I am either cursed or blessed, but at the moment I am leaning towards the former. Whatever is happening to me is certainly unpleasant and I keep on falling back into this pit of despair and wallowing in it and indulging in the resulting negativity. It’s all a game of tug-of-war and my skin is surely going to be shredded to pieces from the sheer tension that is being exerted on it from a million directions at once. Will I break? I am so numb from the stupidity of everyday life. I am yearning for something greater, reaching for the stars, climbing an imaginary pathway to heaven, and meanwhile life is passing me by utterly unconcerned levelling its unsympathetic horror-filled eyes upon me for a brief moment and then moving on and conveniently forgetting. Why do I care? Why not just give up on everything and let go completely? Shall I jump off a bridge? Or is that just another despicable theatric?

I can see clearly that desire is at the heart of my turmoil, but the path to the cessation of desire remains occluded, and even appears impossible at times; paradoxical; contradictory. Sometimes I desire normalcy, knowing all the same the docility this implies and how pathetic I am in desiring it. Perhaps it is from fear of loneliness and estrangement. And this is nothing but a manifestation of desire. How to free myself from its unyielding grip? How? How? How? Meditation? What about when that too is troubled and scattered? Where to seek refuge then? In a certain sense I should die, but not ‘I want to die’. So should I just leave myself to rot and whither and be dispersed by the winds? Even this is an outcropping of a desire, in this case to be free of the misery of desire. Even here it is an ‘I want to die’. How to eliminate this ‘I want’? How to just die?

I know what the answer to this riddle is: discipline. But still there is a nagging worry: when the meditation is rough, the impulse to stop meditating becomes too strong. It almost seems as though I sometimes reach a stage where meditation becomes impossible because of the self-torture the mind inflicts upon itself in its stupidity. What an infirm and unwieldy creature I can be at times!

I take refuge in the triple gem: the buddha, the dhamma, and the sangha. I have no sangha upon whose shoulder to lean in my trials and challenges, but the inspiration of the buddha and his holy message remain an ever-flowing stream guiding me along the right path in life. Buddhahood is possible if only one puts the effort over the required amount of time in reigning in the wild and unstable chaos that is the untrained mind. It is a long long path, and I have only more and more challenges to face and to overcome. This is idealistic talk, sure, and in my current despair seems naïve and uninstructed, but nevertheless cannot be rejected. I must cultivate a certain brutality in my journey. I must be morbidly determined to go the whole way. It must be a ‘fatalistic’ determination, as I called it when it first manifested during my meditation retreat.

Just be quick in forgetting, and drop the past. Be also quick in not caring, and ignore the future. If there’s pain, then so be it, resign and say “I don’t give a fuck”. If there’s euphoria, so be it, resign and say “I don’t give a fuck”. If there’s numbness, so be it, resign and say “I don’t give a fuck”. Retreat into solitude until you disappear off the face of this earth. Act as though you do not exist. Cultivate the belief that you do not exist. Forget about people and personalities. Forget about relationships and friends. Do not do anything and do not attempt to do anything. Do not search for ways to kill time, and do not fill your time with things to live for. Stay still for as long as possible. Do not even move. Do not even breathe. Stop thinking. And you will stop desiring. Without desiring it.

May all beings stop desiring and stop existing