Hermit Crab on Laundry Day

Okay but did you know

some animals have clothes

it’s called Hermit Crab

So it’s not dumb that humans have clothes

And also in humid hot places

like rain forest

they don’t use that much clothes

In hot dry places like desert

you do need lots of clothes. 🧕🏻

And it’s a way to get to hang out

with G-d on the daily

So don’t be discouraged

just cause Adam and Eve

noshed on the science fruit

Now

thanks to their li’l fruit snack

we know that we’re hunks of

spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones

and we just have to

live with

that knowledge every day. 💁🏻‍♀️

But

that’s fine

because the blood of G-d’s Lamb

made it so that

all sentient beings

could actualize buddhahood.

What’s that gonna look like

for us

today

this fine Friday afternoon?

Maybe a mindfulness exercise

or a hymn?

I feel bad for Kierkegaard

with his “leap”

when it’s just three centimeters away.

We can just reach out and touch it.

No matter how hard

all the flies

and decay

and absurdity

and entropy

makes it to see that.

That’s why the

beginner mind

is so great.

Even though we

have all these mountains of clothes and laundry to sort,

even the lilies of the field have raiment

and the hermit crabs have their ceramic doll’s heads

and sea shells.

Ligotti followed Zappfe in talking

about the four responses:

anchoring,

isolation,

distraction and

sublimation.

And of those four sublimation comes closest

to the

real answer

but sublimation sometimes feels like

it’s just passing the buck

like a Sadako “Ring” tape.

Like the only reason you’re talking about how bad it is

is so you don’t have to

think about how bad it is.

The real answer is:

showing up.

I’m grateful for these aching bones

and these heavy rusty breaths.

Beauty and ugliness.

It’s all there anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️

And thanks to

the life-changing magic of

“hedonic adaptation”

we humans tend to grade things on a curve.

In heaven we’re gonna be like

“OMG this harp-playing angel absolutely

sucks

compared to

this other gorgeous harp-playing angel”.

An inch of time is worth a foot of gems.

And even in the perfect Buddha nature,

our lives have texture and variety.

Right now,

my face and my feet

both hurt like heck.

That’s part of the texture of sensation.

I wish they didn’t

but thanks to hedonic adaptation,

if they didn’t,

some other ache would stand out.

There was this dumb ad campaign

when I was in my late twenties:

“it gets better”

and I was like when!???

And now I’m in my mid forties

and it never got better but

you know what did happen?

The gratitude attitude!

Even with tears down my cheeks

and my heart in pieces on the floor

and G-d’s kicks with both feet and boots on,

here I am.

One second at a time,

like the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof.

I was an unhappy child.

Hedonic adaptation to this

trash dump world

took a while

to kick in.

And Ligotti is right about one thing:

the idea that

“it’ll get better and better and better”

is delusion.

But that’s why we have

radical acceptance.

Probably better known as:

showing up.

And sometimes things do get worse.

Unrepairably worse.

Thanks, thermodynamics 🤦🏻‍♀️

Scrounging up

that sixpence for praise

can feel like

rolling a boulder up a hill,

forever.

And sometime it’s shiny and sometimes it’s dull.

It’s right here