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Trinkets of Virtue

So here is a musing on a interview with Ken Kesey for Paris Review. I read it long time ago so no much is left in my memory of it and when I found my little piece in the archives, it sounded ok so I decided to publish it again. I don’t think that many people would have read it before anyway. I wasn’t a part of the Beat generation, neither of its later sprout, the Hippy flower child. On The Road was not yet translated in socialist Bulgaria when I was at school in the late 70s. Fly over the Cuckoo Nest was translated but ‘of course, everybody knew it was written against the Capitalist society’. LSD, mescaline, the Doors, the Byrds and anything of this sort did not even exist in our world – ‘the dust bowl of reality’. My father was arrested for dancing rock&roll on a table and girls with short skirts had stamps put on their hips so they cannot ware them again.Even religion wasn’t there to give some kind of hope to the searching minds.  But both the Beat generation and we, behind t...
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The Run-away Brain


Doesn't this look to you like a gigantic brain, irresponsibly left by its owner in the garden? It moves slowly towards the perils of the ocean. There is a small rope, most likely put there to prevent it of running away, although its presence looks purely symbolic. 

For me, this is a great metaphor for our minds. Left out there, unprotected by anything, but our meek gestures of morality, moving slowly to the perils of the ocean of our disturbing emotions. Our anger and greed, loosely tied by the rickety rope of the possibility of social exclusion, our jealousy, painted over by our pride and reluctance to be seen by others as weak, are the only fences. 
That pretence does not protect our mind but we chose to believe that it will. Putting around it the strong chains of moral discipline and mindfulness takes a lot of effort. Most people will just say, 'Let it run free!'.
Our mind, that boulder, will not cause any damage to the ocean, of course, but when it comes tumbling down, it will break into pieces, crushing and dragging everything in its way.




Comments

  1. Anonymous31 March 2023 at 09:16

    Thank goodness for our lamas, and the dharma that teaches — in its own timeless way — humility, devotion and care, to the rock in that poem, so that it can turn back into sand then merge with the sea. Perhaps only another few million lifetimes 🙏🏽

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    1. Anonymous31 March 2023 at 17:09

      Indeed! But that is another story…

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