Volume 48. February 6, 2024
Bob Dylan is widely regarded as one of the greatest American songwriters ever. In 1997, Bob wrote this plaintive verse:
I’m your man. I’m trying to recover the sweet love that we knew.
You understand. My heart can’t go on beating without you.
Well, your loveliness has wounded me. I’m reeling from the blow.
I wish I knew what it was that keeps me loving you so.
Romantic love like that is celebrated on Valentine’s Day. This year, in a simple twist of fate, Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday. The contrast between the two events could not be more stark.
Ash Wednesday signals the beginning of Lent, a season of prayer, fasting and penance. Sorrowful sinners mark the day by getting dirty smudges of black ashes crossed over their foreheads.
How can we reconcile these opposites? The burning intensity of romantic love and the contrite abstinence of bodily pleasure?
Our old friend, the historical Buddha, faced the same dilemma.
Before his Great Awakening, the Buddha lived in the lap of luxury. He grew up as a royal prince in his father’s kingly palace. He was surrounded by every pleasure under heaven.
Eventually, the idle life of wine, women and song left him restless. He renounced the cushy life of affluence and searched for his destiny in the desolation of the forest.
For six long years, he lived a life strict deprivation. At one point his diet consisted of one grain of rice per day.
Eventually, he realized, “Asceticism is ridiculous. I am no farther along the spiritual path than I had been indulging in pleasure back at my father’s palace.”
The Buddha settled on the Middle Way. It dawned on him that spiritual salvation rests in the center point between the extremes of austerity and self-indulgence, fear and desire, individualism and the oblivion of ego-annihilation.
The Middle Way consists of three things: morality, meditation and wisdom.
When we treat others with kindness, meditate and realize nothing is permanent, not even our ego, we tune the strings of our guitar just right and strum the beautiful music of enlightenment.
At that point we can sing with Bob Dylan:
It’s mighty funny, but the end of time has just begun.
Oh honey, even after all these years you’re still the one.
On Valentine’s Day, you and your beloved become one.
On Ash Wednesday, we also become one. We drop our ego and realize that, ultimately, we are dust and unto dust we shall return.
A fundamental unity lies below distracting duality.
Fasting, abstinence, passion, intimacy —
All things are Buddha things because all things are one.
The Buddha Times 