Do we create, contribute to and exacerbate dukkha? Over the years we’ve talked about dukkha, but sometimes we lose sight of the fact that dukkha is caused not only by birth, illness, growing old and death but also caused by our own doing.
We want everything to be the way we want it. We fight change, but like tides and time, change is the eternal persistent flow that nothing can stop. We get anxious, stressed and ill because of change. The Buddha is recorded as saying “I have taught one thing and one thing only, dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.” Buddhism does not get any simpler than that.
The myth of Ariadne is believed to originate around 900 BCE with the Etruscans. By around 500 BCE, the Greeks slightly modified the myth we know today. It is the story of Ariadne, Theseus, the Minotaur, Daedalus’ Labyrinth, Athens, Crete, Minos and a red ball of string.
After Minos of Crete defeats Athens in a war, Athens is required to send youths to the Island of Crete for sacrifice to the Minotaur. Now the Minotaur (a real adventure story in itself) is imprisoned in a Labyrinth built by Daedalus. Once one enters the ingeniously designed Labyrinth, it is impossible to find the way out. The fate of all who enter is to be found and killed by the Minotaur.
So far, we have dukkha created not by birth, old age, illness and death, but by humans. We have war where one wins and one loses. We have the Minotaur, an outcome of human ego. We have Daedalus, whose genius was turned not to benefit others, but to harm. We have Minos who extracts revenge.
We also have Minos’ daughter Ariadne who is smitten the moment she sees the handsome Theseus, one of the youths sent from Athens as tribute and sacrifice to the Minotaur. Both Ariadne and Theseus are driven by their human nature, one to possess the other and the other to do what is needed to survive another day.
People create dukkha in epic proportions in myths. Perhaps there isn’t much difference between the dukkha they create and what we create in the here and now. We have wars; victors impose impossible conditions on losers. Our inventions are turned to destruction on the grand scale; science now modifies crops (think creation of Minotaur). Our humanness of greed, anger and folly pretty much wraps up the rest seeing this myth in our own day, our own life.
Where does the red ball of string fit in? Theseus agrees to take Ariadne to Athens and marry her if she helps him survive the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. Ariadne cajoles Daedalus for the secret to the Labyrinth - string. She gives Theseus a red ball of sting to fasten to the inside door of the Labyrinth and unwind as he goes deeper in and then follow out after killing the Minotaur. He does and they run away together. Check out the rest of this story for even more dukkha these guys create.
When we are desperate, when we feel totally alone and isolated in this world, we look for a way, any way to help us. We want the trick of the red ball of string someone gives us to follow out of where we are now. Some of us fall into addictions to try to avoid these feelings. Addictions can be anything including busyness. They use up our minutes and hours and divert us from the work of facing our own Minotaur.
We can look at that red ball of string as a Buddhist path, a Shin path. The teachings of Siddhartha Gautama after he awakened to the realities of this life and became the Buddha, the awakened one, work as much today as they did thousands of years ago. These teachings are eternal solely because they are reality itself.
If you read this week’s Nightstand Buddhist, you’ll read how Sensi Ogui’s red ball of string when he was desperate, was a single flower. We hear the teachings of the Buddhadharma, we come together as a Sangha once a month, we slowly come to make the Buddhadharma our own, a part of our life, the red ball of sting, the way to awakening.
Namo Amida Butsu.
In Gassho,
Rev. Anita
rev.anita.cbt@outlook.com
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