The weather here has been fairly warm, but unusually cloudy, such that acquaintances who hardly say more than "hi" have been complaining. I started complaining about this weather two weeks ago, feeling somewhat lethargic and uninspired, but finally, by this weekend, came to a truce with it, and with that, things mellowed to a dull monotony rather than a surly depression. About this, I felt for the first time superior. Hey, I'm over it! Move along!
And so it was this Christmas weekend, gray as usual when on Saturday morning I bit into some Amish fruitcake. I am one of the few who love real fruitcake, and while this had no rum, being Amish, it had just the right touch of vanilla and lots - lots - of pecans. Delicious.
The trouble with fruitcake, though, is its density, and as I stood chewing hard, I noticed some sharp bit of grit in the cake. Ah, I thought, they must have missed a shell. Searching in the bit of mush that contained it, I did find a chip - except that it was white; except that it was a fairly large bit of tooth. Oh no! Oh, yes - my bottom molar had broken, leaving a knife-sharp edge that I quickly found cut my tongue each time I spoke or swallowed. Certainly a penance for talking too much, for sure, and for eating too much.
Still, being who I am, I did not take it in saintly manner. Instead I suffered and moaned and complained - damn, it had to be on a holiday weekend! And so it was, and so it took until this morning, first thing AM, that I was able to go to the dentist.
But an unusual thing had happened - the weather had gotten unusually cold, and with that came the brightest of bright suns. As sat in the dentist chair getting X-Rays, sure to soon have the discomfort of Novocain (thank god for Novocain!), the grinding away of the old molar and the fitting for a cap, I found that I didn't care. Not only didn't I care, but I felt something akin to the gentle brush of angel wings. I sat facing a window that let in the sun and the bright blue, and all was well with the world. Grind away, my good dentist, life is great! Life, in fact, it better than great - it is an elixir to the soul, a wonder of magnificent creation. Bring it on, whatever, I am content with the world.
As it turned out, the news got better: the broken tooth was already a cap, and all the dentist had to do was file down the sharp edge. 5 minutes later, I was out of there, still happy as a lark, pain free, and ready to eat bagels or crusty bread or even - I still gasp at the thought - dense Amish fruitcake loaded with nuts.
As usual, I could not leave this good feeling and great fortune to itself. Rather, it made me think - sitting in a dentist chair, waiting for pain, my cut tongue aching, not having eaten anything but soft bread and oatmeal for three days while everyone else finished off the turkey - with all of this, I was more than happy, even elated. All because of a freak accident of nature here in winter Wisconsin - a broad shining of the sun. So instead of angel wings, it seems my good humor was spiked rather by a shot of melanin or whatever body chemical makes for good moods. I was, instead of a gratefully inspired soul, just another animal responding to an external stimulus.
Of course, the question has been asked again and again, and for most biochemists, the answer has been found - elation, even the feeling of God, is nothing more than a chemical response. Why, take some mushrooms or LSD and one can be cast into, as Aldous Huxley put it, Heaven or Hell.
But we here on these pages do not really believe this, but rather try to put things into the context of the great spiritual masters. For the Buddha, all is a type of illusion, whether it be pain or pleasure, sun or clouds; and while these may be reflections of the great creation, they are only pale reflections. What, then, would be true ecstasy? Where would this come from? For Christians, we might look to the Gospels - weren't the sick and poor of spirit those most blessed? But how can that be? Would grumpy pessimism be more pleasing to the cosmos than the jubilant optimism of a sunny day?
The answer, it seems to me, is to be found in the biochemist's lab book, for as long as we rely upon the stimuli of the things of the world, we are only sophisticate lab rats; we are only our brains and our guts and our biochemistry. It is rather those who have gone beyond this, who can rejoice in the dark with an abscessed tooth, who have found something real, more real than the being with a nervous system alone. Thus are the suffering blessed when they are forced outside of stimulus-response to find ecstasy; thus are the contemplatives blessed when they reach beyond the thin veil of flesh and cold and sun.
