Tis the Season

There's something more than a little upsetting about the conversation I just overheard in the coffee shop. Two ladies, late 40s who could easily be mistaken for mid fifties, dyed blond and pale, with predominantly kapha doshas, were sipping their sugary drinks, swapping stories of doctor visits and sharing with each other tips and insights into their latest doctor-regimented drug use. They were talking about pharmaceuticals with the same glee I would talk, in college, about "Maui Kiblawi", "White Widow", a hippy flip or a candy trip, sharing with each other experiences of what was good for what with absolute zeal. There were statements made I couldn't help but note. At the beginning, "And the doctors don't care," by the end of the conversation had turned to, "but the doctors know what they are doing." Not necessarily contradictory statements, but nevertheless unacceptable when taken together. It speaks of a cold competence, like a sterilized steel surgical implement - the position of doctor as tool supreme, a position negotiated by both patient and physician him or herself. The predominant sentiment of the conversation, whether speaking for themselves or relaying the story of a friend, was one of ignorance. "The doctor told me to do X, so I did, and it didn't work. Then he told me to do X AND Y, and that didn't work. Now he's got me on y, z, q, and p, and we'll see how that goes." The only mention of personal insight into the cause of their sickness? "I tried some mushroom stuff. I was taking it pretty regularly, and that didn't work..." What overwhelmed me was the absolute ignorance of the workings of their own bodies! I looked at the women - their faces pale, spoke of malnourishment, refined sugars, lack of exercise, atrophy of their life force and loss of vitality. And in a way I can't quite articulate, it became obvious that illness is intimately connected with ignorance. Not stupidity, but ignorance of self, of truth, of soul, of vitality, of great spirit running through all things, even sickness.

I began to muse on the thought of the Kali Yug, and all the manifestations of this one dis-ease called ignorance, samsara.

I went out to buy a pen, having realized I was a student, somehow without one. On my travel around the corner, I noticed a tree I must've passed a hundred times by car, but never appreciated its enormity. Two large tree trunks had decided to grow together, in a giant embrace. Its bark reminded me of elephant's skin, grey, old, weathered, leathered. It must be the biggest tree I've seen in Providence! and never before stopped to appreciate. The love of this tree was obvious, radiant. Its trunk was spectacularly large, but the top was scrawny, having undergone many many cutbacks as a result of its proximity to the Wayland Square apartment complex. On second thought, it's now as if someone had thought to cut down this tree of love, but, seeing it was far too big at this point, could only hack away at its new growth. Its trunk was indomitably grand.

"The love that redeems the world." "On this planet, perhaps more so than anywhere else in the galaxy, on which we have chosen to live, LOVE is the only thing" that can survive, endure, escape destruction, diminution, sabotage. "Limitless undying love..." What is it? I don't know, but, then again, of course I do.

So where has the love gone, between physician and patient? Between salesman and customer, wait staff and patrons, for that matter? And what effect, at large, has money on love? In this season of cold rebirth, when we celebrate the birth of Love embodied in the human form, when we are encouraged to celebrate this love by spending in order to make love material, exchange love predominantly by making it manifest in the latest consumer goods, and, of course, by cooking and eating edibles, what are we to make of this holiday season which embodies this culture's understanding of the relationship between Love and money? "For love or money?" For love and money? Cash - or Christ - is king? Love - or money - makes the world go round? Form or spirit? Eidos, logos, caritas...

I guess there's nothing left to do but love even this disease of the Kali Yug. To love the shadow, the necrotic, the ill, the ignorance that is painfully being squelched, painful only if we cling and hold on tight. It feels overwhelmingly present at times, when breathing filthy air, ingesting polluted water more fecal matter than pure, knowing that this is a daily reality for people all over the world, eating when I'm already full, though people on the very same street as me, as well as far away, haven't eaten for days and days. Somehow, turning away from what little I know intellectually, I must accept the love and beauty and truth of what is, and appreciate the love in money, the truth in lies, the beautiful, the healthy, and the wholesome in absolute filth. Can you reconcile opposites?

Merry Christmas.