There are times when I am just unaccountably happy.  Nothing is different in the day.  Haven't seen or done anything outstanding, the routine, the chores, the hours flow unimpeded from one to another.  The day draws down, the light slants gold, and I am full to bursting with joy.  

Reading a small book by Thich Nhat Hanh lent by a friend.  A beautiful book.  A Buddhist book - and I think, I haven't learned a thing.  I remember writing about Buddhism nearly 40 years ago.  I feel the same.  I appreciate what he says, the interconnectedness of things.  I believe that.  What I have a - personal - problem with is the premise, the same with all the great religions I guess, is that perfection is somewhere or somehow different than here.  Non attachment.  To people, things, emotions, concepts, ideas, everything.  When I am attached to something or someone, whether it is an idea or a person, I have taken a stance, grasped hold of something, have removed myself from the reality of interbeing and have therefore set myself up to be hurt if, someone opposes me with another idea (Trumpism vs sanity for instance) or the person I love stops loving me (which may already be happening as dementia colonizes Richard).  To be free I need to let it all go, to see it as just different facets of the same non-dual reality.  And be non-dual myself.  Recognize with every fibre of my being I am one with all creation.  That is the goal, that is the goal post, that is the purpose of  life.

I get it.

Except.  

Why ALL THIS then?  Why life at all?  Is it really an endless round of births until reaching nirvana and we gratefully drop off the wheel of endless incarnations?  Perhaps I'm just in an obstinate mood but it seem as though always guarding my thoughts and actions, always standing outside myself to ensure I stick to the nirvanic  path of least resistance kind of negates the joy of just being here, warts and all. 

If something hurts us, most of us eventually learn to stop doing the thing which brings about pain.  We don't need to constantly monitor our being.  Our being here now is enough.  

I guess it's the striving.  Here folks, is the perfection, recognize that you as a wave on an endless ocean are all the ocean.  Hold that thought.  When the wave breaks, you as water, are still the wave AND the ocean.  Ain't it grand?

But what about the wave?  Maybe I liked feeling the power and the speed as I gathered force coming to shore.  Maybe I liked the cresting and the way the sun shone through my foam at the top.  Maybe a dolphin surfed me in.  Maybe it was raining and I could feel the drops speckling as I roared over the sandy bottom.  Maybe I didn't want to be the ocean right then.  Maybe it was enough to be the wave. Maybe I wanted to feel myself break apart in a surge of clouded sand power as I hit the beach.  Maybe being a wave was enough.

Just sayin'.