The Mosquito

13
BE GRATEFUL TO EVERYONE

"This slogan also is dealing with conventional reality. That is to say, without this world we cannot attain enlightenment, there would be no journey. By rejecting the world we would be rejecting the ground and rejecting the path..."

“Training the Mind
And Cultivating
Loving-Kindness”
By Chogyam Trungpa

*****

    It is the world I was hoping to escape in some manner… through drugs, drink, or any other variety of excesses, including religious rigidity. We think of the duality of materialism vs spirituality as though there is something beyond what we have in our laps that we are trying to attain. I can use meditation as an escape too… to go to a quiet place where I can be calm and serene.

   Above it all at a mountain spa/retreat, sitting in a yurt on a $75 cushion with ebony prayer beads and saffron robes… calm and serene… a mosquito can interrupt my peace. Swat… Just like that! I have murdered another sentient being.

   Actually, in such a serene state of agitation the mosquito becomes a bodhisattva. How desperate do I have to be to get where I am in this space and time? Awake at last, the mosquito points the way at greater expense to herself than I had paid with all the accoutrements of spirituality. Now, if some guru came down from an impoverished squat somewhere in the Himalayas and proclaimed his mosquito as the vehicle of his enlightenment, a gaggle of spiritual seekers would follow to acquire a mosquito for them selves.

Awake, I put a    
   mosquito net on my yurt's
   door and go nowhere.

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