Potential Suicide

Floating in a sea
of your very
own
potential,
there is no escape,
there never was,
never will be.

I was thinking this morning about how the mythical ideas of hell and karma have the same essential meaning. Osho said that rich people need an idea of neverending cycling (karma and reincarnation) so that they know they cannot escape their boredom with life--they must, rather, see through it (life, karma, etc.), burn through it, jump through/into it. He said that, if you struggle every day, though, you want to know that there is an end, a reward, something to be had for all your effort. Therefore, karma and heaven both make sense. Heaven makes sense as a motivation in front of those of us who have less than enough, the poor folks; hell is the flipside, the pusher. Until we wholeheartedly embrace that sameness, the oneness, the pinpoint aliveness we are and which we represent, we live in either personal or societal myths.

And so I've heard some people say that they could not do "this" (life, I suppose) without a mythical (real-or-not) personal savior. I've heard plenty of people affirm part of the meaning of the Buddha's comment that one must enlighten oneself. I like Zen Master Dogen's comment that no buddhas are self-liberated.

Sometimes the answers are much, much simpler than the questions. Sometimes the answers need to allow for and include the complications--the rich abundance from which potential may arise as real forms answering real people. Anyway, I like the doctrine of no escape. It directs us to this very pinpoint moment in which we can accept small blessings and large.