Finding Myself in Rehab #8

I consulted the medical actuarial table at MEDIndia this morning around 6 AM. It said I had 8,760 hours left to live, and provided a handy countdown clock ticking off the seconds to my being dead.

By the time I post this and you read it, my time on earth will have diminished some. If you are keeping track, you should take into account that I am on Central Time.

The MEDIndia clock provides a disclaimer explaining that the counter may not be accurate, and suggests I consult a physician if I have any doubts or feel the need for therapy.

The fact that I consulted an actuarial table in the first place might suggest the need for therapy, and choosing the MEDIndia table in particular might strengthen that suggestion, but I’m very fond of India, and you can’t trust any numbers coming out of the anti-science MAHA health department of RFK, Jr. Besides, it was free.

Do I have any doubts? Sure. Doubting, if it’s authentic, keeps us from the idolatry of isms, self, and tribe. I can legitimately doubt everything but the I AM, though I have no problem doubting the accuracy of how I speak about the I AM.

In Hinduism this is called Jnana Yoga, the yoga of wisdom: realizing I AM through the practice of neti-neti/not this-not this: stripping away every illusion mistaking the temporary form for the eternal and formless absolute.

I’m no yogi and I doubt I will awake as I AM in the less than 31,535,636 seconds I currently have left to me. But if I AM is truly nondual, then the illusory is no less That than the real. True, you can’t drink water from the mirage of a lake, but that doesn’t make the mirage less real. It is an authentic mirage. It is no less I AM than the lake.

This may be what the Buddhist Heart Sutra means when it says “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” And what Torah means when she says Ehyeh/I AM is YHVH/the happening of all happening. Whatever is, is I AM.

If humans knew this, we might still hate one another but we would find our hatreds so absurd and hilarious that we couldn’t act on them. We might not be enlightened, but we would be enclowned. We’d see all our prejudices as laughable. We might still worship our guns, but we’d be too doubled over in laughter to pass the ammunition. Perhaps this is why Sasaki Roshi once told us the best meditation was to sit on the edge of your bed each morning and laugh until you were exhausted. Then go about your day.

The fundamental reason for all our evil is our desperate attempt to prove our preferred illusion true by slaughtering everyone who clings to a different illusion. If we could see that all illusions are authentic illusions we might stop slurping sand insisting it’s water, and laugh our way to an actual lake and dive in together.

Or maybe I should consult a therapist.