The Rarity of Posts

I haven't been posting as much lately, and one reason is that I'm trying to break myself of the habit of writing parts of posts in my head at various points during the day. It is an old habit of mine to be involved in an internal monologue as I walk down the street or take a shower. Sometime these things are productive, but usually I'm just spinning my wheels, especially now that I am often thinking at the same time, "This is something I can put in my blog." I usually never end up putting it on my blog though.

A second reason that I don't post as much is that I'm much more acutely aware of how little I know, how fragile my understanding is, especially of Buddhism. When I started writing this blog, it was very good for me, since I didn't have any other formal support, and it forced me to think about a lot of things. Now that I have come in contact with a group and with several teachers, with living, breathing Buddhism, as it were, I see that my initial understanding was way off the mark in many ways. So, rather than propagate confusion, I'm not putting my ideas out there in the same public way. With that said, maybe I will post a bit about where I am now in my journey...okay, I just realized another reason is that I'm often too lazy to collect my thoughts in a coherent way, but here goes.

Buddhism is about the "middle" way, a lack of extremes. Humans sit in the middle of the realm of samsara: they don't suffer as much as the lower realms, they have less pleasure than the upper realms. As a result, they are optimally suited to make progress on the path to enlightenment. The thing is, to keep my precious human body, I need to act virtuously, lest I be reborn in a lower realm. However, this is not enough, because if the virtue is tainted by pride, then I will be reborn in a God realm, where this virtue will be uselessly expended. After dying as a God, I would probably end up in a lower realm. Thus it is important to be humble. I know Jesus said something about the Pharisees being proud of their virtuous actions, and that they've already had their reward. This is similar: their virtuous actions do not lead to spiritual gain. An interesting fact is that even being good at meditation, if it is tainted by pride, will lead to rebirth in an upper God realm, and this is still considered an unfortunate rebirth. So even being good at meditation is not enough. It is said in this upper God realm, beings are addicted to pleasurable states of consciousness, but have no interest in the welfare of others. Thus they don't accumulate any merit, and when they die, they are reborn in a lower realm, such as a hell realm.

It occurred to me just now that one can see these realms in the life of an alcoholic. At some point, he is addicted to the pleasurable state of conscioussness, which is that alcoholic buzz. Soon however, that is turned into a hellish existence. At some point, if he's lucky, he is reborn as a human, and begins to accumulate great virtue, as part of a twelve step program, for example. Hungry ghosts are also represented: they are always craving, but never satisfied.

Anyway, I've assuaged my guilt about not posting often enough, I think.