Breathless: “I”-yie-yie

I’ve been thinking about reality, about the origin of what is. I wonder if reality is like a narcissistic lover, so vast that it forgets itself, routinely getting confused and thinking the “bits” of itself are separate from the other “bits.” Then it falls in love with these “bits,” and hungers for them, as if they were separate. It’s like a dog that falls in love with it’s own tail, and keeps checking to see if it’s still there, as if it’s ever anywhere else. If it loses sight of the tail it gets worried that something has been lost, even though this is impossible. At the same time, if it tires of this “bit,” or thinks it is engaged in some sort of conflict with it, it tries to get away, but this too is impossible.

We all think we have some separate existence from one another, but perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we just think we do, because reality is so huge that we forget we are it. We imagine we love somebody out there or hate somebody out there, when really they are just us, and this is what makes everything what it is.

Without all this love and hate, this affinity and repulsion would we remember who we are, and then what, I wonder? If everything was just everything, not pulling or pushing, then how would it know it was there at all? Maybe all this conflict and attraction is necessary for existence to know it exists. For if it wasn’t there, how would it know that it is? Because, as I am speaking of everything here, there would be no point of comparison, there being nothing outside of everything to compare everything too.

But how did this happen? Who started it? Or, is there simply no beginning and no ending? I’d really like to know, but who is this “I” person anyway? If reality doesn’t know then who knows? Or, is this wanting to know just foolish reality looking for its tail again? Where did all of this come from? Where did I come from? Where did “I” come from? Or, maybe this is just a silly question.

I seem to recall that Buddha thought these questions were pretty futile, and perhaps he was right. Maybe it’s stupid to inquire. It could be a waste of time, but we do it anyway, or at least some of us do. In fact, some people make their entire careers out of “where did everything come from?” And “Why are we here?” And, so on. But unless I plan to do that, I suppose I ought to just stick to my own brand of knitting, and leave this question alone. Otherwise, I could just drive myself nuts, whoever “myself” may be. (giggles) Either way, I was surprised how peaceful I felt after writing this, which for all “I” knows, may possibly be the whole point of such speculations.