Goodbye to the Bullshit

Goddamnsonofabitchmotherfucker! This is the text I sent to Veronica after contacting City Hall about the ticket (civil infraction) I received for not getting rid of a brush pile in the yard and neglecting to paint my shed in the specified time. "One hundred and eighty-five dollars for each offense," they said dispassionately. "It is due tomorrow." Thrown into a tizzy, I reverted to philosophical acrobatics. A familiar mind-bending series of rationalizations, a veritable contortionist's search for meaning! A human pretzel, taking "bending over and looking at the world upside down" to a new spinning plateau. Dizzy, I am ready to sacrifice myself to the gods of the mundane, to the devils of conformity, to the warm world of fitting-in. "But really, the shed has a mossy roof, weathered wooden shakes, many bunnies live in the brush pile, it is weathered and picturesque, hardly a sanitation problem!" I rehearse my defense, deciding on an amiable girl-next-door quality.

So what is the deeper meaning of all this? Aren't there more important things in the world than my stupid brush pile, my shed's supposed need of paint and wondering which neighbor complained about me? What is all of that in the total scheme of things? Here I go again, worrying, thinking, pondering, desiring meaning that transcends all the stupid stuff. But the scientist Horgan believes that there is no deep meaning.

"Horgan concludes that, 'all religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit,' while 'science tell us that we are incidental, accidental.' 'This is not a comforting viewpoint,' he says, 'but science, unlike religion, seeks the truth regardless of how it makes us feel.' He says that Buddhism is 'not radical enough to accommodate science's disturbing perspective." (Beep Beep! It's Me.)

WTF? I want meaning. So I'm liking Brad Warner's take on Horgan's viewpoint:

Buddhism has no arguments with science.The scientific view is perfectly true as far as it goes. But let's say you're walking down a deserted street at ten o'clock one winter's night. You come across a girl, about ten years old, sitting near the curb shivering because she has no coat and crying her eyes out. Now you could explain that scene in terms of emergent phenomena, or in terms of chemical reactions taking place within the body of a highly developed animal, or in terms of sociological theory. But is that really all there is to it? Is that the Truth of the matter? Do our words and symbols really encompass all that life really is? When you can explain something even extremely thoroughly and with pinpoint accuracy, have you really understood it? Lived it? And if this is clear in terms of the little scene I described above, how can we be so bold as to say that something as big as the whole universe is utterly without meaning? How, in fact, can we say so when we are confronted face to face with all of that meaning every single second of every single day?

Science is all well and good, no true Buddhist would ever argue with its conclusions and explanations so long as they were sound ones. But scientists are too prone to believe that not only can all things be explained empirically and represented symbolically -- which may be true, though I have doubts -- but that those explanations are an adequate basis by which human beings can live their lives. You can choose to explain your life and to try to live within your explanations, or you can choose to live your life as it is. Buddhism chooses the latter alternative.

You could argue that the meaning we perceive is just a chemical reaction within our brains, another emergent phenomenon. OK, I'd say, you're probably right. In terms of matter alone, this explanation works. And if you're satisfied with explanations like that, fine. I find them lacking.

The universe is more than just facts, more, even, than the sum of all the facts that make it up. The universe is meaningful. The universe is meaning -- as well as matter. The two are not different. Matter is meaning. To me, this is so apparent as to be absolutely undeniable. (don't drop that atomic bomb on me!)

How comforting to believe that something is undeniable. Well, I believe this: It is undeniable that we are going to die. Who knows what happens then? No one. So the absence of the fear of death is what we are after. At least that makes sense to me. Or at least the end of worrying about incidentals, sweating the small stuff, losing sleep over the goddamnsonofabitchmotherfuckering bullshit. Keeping an eye open for the love part. Making mistakes and then picking our sorry asses up off the ground and walking on. Making a Herculian effort, knowing we are prone to error, always being mindful to err on the side of love.

Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!