4 noble truths and a lie

wakare. i read that in Japanese that means parting. owakare is apparently a final parting. as in a death. apparently, in japanese, any time you add an o at the beginning of a word that makes it a bigger deal.

i'm reading all this in a book entitled, "Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye" It's about Japan after the earthquake, tsnami and nuclear mishap. it's a little about the Japanese culture. and it's about grief.

it's interlaced with concepts of buddhism and the shinto religion. it's all very mind opening to me. as a good book should be, i guess.

i'm reading it on the heels of reading a book about rosa parks. i'm reading it on the heels of all the both great and terrible things that have happened in the world as of late. i'm reading it on the heels of a bit of a down cycle in my head lately.

it's not that i'm depressed. i'm not, really. just not at my sunniest self. which either comes from not being with people enough or perhaps with them too much. i can't really say.

what i can say is that i think it started upon meeting this guy, who is just a friend (really) and is going through an unwanted (on his part) divorce. he is now part of a circle of friends that i've acquired down here. and here's the thing. he seems to want something from us that most of the rest in our circle seem prepared to give him but for some reason i can't. i can't be upbeat with him when that's what he wants and i can't be sympathetic with him when that's what he wants. i just can't. summon anything at all for him. i find myself wanting to distance myself from him. and the whole group.

because he's rather like a ghost to me. what he's going through (with far more grace really than i ever had) is something i don't want to remember or be haunted by. an unwanted parting. a big old messy pile of grief. i just don't want to be near it, hear about it, empathize it or be reminded of it in anyway. and i find myself withdrawing.

which makes me a lousy socializer. and a lousy friend. and quite possibly a lousy human being. especially when i think how very much time, love, and understanding my friends gave to me back when.

there's a lot of talk about ghosts in this book. apparently the Japanese are big on ghosts. which is something i didn't know even after having been there four times. there's talk about noh theatre which is apparently usually about a chick being dumped. who knew? anyway, i can handle all this in the book. but i can't handle it all in my life. perhaps because i can put the book down if i'm too overwhelmed. and the book is not offended. not sure. but i can fade out. and then fade back in. when i can do it.

i was intrigued by the discussion in the book between two shrine priest who were comforting survivors of the disasters when one told the other that he must never give more than an hour to any one person at a time. because more than that and it would eat you up and you wouldn't be able to console anyone. i'm also intrigued by the concept of bodhisattvas who are beings who could be buddhas but who stay behind on earth and help ease human suffering. i'm definitely not one of those.

the first noble truth in buddhism is that life is full of suffering. the second is that suffering is caused by human attachment. the third is that we can rid ourselves of suffering if we rid ourselves of attachment. but the 4th and final is the kicker- and that is to end suffering and cease attachment, one must live correctly.

apparently there is an 8-fold path to this living correctly. perhaps, i need to study on that path of right living.
because right now, i'm having trouble understanding all this. how do you strive for no human attachment when life seems to be all about human attachment? i'm not an eastern thinker, so there must be something about detaching that i don't grasp. perhaps my understanding of detachment is warped. or at least different. because while i seem to instinctively know detach from people these days, it seems more to isolate me than to bring me closer to helping to end suffering. my own or anyone else's. all i know is that i've got enough of my own ghosts to deal with- i don't feel like i can take on anyone else's.

i don't have any wrap it up conclusion to this post. i don't know how to end it. just as i don't know how to end suffering in the world. so let's just part for now. wakare.