Dependent Origination

This is the doctrine at the heart Buddhism. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are a ramshackle collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center – no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned flotsam floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA.

Your intellect, dear reader, is chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your spouse leaves with the kids and the money in the joint account, or the economy fails and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some village idiot’s war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor, or you realize you're consigned to live in Armpit, USA. To name this amalgam of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re truly a deluded species.

We are in a trance from birth to death. Bust the balloon and what are you left with? We are left with what we most fear, but what is truest...

Emptiness…

It’s not only us – this radical doctrine applies to the whole sentient world. Dependent origination is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, I admit. Nevertheless, it does have a compelling point: stop for two steps... still yourself... listen – in other words, meditate just a little – and you will find yourself on a planet you no longer recognize. Those needs and fears you thought were the very foundation of your existence turn out to be no more than bugs in your software…

Smooches,

Eddie