The Hole in Heaven

In an Australian interview with the Tibetan spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a Journalist from the ABC excitedly asked him…

“Oh, I’ve always wanted to ask this question, and finally – TO YOU – I can: What is the meaning of life?”

His Holiness smiled mischievously, and replied:

“Oh that’s easy. The purpose of life is to be happy.”

***

Happy. You're lying in the arms of your lover, so complete, so full. Happy.

Suddenly, his phone pings.

He looks nervous, turns the other way - but you see a picture on the screen. A stranger. Naked. You see his reaction. Embarrassed.

And heaven ends, pleasure ends; horror begins.

How could happiness turn so quickly into terror? But it does.

Because it isn't happiness, it is desperation. Your heaven has a hole in it, and all the pleasure and completeness suddenly drains away leaving you empty, devastated and alone.

You think heaven is completed by finding someone or something. And you never find it. And you see this same behaviour in teaching Alexander's discovery.

Marj said so succinctly:

"The trouble with all you people, is that you all want something, and that something is your tension. All you really want is a little bit of nothing."

Heaven is a little bit of nothing. Nothing to drain away.

But we think heaven is the right job, the perfect partner, enough money, no pain. Or heaven is a having a free neck, getting out of the chair right, good use as you talk…

That heaven is a little bit of something, and there are not enough 'somethings' to ever fill the hole in that heaven.

FM put it this way:

"Directly you get them to the point where they are right, they won't go on -- there is no urge -- they don't want to go on."

Heaven isn't pleasure, heaven can't be chased.

When you get there, there's nowhere to go. There's no urge to go on.

You are ready to die into the joy of nothing.

Who could have guessed Alexander's discovery was so profound?