The Greatest Thing There Is

I flew back to Boston from Las Vegas last night. I started working for a new company a couple weeks ago. My second week they sent me to Vegas for a week-long conference.

Flying over the mountains and foothills of Salt Lake City, Utah, I was awed by the beauty. What made these things? What made a gigantic salt lake? Snow covered the taller mountains. The foothills were rich, dark earthy brown, capped with snow. Creases and ravines fingered their way down and through the loaf-shaped hills as far as I could see.

En route I finished the book I bought at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport bookstore on my flight to Las Vegas: Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. The greatest modern book I've read in a long time. I am lucky to have found it. Thank you, Yann.

Flying over Boston at about 11pm, I was in a window seat. I looked at all the yellow lights that spotted the black land here and there and then collected in bright dense pools of cities and towns, arms of light stretching into suburbs before tailing off into the black again, flecking here and there.

When I finished the book, I would have died happy. Coming back from Vegas I had no big plans for the future. I take life one day at a time, quite literally, as much as I can. Last night, the only thing I wanted to do was finish the book. I couldn't think of anything else that mattered. But I did look forward to seeing my cats again. After Yann's tale of the Hindu zoo-keeper's boy castaway in a life boat with a Bengal tiger for 7 months, I had a new appreciation for my non-human companions. I missed them both.

Am I my body? What am I? What are we all? Looking at us from the airplane, I saw how the "I" in my head, who is the center of the Universe, must be the "I" that is in everyone else's head. And everyone thinks he or she is the center of the Universe. It's not a conscious thought -- it's an attitude, a perspective, an assumption that is never stated but always behind our thoughts and actions, every minute. I am the center of the Universe. And if I am, then you must be too. So we both are. So we all must be, well, we all are under the impression that we are. It would be difficult to survive in competition otherwise -- how would I know whose mouth I was feeding? Whose eyes I was rubbing? Whose body I was touching? Whose children were "mine?" But we also tend to forget that this is how it is for everyone, or maybe we don't think we know it, but, yes, it is.

Yet, none of us are. From way up high, cities of millions shining yellow and bright from the ground, highways pulsing traffic lights, no one individual person or town or city amounts to anything. From way up high, we are all benign, ephemeral blips of flesh and blood life struggling in the biosphere. Or, if you like the Hindu cosmology (I do -- I think it's a wonderful mythology that maps somewhat well to the Western scientific world view), we are tiny atmans in the mind of Vishnu dreaming, all separateness an illusion generated by the force of Maya, all, along with Vishnu and Maya themselves, just like every other thing that exists in temporary separation, the manifestation of Brahman -- God, the Oneness, Being. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and in between, from the perspective of our "I," an illusion of seemingly deep significance and import. Check book, health club, job, credit cards, 3 meals a day, goals, survival, soothing the pain, love, sex, orgasm, warmth, cool, getting it, new stuff, fixing things, building . . . we do it all here.

The more I realize this idea as an experience and not just a concept, the less I fear death, since I know I am just a temporary blip and so is everyone. The "I" in my mental ears that's always chatting and scheming will live on, more or less, in others for as long as the human race survives. There's nothing particularly unique or even interesting about me when I put myself alongside the millions of people, good people, who exist now, have lived and died before me, and who will come after I am gone. But also the less I think there is anything to get emotional about (in other words, the less anything seems to matter). It is living on a mountain in my mind. Partly this is how I survive bad things that happen to me. My divorce, for example. Finding a higher perspective from which my suffering is irrelevant is comforting. Feeling I am part of something greater, of The Greatest Thing There Is, is comforting. Feeling that I am a peephole through which God can benignly, unconditionally watch and participate in the world is comforting. And I am surrounded by Him. Everyone, everything, everywhere I go, when I have this perspective, is Him.

So don't be afraid. A divorce can be like a jail sentence or maybe even a death sentence, if you are one who did not want it. Everything you thought you were, everything you built yourself up to be, everything you had planned and the experiences you took as being most important to your identity may now seem very meaningless. Don't worry, this is how I feel too. Look at it like a gift. Not everyone gets a chance to see things from this perspective. Not everyone gets to shed their identity (or has it ripped from them) and see things this way. Where to from here? I am not sure. One day at a time. If you have any ideas, drop me a line.