Meditation Blues in F#m (A Tribute to Yatha-Bhuta*)
July 22nd, 2008
something i wrote 4 years ago, sept. 2004…
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Meditation Blues in F#m (A Tribute to Yatha-Bhuta*)
by Michael Ian Lomongo
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*Yatha-Bhuta – a Pali word meaning, “reality,” “as it is”
(For my batchmates at VipaT(h)ree, especially Modie, Susette, Rose, Art, and Rudy – the “Usual Suspects” of the group-sittings I attend, from whom I continually draw inspiration…)
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“Am I ever gonna change? Will I always stay the same?
If I say one thing, then I do the other
Same old song goes on forever…”
- “Am I Ever Gonna Change,” Gary Cherone, Extreme
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In an essay entitled “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus likened the human condition to that of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push a huge stone up the top of a mountain, only to have the stone roll down the mountain once he’s reached the top. He’d have to start again, push that stone up the mountain, to the top, and so on. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.
“Vanity… all is vanity,” the book of Ecclesiastes proclaims.
The pop song “Dust in the Wind“ by Kansas has this line: “All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see…”
A bit of a pessimist myself, I tend to withdraw from the exertion of effort. If I can’t do something well, I’d rather not do it. (It’s pride, really.) They say, “Try and try, until you die.” I say, “To try is already to die.” Why try when you can fly? Away, away from it all… the suffering, pain, humiliation, defeat.
Desist, and persist.