January 12th 2009

I sometimes embarrass myself among more sophisticated people with my habit of delighting in small things. Old, broken glass strewn on bare, desiccated earth for instance. The patterns that my eyes feed to my mind give me joy.

Long before I became a Buddhist I wrote a short story about a hermit who lived in the top of a tree for hundreds of years, trying to attain nirvana. Every morning he would wake to see the beauty of the earth, and he could not let go. He was stuck in that tree.

There is nothing serene or centered in the enjoyment I get from looking at a bottle top or a gum wrapper. It is just plain fun. Am I attached to gum wrappers, metaphorically speaking? No. There's a leaf, a bumper sticker or the shape of a roof top to look at and then there's........

What is this surface, visual, mental enjoyment? Is it deeply shallow or shallowly deep even to dwell on it?