material possessions' thing lets you wear pants at least," I said, but would a pair of clippers really be breaking it?"
"I subsist on the natural bounty of the universe and the kindness of strangers. In a sense."
"Okay, so here's the thing I don't get. One of the songs at work, one of the multitude of various 'classical' singers that seems to have become popular lately has a song with the line 'beyond the veil where there are no tears' or something like that. And it made me wonder. How does that work?
"I mean, okay, I get it, they're talking about Heaven. Or I guess they mean once you're dead that's it, so it doesn't matter, but I kinda doubt it. So how are there no tears? Okay, there's the literal 'They're dead, they don't have tears since they don't have bodies sense,' but that's kinda a cop-out. They're using it as a metaphor for sorrow. Why wouldn't there be sorrow in Heaven? Bad things still happen."
"Why are you asking me this? Wrong theology."
I shook my head. "Universal Wisdom and all that. Besides, you know what I know, so you know what I'm talking about. And besides, there's sort of the same thing with Buddhism, with Nirvana and suchlike. Which probably doesn't map over exactly, but it's kinda the same thing. Okay, sure, nothing bad (in theory) happens to the people in Heaven or where ever. Great, fine. But most of them still have friends or family who're still alive. And bad things can happen to them. Or their however many descendants. Or just, you know, ordinary relatively innocent people. So what, do people in Heaven not get to see what goes on elsewhere? Or do they just not care? Or are they unable to be sad? That's kinda creepy to think about.
"Okay, sure death may not have any sting for people who're already dead, but there's lots of worse things that can happen than death. I guess there's the possibility for the Big Picture, where everything suddenly Makes Sense. But you know, even if it's Necessary, for whatever reason, bad things happening to people is still something to be sad about. And makes me wonder how Necessary it really is."
The buddha waited several seconds to make sure I was done. "That's a lot for a throwaway line in a song," he said, "The easy answer would be they're wrong. It might not be the right answer, though."
"What do you mean 'might be', Universally Wise One?"
"You're basically running into the Problem of Evil. And if wikipedia doesn't know, you expect me to? But it's not a problem if the whole question is wrong. Well," he reconsidered, "It's a problem, but then the problem is the bad things happening, not the faulty logic of an afterlife. Or the afterlife could be something weird that doesn't work with human logic. Monkey brains can only go so far."
I sat back down. "You know, you're not so good at this guidance thing."
"I'm just a catalyst and metaphor. You have to do the work. That's what the fortune cookie thing is all about. If you want wisdom, maybe you should try talking to some dead Greek guys. Like Epicurius. Or Heraclitus. Or Soc-rates."
"Not Plato. He was a twit. Besides, talking to ancient Greeks can't be passed off as religious, it'd just make people think I was crazy. Kinda like now, when I'm talking to empty air. Use a door once in a while, would you?"
For Those Just Joining Us:
Stories from the Rabbit Hole
Stories from the Rabbit Hole, Part 2
There's a Buddha on My Bed
A Discussion of Procrastination and Buddhism
Buddhablog
Haven't Seen Him in a While
The Illusion of Pain
Stuff that Binds
The Joy of Scrubdom
More About Failure
Book Reviews with a Buddha
Who's Afraid of a Little Enlightenment?
Special Guest Star Daily Drabble