A woman wrote to me talking about how her Christianity intersects with her love of Eckhart Tolle and Oprah. So instead of blogging about male enhancement pills, let me post my response to her which is a summary of some basic Buddhist concepts.  It doesn’t say much about how to improve semen quantity, but says a lot about how to enhance the quality of your life.

Eckart Tolle is one of those guys who is unsuccessful with women so he spends all of his time hitting the spiritual bong. It’s his escape from a reality he wishes he wasn’t present to – just like Oprah gets involved in all this feel-good mumbo-jumbo because she is fat and unloved, and consequently acquires a following of millions of other women who feel likewise. This isn’t to say that there aren’t very attractive women who are into Oprah, but they are running from something just as are the rest of the sheep and end up food for the wolves as a result.

I don’t choose to see the dark side, I just see what is. To quote an episode of Dr Who (BBC science fiction show), “I have the two qualities critical to seeing things for what they are: I am brilliant, and I am unloved.” lol!

Seriously, when most of the planet is suffering horribly, one cannot say life is so awesome because it is only awesome for some. Certainly those born into a hell like the Congo or Liberia are subject to all sorts of misery and unimaginable cruelty – and don’t deserve to be there? Or do they?

This is the big, ugly question that nobody dares to ask. Most religions ignore it, and turn their thoughts toward “God.” This is how my conversations with “religious” people always unfold:

Me: “If there is a God, he’s got to be a real asshole to allow these sorts of horrors to occur.”

Religious Person: “These horrors are not of God, they are the work of the Devil.”

Me: “Why the hell (pun intended) would God allow the Devil to make his creatures suffer?”

Religious Person: “God could put a stop to this at any moment, but he wants to test you to see how much faith you have.”

Me: “Well then God is an even bigger asshole then I thought.”

So I would say that life is not necessarily suffering (most people would put up with the minimal existential suffering experienced by those who are rich and beautiful and can indulge themselves at will) – but suffering is caused by karma. Otherwise, you have only 2 possible explanations:

1. God is an asshole.
2. Life is utter chaos.

Both make no sense (although God could be an asshole), while karma is perfectly logical. But people have trouble with the concept the same way they have trouble with the concept of diet and exercise. They just don’t want to shut their mouths and prevent food from magically going inside while doing some sort of physical activity.

Dieting is enduring the suffering of not eating as much as one would like, and exercise is doing good deeds for your physical body to set a foundation for good health and physical attractiveness. What happens is many people can’t endure the suffering of not eating so they can never climb out of their predicament.

In case this analogy is unclear, let me give another one to illustrate the way I see life – as a trap that sentient beings are caught in:

1. When you have a toothache, and it is painful enough and lasts long enough, eventually you will snap and say something nasty to someone around you. It is not easy to be nice to people when you have severe tooth pain.

2. Other forms of suffering are like that toothache – eventually one may not be able to endure any longer without doing something bad.

3. As the bad things accumulate and the good fortune runs out, it becomes very easy to slip. The lower you slip, the harder it is to escape.

4. How does a being escape from it? Only by enduring the suffering without lashing out, and at the same time by doing good deeds. This way you use up the bad fortune without creating any more of it, and create good fortune it its’ place.

This is why a Buddha may say that ultimately life is about doing as much good as possible and as little bad as possible!

Now imagine those born into a place like the Congo or Liberia?  How do they prevent themselves from repeating the endless cycles of violence? The TV series “Battlestar Galactica” asked this same question.

If we had the answer, the universe would become a paradise for everyone.

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