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| Salvador Dali Illustration for Don Quixote |
I
thought of myself as bold, adventurous and above the petty concerns of
bourgeois society when I launched out from the safety of the home of my family.
Perhaps it was courage but it could have also been an overdose of
immaturity. I was a romantic who wanted to take the world by storm and become
the next most famous artist. When that goal was denied me, I drank more and the
more I drank the further away my dream had become. I became an artist alright…
a petty con-artist… whose only contribution to life was to become skilful at
taking from it and rarely giving back. At fifty-two I looked in the mirror and
saw myself as I was... it wasn’t the most prettiest picture I could have painted.
Today, I look in the mirror of sobriety, meditation, and the Dharma path that chose me, and I see through the disguise and subterfuge of ego, allowing the
light of compassion touch my heart. Bathed in that light I can see my character
defects for what they are and realize that compassion requires that I forgive
myself of my humanity. I can the stand up and go out into the world where
forgiveness is extended to those I come in contact with and those remote and
impossible to reach. The solution to all my problems being acceptance, and
acceptance leading to rational solutions, I have been growing up and I no
longer even want to be on the top of the world but to simply be productive
within it.
geo, 4,665
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