And so we are only a brain as long as we stay there, just as the biochemists say; but there is another seat of consciousness, or so the masters say, that remains well above this. In this resides the soul, and in this, the true self - or so they say. For right now, I'll take my sunny skies and good tooth, but these, too, will end, as will my brain and everything to do with it. But somewhere, they say, there is something much more. Perhaps I will return to seek it on a cloudy day, or when misery strikes again. Such, they say, is the way of the pilgrim. FK
And so it was this Christmas weekend, gray as usual when on Saturday morning I bit into some Amish fruitcake. I am one of the few who love real fruitcake, and while this had no rum, being Amish, it had just the right touch of vanilla and lots - lots - of pecans. Delicious.
The trouble with fruitcake, though, is its density, and as I stood chewing hard, I noticed some sharp bit of grit in the cake. Ah, I thought, they must have missed a shell. Searching in the bit of mush that contained it, I did find a chip - except that it was white; except that it was a fairly large bit of tooth. Oh no! Oh, yes - my bottom molar had broken, leaving a knife-sharp edge that I quickly found cut my tongue each time I spoke or swallowed. Certainly a penance for talking too much, for sure, and for eating too much.
Still, being who I am, I did not take it in saintly manner. Instead I suffered and moaned and complained - damn, it had to be on a holiday weekend! And so it was, and so it took until this morning, first thing AM, that I was able to go to the dentist.
But an unusual thing had happened - the weather had gotten unusually cold, and with that came the brightest of bright suns. As sat in the dentist chair getting X-Rays, sure to soon have the discomfort of Novocain (thank god for Novocain!), the grinding away of the old molar and the fitting for a cap, I found that I didn't care. Not only didn't I care, but I felt something akin to the gentle brush of angel wings. I sat facing a window that let in the sun and the bright blue, and all was well with the world. Grind away, my good dentist, life is great! Life, in fact, it better than great - it is an elixir to the soul, a wonder of magnificent creation. Bring it on, whatever, I am content with the world.
As it turned out, the news got better: the broken tooth was already a cap, and all the dentist had to do was file down the sharp edge. 5 minutes later, I was out of there, still happy as a lark, pain free, and ready to eat bagels or crusty bread or even - I still gasp at the thought - dense Amish fruitcake loaded with nuts.
As usual, I could not leave this good feeling and great fortune to itself. Rather, it made me think - sitting in a dentist chair, waiting for pain, my cut tongue aching, not having eaten anything but soft bread and oatmeal for three days while everyone else finished off the turkey - with all of this, I was more than happy, even elated. All because of a freak accident of nature here in winter Wisconsin - a broad shining of the sun. So instead of angel wings, it seems my good humor was spiked rather by a shot of melanin or whatever body chemical makes for good moods. I was, instead of a gratefully inspired soul, just another animal responding to an external stimulus.
Of course, the question has been asked again and again, and for most biochemists, the answer has been found - elation, even the feeling of God, is nothing more than a chemical response. Why, take some mushrooms or LSD and one can be cast into, as Aldous Huxley put it, Heaven or Hell.
But we here on these pages do not really believe this, but rather try to put things into the context of the great spiritual masters. For the Buddha, all is a type of illusion, whether it be pain or pleasure, sun or clouds; and while these may be reflections of the great creation, they are only pale reflections. What, then, would be true ecstasy? Where would this come from? For Christians, we might look to the Gospels - weren't the sick and poor of spirit those most blessed? But how can that be? Would grumpy pessimism be more pleasing to the cosmos than the jubilant optimism of a sunny day?
The answer, it seems to me, is to be found in the biochemist's lab book, for as long as we rely upon the stimuli of the things of the world, we are only sophisticate lab rats; we are only our brains and our guts and our biochemistry. It is rather those who have gone beyond this, who can rejoice in the dark with an abscessed tooth, who have found something real, more real than the being with a nervous system alone. Thus are the suffering blessed when they are forced outside of stimulus-response to find ecstasy; thus are the contemplatives blessed when they reach beyond the thin veil of flesh and cold and sun.
And so we are only a brain as long as we stay there, just as the biochemists say; but there is another seat of consciousness, or so the masters say, that remains well above this. In this resides the soul, and in this, the true self - or so they say. For right now, I'll take my sunny skies and good tooth, but these, too, will end, as will my brain and everything to do with it. But somewhere, they say, there is something much more. Perhaps I will return to seek it on a cloudy day, or when misery strikes again. Such, they say, is the way of the pilgrim. FK
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