War is one of life's reminders of our finitude and eventually our suffering and death. Peace then is a time not to indulge our sensory pleasures but to successfully escape from life’s coming conflicts. (By escape I'm alluding to the word transcend.)
To stop this eventual doom we cannot afford live in a utopian fantasyland while the hard evidence shows plainly that we are in deep doo-doo.
But life is a work (or rather an escape) in progress. The work is truly complete when we achieve its goal which is nirvana: a return to life’s very source which is unconditioned.
Right now, we humans can only imagine what life is about. Presently, it seems to be about preserving our memories in this particular lifespan. But they are only conditioned. But T.S. Elliot said it better with these few lines.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Where conditionality began for us is not in anything conditioned or even imaginable. Certainly not in a conditioned womb. The senses, including the sixth sense or mentation/manas, which make up our conditioned body, serve to localize spirit into a finite, conditioned system. A mere representation.
And so it follows that what we perceive from this localized position is not true reality or even our true self. It is a false self or anātmam which is suffering (S. iii. 22) according to the Buddha.
Comments