Most humans will spend inordinate time defining success and finding its true meaning. Newsflash - all humans the second they are born are in a dead end job. Everyone dies. No two ways about it.
Some die peacefully while others die a gruesome or somewhat unpleasant death but in the end there is just that - the end. You cannot be deader than dead. Ask any deadee. I am dead serious.
So then what of the deadee? Can he or she define what it was like before he died? Not really since there is a paradox for those that are still around. If you are dead there is no more backward and forward looking statements to be made. That is it. You are simply DEAD.
Deadly idea I know - but then again no different than finding Moksha. Buddha had something to say about it -he came up with that invention. Attaining one that is. You simply cannot buy moksha at a grocer or street corner (the Colombian cartels might beg to differ), or a post office - its worse than a good score on a CAT or GRE even. It comes to someone with a special skill - like Gautam.
What it boils down to (at high heat for 115 min under a Bodhi tree) is that at the moment of dehydration you see the light. You do not need to keep chasing crap all your life because there is simply no point to it. Once you get this fantastic idea drilled on your duramatter then nothing else matters. Problem is we are called thick skulled for a reason. It ain't easy.
So going back to the similarity between being dead and being a Buddha is that at that point there is no mountain high enough left to climb. People get all caught up in saying its not important what you did while living but its after you are gone that matters. Really? I beg to differ. In the absence of Moksha, live it up because again how many deadee interviews have been published that indicate a party in the dead zone? Are the dead actually saying - man that is some party in my name - I am so thrilled beyond words. On another note, they cannot come back and say they don't like the statue or portrait recently commissioned in their memory. So what's with all these statues? Most become toilets for the birds anyway.
I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language. Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds. The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic. Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'. This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...
There IS a place called Moksha in Nagpur which is a popular haunt of party animals..So you can buy stuff at Moksha, but not Moksha itself!
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