It is only because I am an honest man, or rather, try to be, that it is my habit to share with you the burden of my mind, so that you, the reader, will have clear example of what they mean when they say, "monkey mind," the incessant flipping about and pondering about bits of memory ruminated over deeply, that is to be avoided.  The thoughts of the mind are, oftentimes, best ignored, until one comes to terms more circumspectly, with a broader understanding (like that of 'mindfulness' or 'consciousness.')  It's a basic Buddhist precept.  And as a bartender, who sees every night fade into a chimera, I know it to be true.

But as I was saying... I often wonder.  Or rather I think that the ideas Abraham Lincoln was a proponent of, and a debater for, in career as a candidate and as President, are far more to the side of Egolessness than the other side, the one of the Ego's illusions, the separate self stuff.   His was a side with a good rule of thumb.  If the concept of a distinct and concrete Self was directly and foremost upon the mind bearing one's agenda, the set up is for a basic conflict with the National Purpose (defined  in the best way people can), the good of all peoples in look of a decent form of government.  Slavery, with its perspective of a Self needing the low cost labor of other human beings for the sake of selfish illusions, well, ultimately, you'd run into conflict.  For the young colonies, it was important to set up industries and economic hubs and units, and it's an argument that can be made:  slavery was highly convenient and necessary.  But, as a Nation, coherent, the idea of slavery is of course a huge huge and devastatingly important issue!  We know slavery to be wrong, immoral, and an inefficient use of resources, at the very least.

Well, I think it's easy to see Lincoln has having a pretty good sensibility about it all.  But of course, a huge argument there is against that, holding him to be a tyrant bent of pressing a foreign will destructively upon whomever.  That's the State's Rights argument, that the States, individually, are concrete and distinct Selves that exist completely on their own, in their own bubblous realm.  Which of course is not the ultimate truth about them.  They exist out of a larger mystery, connected to, comprising, a whole.  The individual States do not exist on their own.  They might think they do, but they don't.


Were it not for the good things found on the web, like the NY Times review of the coming movie on Lincoln, I would say that the technology has brought to us the perfect distraction, the playground for the monkey mind jumping about from one thing to another, distracted, looking for some satisfaction.  And this is bad as it is potentially good for anyone with a task like writing before them.  Our addiction to words, our craving for thoughts, will lead us first thing of the day to see if we've missed anything, an email, a text, the most current news, as who knows, something might have happened while we slept.

But I would know, having been led astray, to spend my professional life, so it seems, in places where pleasures are sought after, entertainment, music, good feelings, fresh company, excitement, possibility...  I unwittingly beat the drum to whip up all falseness, in a curious way.  And tolerating it all has left me with not a whole lot, just as the U2 song might have predicted, 'stuck in a moment.'  And it was even over the same addictions, to listening to such songs, ironically, that have kept me too long where I am.  (Lincoln was right:  get the hell out of the tavern business.)  Was there some point I was fated to find, to stare at in the face, and maybe eventually figure out?  No one starts out wanting to be a self-denying monk of Buddhism, but what are you left with, if you don't fall for all the other occupations selling their own widgetry?  What is there that lasts, beyond Chinese medicine and meditation and walks in the great outdoors?  Of course we are all scared, scared of ending up in poverties worse than we imagined amongst violent and ill types.