Leap Day

It sort of feels like getting an extra day, doesn't it? And in some ways it is, someways it's not - it just goes to show, again, that everything is just what we name it. Feb. 29 vs. March 1. The "day" is the same. The name is not. Leap day also shows how arbitrary time is. Einstein says a couple of great things about time. "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." and "The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." In other words, time itself is just something we make up in our minds to try to make order. Past, present, and future, are also just names, just concepts. There's nothing "out there" that constitutes time. Time is a fiction we invent, a story we tell ourselves in our own minds, just like everything else.

We, like time, are also fictions, created in our own, and others' minds. Which leads me to this from Jorge Luis Borges - an Argentinian writer, and a favorite of mine. "Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."

We are devoured and consumed by the fictions we create. This is one way to understand what Buddha meant when he taught that desire creates suffering. We think that there is something, some one, some situation or place that exists "out there" that will make us happy. But since everything "out there" is a fiction of our own creation, the closer we get to it, the more it disappears, like a mirage in a desert, or changes into something we no longer desire.

There's nothing wrong with our desire for happiness, we're just looking for it where it doesn't exist. Remember that song "Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places"? It's kind of like that.

The same goes for people, places and things that we think make us unhappy. We push them away, get rid of them, leave them, somehow they turn up again, maybe in different guises, but causing us the same kinds of problems. Why? They are also fictions created by distortions in our own minds. And guess what? Our minds follow us everywhere.

So what do we do? We stop believing what we're seeing. Like waking up from a dream. We can dream about an elephant and the elephant will seem entirely real. But then we wake up and we go, huh, it was just created inside my own mind. Our waking reality is exactly the same kind of "appearance to mind" - it's just that it appears to our waking mind instead of to our dreaming mind. If we wake up from a nightmare, we can experience profound relief - Thank god that wasn't real!

That same relief is what happens when, in our day to day lives we're disturbed, unhappy, frustrated, angry, suffering, and we remind ourselves "This doesn't really exist." It's like we're asleep, struggling with our covers, trying to run but can't, maybe moaning a little bit. And Buddha's going, hey, wake up, it's okay, it's only a dream. You're making it up.

This is good news. Why? Well, as my teacher says, "To change your reality, all you have to do is change your mind."