Filed under: News
These are profound times we live in, my friend. I don’t suppose I have to tell you that. I reckon everybody feels the profundity in his or her own special way. For me it’s reached a watershed in just the last few days and weeks. I’ve had a series of epiphanies that all add up to one big “realization” and the feeling I have right now is one of energy and focus like I haven’t had in a very long while. A great weight has been lifted and I feel safe somehow, like I’ve walked through the fire and I’m on the other side of it.
I know this is all very cryptic, and cryptic is not usually my style. I always let it all hang out. That’s Tommy! But not this time. First of all, the experience of life lately has been too profound to put into words. I’m still in the midst of processing it. But I can clearly see the implications of all I’ve been living through lately and I know what the moral of the story is.
It’s time to wash bowls like a mad dog.
The Buddha teaches that a young monk asked his master “What do I do to be enlightened?” The master asks “Have you eaten breakfast yet?” “Yes.” “Then wash your bowls!”, the master said, and sent the young monk away, and the youth was indeed enlightened.
Maybe it’s the way he said it.
You can talk and talk and talk about life and believe me I’ve done it a heap. You can talk about your misfortunes, your dysfunctions, your maladies, your dreams, your fears. You can talk until little white bits of spit collect in the corners of your mouth and you can keep talking until your throat gets sore and you start shouting in a shrill, thin voice like Hillary Clinton at a midnight campaign stop. And you can talk some more after THAT. You can order drinks and talk more and more as you get smashed and you can talk back to the talk radio guy who can’t hear you and you can talk to God and talk to Mom and eventually… you have to stop talking and wash your bowls.
Until your bowls are clean, nothings going to happen. Talking doesn’t make anything happen. Action makes things happen. Talking is so much of the time about expressing doubt; and as the man said, when in doubt, do something. Wash your bowls.
Some of my bowls are fairly clean. The one that holds “Alpha Male & The Canine Mystery Blood” in my head is spick and span. Other bowls are filthy. Not every bowl can be clean all the time by any means. Once one is clean another gets dirty and life is about doing the work, constantly doing the work, that never ever gets done. Talking about it doesn’t get the rag wet nor does it wipe the inside of that bowl until you can see your face in it.
We all have our own bowls. I can’t wash yours and you can’t wash mine. I hope that, if you’re having a revelation such as I am, that you make the best of it. I consider it one of the finest gifts I’ve ever recieved and right up there with my black 44th birthday bathrobe. I suspect higher awareness might be going around like a flu bug. Bad economies do that, make people look in the mirror and really see what’s going on for a precious vital second, and then digesting that vital second over the next weeks, months and years, processing it and doing your best to use that little nugget of wisdom gained as a catalyst to wash more bowls in less time.
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours. Now if you’ll excuse me, I just got back from Chattanooga and I have to wet a rag and wipe the cigarette ash 0ut of the console and spray Fabreeze in it so they don’t charge my ass for smoking in the vehicle. Then I have to take a shower before Nathan comes home and I take him to the Cub Scout laser tag. And then I’m coming home tonight and working on Government Cheese .wav files I SWEAR. There’s a travel bag to be emptied out which I’m not usually very prompt about but I feel the urge to be now. I’m out of mouthwash. The living room’s a mess. There’s writing to do, guitar to practice, barges to lift and bales to tote. There’s self-awareness to heighten. For instance, I can wash bowls like a madman and I’ll never be Bob Dylan. God didn’t make me to be Bob Dylan. But I might be Spalding Gray. Heck, if I concentrated, I could be Thomas Merton. Serious. I could be. I have that inside me. It’s there waiting to come out. I just need to clear out that pile of dirty bowls blocking the door.
Death to all extremists!
Love,
Tommy
