Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva
Chapter VII– verse 5
Transglomeration: And do I still not see all these ones about, my mothers, felled and finished with, one by one, without let? And all the while I am one who allows himself a complacent slumber like the buffalo unperturbed before the butcher!
~~~ “BCA” ~~~
V. 4 cornered prey, trapped in birth after birth
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 5 evidence of death all around, but I sit chewing the cud
Glimpse: living (life) in ignorance of death (simile: the buffalo asleep with the butcher – Sharma, ‘…and the butcher’s sword breathing over its neck, one goes on chewing the cud of illusory joys…’); everyone else is dying
Reflection: making the implication of verse 4 even more explicit, there’s nothing clever going on here, no subtlety of argument: death is immanent, it’s there, it’s right behind you! It really is! Verses 4-6 are driving the point home, verse 4 a hook – makes us look completely the other way; verse 5 a body punch, right in the ribs, makes us look stupid, wo wind; verse 6 the downing KO, this is what happens when you live stupidly; and what is ‘stupid’: in verse 5 it is the wilful ignorance we exercise, the ostrich-reaction to what is the single most definite thing in life – death; and this is beyond the ‘o, people die’ realisation, the flippant ‘no one can live forever and can I have that last piece of pizza’, and neither is it the perverse reaction to death that makes a ghoulish fetish and fashion out of it, this should be the realisation that should bite, sink its teeth in and draw blood – the fact that we are still sitting around, chewing the cud, means that that realisation has not bitten; `makes us look really stupid
Determination: if I am really serious about making anything out of my life anything more meaningful than swallowed cud, there needs to be an edge that pricks me out of complacency; now!
mlewisredford 
I am supposed to be writing like I’m running out of time, as someone else more famously wrote. But as it turns out, I find myself cooking for my family like I’m running out of time.
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running out of time throws all sorts of earthily worthwhile things up
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…an edge that pricks me out of complacency….
I like the ambivalence of this.
Am I complacent…or is that edge? Perhaps the edge needs ME (Haha!) to prick IT out of complacency…a little nudge, perhaps…(“psst….you! It’s your move! Prick me now!”)
I am ever on the search for that prick–that pricking edge–as I dig through my journals, searching for poem-fodder–more meaningful cud…..I must remind myself…it’s ok for it to be dark…it is in this darkness that we find the light….the spark is brightest deep within the cave…
“In other words, you wish to be an arrangement,
and you wish to be the arranger.
Can there ever be enough distance from yourself
to get yourself right? It’s hard, and should be,
to become a work of art. Maybe the trick is
to avert your gaze, look a little sideways
as an astronomer does.
That’s how a faint star becomes visible.
just a glimpse at first, then the long adventure
of saying what exactly it is that shines
behind so much of its own smoke and gas.”
–Stephen Dunn, Turning Yourself Into a Work of Art
I was reading this very passage only moments before I dipped in here…
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… pricks are nothing if not serendipitous, besides, they’re the only things that complacency might listen to; complacency would not be looking through the old notebooks sure that there was something there that you missed when you wrote it, the prick will be when you find something either that you don’t like now (‘was that me then, or now?’) or something only evident in retrospect which you might still not have faced up to …
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Now there’s a great punk band name for you: The Serendipitous Pricks
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— gurn
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Splunge!
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And on another friend’s post today, I find his reference to Browning’s poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. I say you make your assault on that tower. Don’t let all those dead bodies dissuade you.
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certainly … as long as the tower is something like one’s own arrogance and those dead bodies are your many humiliations and this is not some ‘glory or death’ iteration of ‘my way’ (is it coming through clear how unacquainted I am with Browning’s poetry?)
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Ha! It’s more like the struggle to face your own fears, and the approach to the tower is littered with all those who have failed
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Uhuh, as long as those who have failed are all ‘me, me, me’ … I don’t want anyone else facing my fears thank you very much!
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The Dark Tower reflects the fears of the individual who approaches, so no worries. The only one facing your fears is you.
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