In life there are patterns.  To life, there are patterns.  There are biological forms.  The botanist makes note of shape and texture...

And one would suppose that beyond our own biped biological human form, even beyond Jungian archetype, there forms made note of, first in literature, particularly in spiritual literature.  Observations, ones that sometimes prove uncanny in their resemblance to our own states of being in life...  Musing on a neighbor's life, one sees himself.  Musing on a writer's life, a spiritual life, from story or reality, one sees himself.

The Buddha...  As a young prince, entitled toward every pleasure, he took a ride with his charioteer outside the walls of his father's kingly castle, and there, he saw it, sickness, decrepitude, death, the basic forms of suffering that are so evident upon seeing them firsthand.  How could such things prevail in this world he thought he knew by his own experience?  So the story goes.



The hack science fiction writer had returned from visiting his aged difficult mother, and of course, he returned to his job behind the bar.  He'd gotten in about eleven the night before, parked on the street, unpacked his traveling gear, his clothes and shoes and jackets and the medicines and the toiletries, returned the rental car to the parking garage, the night before.  After the long drive, eight hours or so, the last two in the darkness of night, he felt he had needed some wine, to sooth the pain and the nervous system's befuddlement at the whole thing...  But his first night back, he avoided even the slightest drop of wine, and when he returned to the apartment after his shift, he had enough energy to do some cleaning and sorting, to put away the clean garments and set aside the laundry in small piles...

The thought had come across him that he was not of the "right profession" as far as the Buddha's Eightfold Path, that because the job came with the offer of wine and other intoxicants, with the pleasure of good dining, it was rather the wrong thing to be doing.  If that was what he was doing, and as the night grew longer, he was more susceptible to a need for calm, and even worse, given the sort of people who would come in later in the evening...



The hack science fiction wrirer had done his best from winter on through spring and a good part of the summer to be Christian minded and Christian believing and following, and wore his Byzantine Cross with a new stainless steel chain he'd purchased with his mom, but now in his life the moon of Buddha Wisdom was coming up, and he felt he'd sort of worn things out anyway, as far as being a devoted Catholic toe-ing the party line, and there had been another Bishop sex scandal involving pressure and boys and anyway, the old book of his father's, from the London Buddhist Lodge, had served as reading material on the road, even though his mom, drinking her coffee above him over in the corner Eames chair talking to the cat as he tried to sleep, tired by worsening grass allergies and travel, the long drive through the torrential rain, even as she picked the old thing up and pronounced it, quite negatively, as "hooey."  He had turned over on his green Thermarest mattress as he rested in his REI Travel Down mummy bag and pondered, this woman and her belief system, and then his own, as his body lay down unwilling to move.

It was not hooey to his father, nor his mentor, old Dr. Torrey, and it was not hooey to him, and has he thought about it now, back in his own space, it occurred to him that many of the things he would in states of morning depression deeply regret, were in fact sings of a nascent philosopher following the path, whatever the path was, and Buddhism had a lot to do with it, perhaps more so than a pure belief in Jesus as other people seemed to believe in Jesus.

It occurred to him now as he read, that all he had to do, was do a bit more of the follow through.  Yoga.



We all are patterned to fail the first time around, even with many attempts.  Siddhartha made many attempts, and for a long time he was an ascetic, to the point of suffering and extreme and even starvation.  And then some others work to it as gluttons and wine-drinkers and friends with the wrong sort of people...  How far away is the story of the Prodigal Son, how far away the story of Jonah, and Abraham, and Moses, how far away are those stories from the story of the failing would be seeker as he narrows in, through his own experiments and failures, on the true pith of life...


The regrettable thing is the widespread focus on the wrong things, with the illusions and the appearances...

With all the nuances within, why not take the time to focus on the self;  why not focus not on the outer appearances and all the things that come received by the world around us through its particular materialistic focus, but on the worlds within ourselves, as might be apprehended through yoga and meditation and considerations of the Buddhist path...

Rather than being sold on everything and trying to belong, one could remember his own life and karma...  And if one did, who knew, what could open up, what sort of vague memories, largely a peace with all living things and the earth one felt from time to time, when not distracted and stressed and preoccupied...

It had taken him, the hack science fiction writer, a long time, and a good amount of mental suffering, to realize the truth of self-reliance, of Buddha's enlightenment...  It takes false starts, errors, vast mistakes.  But now and again, you remember a bit of it.  It takes maturity, it takes time...



It is an unlikely measure, to go against all the things built up by society in the world, to back away from all that, to see life as a more intimately available creation.   You find you need nothing outside of yourself, that after all incarnations you are ready to enjoy life as it, yourself just as you are, without the things that lie outside the life.

But there is no choice.  Absolutely no other choice.

(Thus the evil of constant invasions into the natural curiosity of the thoughtful mind, news, the screen, dating apps, the constant news stream, the constant temptation of the outer upon the inner, made ever worse by profit minded egos attempting to conquer and change the world with no thought as to what that world would then be like for the human being...)


Thus, you can say goodbye to being a certain kind of writer, out to please a certain audience.  The audience is that within.  You can say goodbye to the one seeking pleasure and satisfaction outside the self...  Mara's Temptations...


Life is terribly sad if you look at, no way around.  (Though joy may by found in the present, in the transitory nature of life...)

He opened to kitchen door to the porch so that the fly would see the light of day, and soon the fly was on the screen, obeying the law of light, and then he had only to open the screen door, and out went the fly.  As he heated the bone broth in a small pan, he let an incense stick of Frankincense and Myrrh and soon he was calm and feeling positive about things, such things being that he had to get to work and then take Jazz Night as it came...  There wouldn't be much time for yoga.


To mount such an expedition as climbing the mountain of the night shift all alone--you had to have been mad--you needed equipment, much as in those old books on mountain climbing expeditions he read as a kid with their lists of gear, how much rope, stoves, tents, etc.    Things you needed:  a therapist, an antidepressant, vitamins and other nostrums, a Fleshlight, any improvised device to bring vibration to the prostate, a mirror to help foster some self-love and esteem, acceptance, a Light Box and an Ott Lamp, strong light lamps for winter blues, green tea, sausages, iron pans, green tea... a bicycle and a courier bag to get back and forth.

It is a bright part of literature when a writer takes it upon himself to tell the story of The Buddha.  Kerouac does a great job, being quite  a student.  Hermann Hesse.