Smothered

It’s daybreak and already
The prostitutes are on the street,
Addicts are searching the corners with a feral glint.
An obese woman, winded from a few steps,
Passes an anxious man scavenging a garbage can —
Jester to winos in a fiefdom of pigeons.
The summer sky is obscured with leaden clouds.

Tao is all around us, but sometimes the weight of our poor habits, our bad circumstances, or our lack of exposure to philosophy hampers us. Although every person should be equally valued as a human being, not every person is equally sensitive to Tao.

Ignorance is our predominant mode in life. We may pass through ghettos and consider ourselves more fortunate, but don’t we all have dense layers of misfortune, confusion, and selfishness to dissolve?

Tao can be known by progressive purification and cultivation. The opposite is also true. Ignorance can be compounded, made denser, until the light of our spirits is smothered.

The light of the soul is bright, but dense clouds of human ignorance obscure it. Where are you in terms of your effort to make your life brighter?

Deng Ming Tao, 365 Tao

You are the light of the world!
You are the light of the world!
But if that light is under a bushel,
Brrr, it’s lost something kind of crucial
You got to stay bright to be the light of the world

So let your light so shine before men
Let your light so shine
So that they might know some kindness again
We all need help to feel fine (let’s have some wine!)

— Light of the World, Godspell

At times
A fog creeps across my spirit,
And my heart is smothered
With loneliness.

Though I know of the distant horizons
And of the paths to be explored,
Though I know of the strength I carry inside of me
And of the freedom of being comfortable alone,

Still at times
A fog creeps across my spirit,
As if waiting for a light to shine through
And show me the way.

Mark Tomkins, Remembering to Live

For me, the thing that most dims my light is annoyance. Little everyday annoyances, with myself or with other people or things. As Anton Chekhov put it, “Any idiot can handle a crisis–it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.” It is the day-to-day annoyances that get to me – my husband’s seeming inability to actually close a drawer all the way, my kids’ inability to see the floor as a space to walk on rather than a shelf for all their stuff, the stupidity of the things that are happening in our government, and nearly any demonstration of stupidity can tick me off, really, if I’m not in the right frame of mind. Then there is the meta-annoyance at being annoyed itself – I get annoyed that I am annoyed.

So when I feel annoyed, I am not the calm, rational person with perspective and far-sighted vision that I would like to be. My light dims with the clouds of annoyance and frustration and sometimes even anger. The “watcher” in me, who can usually sit back and observe everything with amusement, becomes caught up in these feelings and for those few moments, the fog creeps in….