The Buddha and Me

                                   By Doc Walton

The ceramic Buddha leaning against a tree in my backyard squats there grinning at me like a deranged evangelist, one of those guys with too much light behind eyes that don’t blink enough.  I admire the always up demeanor this small statue sports, but I wonder what is hidden behind that frozen smile. I get the feeling there is something on its mind, something it is trying to tell me that doesn’t quite square with its “Look, I’m fat and happy” Buddha countenance.  It’s an odd feeling and it drops on me like an invisible cloak.  There’s nothing to it really, nothing concrete, nothing I can point to with conviction as I sit here squinting through the window glass at this corpulent character, but I sense something the exact opposite of what the Buddha is supposed to represent, something not joyful at all. In fact, what I’m feeling, if I were to put a word to it, is something sinister.

The Buddha, as a vague history tells us, was a rich kid who was unfulfilled by his life of plenty so he abandons it and wanders off in search of a more meaningful existence. He finds this new existence completely within himself – possibly while sitting under a tree just like his miniature likeness in my backyard – and that Better Way has come to be called, Enlightenment.

Enlightenment: The turning of consciousness from darkness to light.  Think about it.  From Darkness.  The Buddha came from Darkness in search of light.  Is it possible he carried the Darkness with him?  Is it possible that all the millions of representations of him throughout the years have shared a bit of that hidden Darkness? 

That contingency certainly seems possible to me as I lock into a stare contest with my own inanimate symbol of a Better Way, a contest that is proving to be more than who can hold the other’s gaze longest, more than who has the stronger will, but rather a test in which I must fight for my own existence!  I feel not only my thoughts leaving my head but all else as well, my awareness, my consciousness, my complete sense of self.  It is my soul that is being sucked out through my eyes. It was my very soul that is bit by bit being excised from wherever it lies within me.  I feel my SELF, all that I AM being inexorably drawn towards the demonic ceramic figure before me.  A figure whose fat satisfied grin now seems to widen as it absorbs the contents of my reality.  I am nearly gone, nearly gone…and then…I am.

Some people say Doc has the most peculiar way of meditating.