The Abyss
“I inform you, great king, I announce to you, great king: aging and death are rolling in on you. When aging and death are rolling in on you, great king, what should be done?”
“As aging and death are rolling in on me, venerable sir, what else should be done but to live by the Dhamma, to live righteously, and to do wholesome and meritorious deeds?”
Death, like the sun, cannot be stared at too long.
But death, also like the sun, cannot be avoided entirely,
Without ending up withered and emaciated inside.
The stunted, rickets-plagued character that results
From staying indoors, never facing the world as it is,
Subsisting on a diet of saccharine fairy tales,
Manufactured junk-food doom-scrolling distractions,
And the slippery, seed oils
Of the present-tense, oleaginous outrage-of-the-day.
Like the Strange Blind Idiot God of Evolution,
Creeping and slow, without an agreed upon plan,
Society has assumed the role of Suddhodana.
The old man and the sick man still serve some useful purpose.
The former as an important marketing demographic,
At least until his 401K dwindles,
Whereupon he gets shunted to Death’s Waiting Room in Florida
Where it’s always 75F, and the phone only rings on Thanksgiving.
The sick man is valuable, at least in the abstract,
For highlighting the importance of “dem programs”.
But the corpse, young Siddhartha,
That simply will not do.
It is for your own good, you see.
(The monk, of course, barely even exists,
So needs no concealment.)
Reader, having officially reached middle age,
I can only remember seeing a corpse once.
At a distance, on Santa Monica Beach,
A hobo having expired somehow,
Lying supine on a bed of concrete,
The lifeguard urgently performing CPR,
But the paramedics from the ambulance,
Ambling without urgency.
They knew.
Meanwhile, the hero of the play, with only the best of intentions,
Kept the show going, lest the tourists get alarmed.
He shall be taken to the hospital.
Yes, the hospital. That’s where ambulances go.
If you escape misfortune, your first introduction
Into the Society of Those With Open Eyes
Will be when your own parents die.
The happier your life is,
The later will you learn its most important lesson.
And standing over their grave,
You shall face Siddhartha’s choice.
The heavy oak door swings open a crack,
Revealing a strange light,
And murmurings that beckon from outside the palace.
Shall you walk out into the night?
Or stay in the bedchamber?
How few, how mad with truth,
Those who follow in his footsteps.
It is a trick, of course.
Everyone resolves to leave.
They even walk a few hesitating paces.
A few hours later,
Nearly all of them go back.
But modernity, like Suddhodana,
Never entirely succeeds in tossing out nature with its pitchfork.
There is a crack through which light occasionally seeps in,
When the sun is aligned just right,
The Stonehenge gap in the Machinery of Moloch,
An ancient monkey-brain relic that can’t quite be erased.
As the tarmac rises up to meet your meandering plane,
And the engines whine with a different tenor,
A chance cross-breeze lifts you up,
And for one terrible, glorious second,
As the primordial panic knots your stomach,
You are aware, acutely, incisively,
That you will die.
Not just eventually.
But maybe right now.
The moment, like death itself, is shared with no one,
No matter how close by.
But everybody knows.
And what you think, right then,
Has a clarity of vision,
Both sublime and prosaic.
(It would be very sad if my daughter grows up without a father.)
(Christ, I still haven’t gotten the life insurance sorted. That’s incredibly stupid.)
* In breath, out breath *
(I wish I’d called my parents more.)
* In breath, out breath *
(If this is it, I am happy that, broadly, I have done my duty.)
*Thud!*
The wheels touch down.
The engines roar into reverse.
The world returns.
Without ending up withered and emaciated inside.
The stunted, rickets-plagued character that results
From staying indoors, never facing the world as it is,
Subsisting on a diet of saccharine fairy tales,
Manufactured junk-food doom-scrolling distractions,
And the slippery, seed oils
Of the present-tense, oleaginous outrage-of-the-day.
Like the Strange Blind Idiot God of Evolution,
Creeping and slow, without an agreed upon plan,
Society has assumed the role of Suddhodana.
The old man and the sick man still serve some useful purpose.
The former as an important marketing demographic,
At least until his 401K dwindles,
Whereupon he gets shunted to Death’s Waiting Room in Florida
Where it’s always 75F, and the phone only rings on Thanksgiving.
The sick man is valuable, at least in the abstract,
For highlighting the importance of “dem programs”.
But the corpse, young Siddhartha,
That simply will not do.
It is for your own good, you see.
(The monk, of course, barely even exists,
So needs no concealment.)
Reader, having officially reached middle age,
I can only remember seeing a corpse once.
At a distance, on Santa Monica Beach,
A hobo having expired somehow,
Lying supine on a bed of concrete,
The lifeguard urgently performing CPR,
But the paramedics from the ambulance,
Ambling without urgency.
They knew.
Meanwhile, the hero of the play, with only the best of intentions,
Kept the show going, lest the tourists get alarmed.
He shall be taken to the hospital.
Yes, the hospital. That’s where ambulances go.
If you escape misfortune, your first introduction
Into the Society of Those With Open Eyes
Will be when your own parents die.
The happier your life is,
The later will you learn its most important lesson.
And standing over their grave,
You shall face Siddhartha’s choice.
The heavy oak door swings open a crack,
Revealing a strange light,
And murmurings that beckon from outside the palace.
Shall you walk out into the night?
Or stay in the bedchamber?
How few, how mad with truth,
Those who follow in his footsteps.
It is a trick, of course.
Everyone resolves to leave.
They even walk a few hesitating paces.
A few hours later,
Nearly all of them go back.
But modernity, like Suddhodana,
Never entirely succeeds in tossing out nature with its pitchfork.
There is a crack through which light occasionally seeps in,
When the sun is aligned just right,
The Stonehenge gap in the Machinery of Moloch,
An ancient monkey-brain relic that can’t quite be erased.
As the tarmac rises up to meet your meandering plane,
And the engines whine with a different tenor,
A chance cross-breeze lifts you up,
And for one terrible, glorious second,
As the primordial panic knots your stomach,
You are aware, acutely, incisively,
That you will die.
Not just eventually.
But maybe right now.
The moment, like death itself, is shared with no one,
No matter how close by.
But everybody knows.
And what you think, right then,
Has a clarity of vision,
Both sublime and prosaic.
(It would be very sad if my daughter grows up without a father.)
(Christ, I still haven’t gotten the life insurance sorted. That’s incredibly stupid.)
* In breath, out breath *
(I wish I’d called my parents more.)
* In breath, out breath *
(If this is it, I am happy that, broadly, I have done my duty.)
*Thud!*
The wheels touch down.
The engines roar into reverse.
The world returns.
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