Dialectic Two-Step – The One Step Wake Up Program

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio Paz  

The One Step Program

“Everyone buckled?” The boys and my wife chimed in with the usual “’yup”. I backed out of the driveway and we were off on the journey of the day.

She was on the phone, obviously distracted and headed into my lane. I punched the horn and … phew. My hand went to my wife’s thigh and my eyes to the rear view mirror.

The Mahayana teaches us four things

The Preciousness of This Human LifeImpermanenceThe Laws of Cause and Effect (Karma)The Error of Suffering

These are not novel ideas, or some passing 4 step fad. They are the facts. This becomes absolutely, in your face, clear when you stare at a car coming, head on, into your lane.

Is there any doubt when looking into the eyes of a child that life is precious? When death is a car length away is tends wake you up. It makes you think, is what I’m doing right now really important? And when it’s not, you wonder why you are doing it.

That’s the whole teaching. Everyone gets it, but very rarely does anyone get it.

Step One: Wake Up

A while back I watched the movie In Time. The plot offers some insight on the urgency of life. The movie takes place in the future, where genetic engineering has reached the point where the gene that controls aging can be manipulated. Essentially everyone is potentially immortal.

To avoid overpopulation, each person, on their 25th birthday, is given a year to live. Time can be earned, but once the clock reaches zero you die. The new currency is time. The price of distraction is death.

Even in such a world, its not hard to imagine people tuning out to the urgency of life. But spending some time with the idea does turn the mind towards the truth. In one tradition, these four teachings are called just that, the Thoughts That Turn the Mind From Samsara. They are the motivation for practice.

What if we spent some time, each day, contemplating the good fortune of having been born in this human form? What if we remembered that death is real? What would happen if we made choices as though our lives depended on it? What if we remembered that what is precious in life is right here in front of us?

Get Each Week's Dialectic Two Step in your email box

First Name:

Last Name:

Email address:

In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)

 

The post Dialectic Two-Step – The One Step Wake Up Program appeared on Andrew Furst.