Thursday, January 24, 2008

Disgusted with samsara

Sometimes the thought of death becomes unbearable. And the more unbearable it becomes, the more I understand the urgency to follow the Dharma and take refuge in Amida.
It has nothing to do with merit or being wise. When one sees that fire burns his room and his entire house, he has no other option than run through the door, or through the window. What else can he do? In the same way, what other option do I have, than trying to escape this miserable house of pain?
Sometimes the events of my life become unbearable and impermanence shows his ugly teeth to me. It's all the same shit, repeated again and again in every life. I am born, I grow, become attached to this or that, I waste my life, become sick, old and finally die just to start it all over again. And between these events, I lose everybody I love.


I read some Buddhist texts recently in which the expression "disgusted with samsara" was repeated many times. It seems to be the most appropriate description of my feelings.
I am disgusted with the thought of death, sickness, old age, the impermanence of human relations, my mind and the mind of others. But if here in this world the pain is sometimes hard to resist, how much more suffering might be in the pretas (hungry ghosts) and hell realms! I really think to this many times. To me, the human realm and human condition is miserable enough than to imagine other realms with even more pain and adverse conditions. Sometimes I think that I wished to be born in the gods realm, no matter how many teachers said that human life is most suitable for Dharma practice.
But death comes even there and I heard it is even more painful after a life of joyful delights. I imagine it is like dying in the middle of a party, while enjoying good food, beautiful women and beer. At least here, in the human realm, I have more occasions to accommodate with the idea of my own death. In a poor neighborhood is easier to think of death, than in Beverly Hills.

Disgusted with samsara, with how everything here has the same end..... Sometime I try to forget this, but the thought of death comes unexpectedly in the middle of any activity and it ruins all the fun. I look to my mother and father and I find it unbearable to think that they will die one day. I imagine myself on the death bed with great pains and the feeling of not having enough air to breed. What can I do then and what shall I do now? Should I forget all these ideas and try to engage in activities that make me forget my own death? But what for? Can I eliminate death simply by not thinking to it? Sometimes I play PC games and try to have as much fun as I can, or I dance all night, but then, suddenly I remember death again.

I find no long lasting satisfaction in being alive because I know that one day I will die. I also find no satisfaction if I am to die today because I am attached to life.

I look to my body which I try so much to preserve and realize that one day it will become a corpse!!! Indeed a corpse with a smell hard to resist and a color unbearable to look at. My relatives will just wait for the occasion to throw it outside of the house. My friends will have a sad face for a short period of time and after a few years everybody will forget me and will go on with their lives. Maybe if someday I have the chance to marry and die young, my wife will re-marry with another man and make sex with him, while my body is rotting in the cemetery. I really think to all these, it is not that I have nothing else to do now and wish to scary the visitors of this website. I am struck by the fact that all these things are real and one day will happen to me, too. It is one thing to read about death and another thing to really feel that you are a mortal. The last feeling is for me like being awaken from a dream by someone who is beating me with a hammer. The waking up is painful, but is the only real thing in this life.

Because of matters like this I've became a Buddhist and especially a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist. My only relief is that a path so easy to follow was preached by Shakyamuni to people like me and I don't need any more to rely on myself. I want so much to escape this miserable condition and never come back with the same mind again. I am sick, tired and disgusted with samsara. I just want to go to the Pure Land and become a Buddha so that all these things can end once and for all. Then, my mother, father, friends and even all other beings can receive great benefits when I will return to this world as a Buddha.

I have this simple and direct understanding of my life and took this simple decision - I want to get out of here!

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