The Timeless Time-Out

Vol. 13. March 10, 2021

Bob Dylan put the pandemic in perspective when he sang,

Every step of the way, we walk the line.  Your days are numbered. So are mine.
Time is piling up. We struggle and we scrape.  We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape.

Time indeed is piling up.

One year in captivity. One year of Contagion Claustrophobia. One year of Decreed Detention. One year in Pandemic Prison.

One year. March to March. Marching nowhere. Frogmarched. Time slows down, stretches out, elongates. The Timeless Time-out.

Now is back then. Then is right now.

We are the Plague People. The Lockdown Lunatics. The Masked Meanderers. Habituated to Home. Reconciled to Routine.

Above us, the blue sky, endless, immense, impartial, unchanging. The past year was a dream. The future too. And most amazingly, so too is the palpable pandemic present. All a dream.

Beyond it all is the Non-dreaming Non-self, Nirvana.

We, the Sweet Suffering Swine of Samsara, struggle and scrape through life, while all the time ignorant that our misery is bliss. Samsara is Nirvana.

How can we rise above the misery to see a new vision of reality?

Look at that sky for a while. Then look at the earth. See if it isn’t one pure Suchness.

The natural state of everything is blank, empty, serene, one.

As soon as conceptions cease, Indivisible Reality is here.

Zen calls it Buddha-nature.

Buddha-nature

Buddha-nature is everywhere. It’s everything. It’s every moment. Dwell on divisions, devolve into duality and samsara is yours to roll around in. Wallow in that mud of misery, my fellow swine!

But we can stop the misery. We can clear away the clouds.

Meditate. See things in their suchness. Nirvana is in the palm of our hands. It always has been. Our true nature is never separated from us, even in moments of delusion.

Our little minds divide Time into past, future and present. But Time is one. Time is the eternal now. March 2020 is March 2021. Our Divided Decreed Detention endures only in our thoughts.

Samsara has no reality, yet we trade our immaculate minds for it.

Every step of the way, we walk that line.

When are we going to stop the madness?

Time is piling up.

There’s nowhere to escape.

Samsara is Nirvana. — Rejoice!