Being Home Alone with Corona is turning us into Buddhist monks (if we want). Siddhartha (the Buddha to be) left his pleasure palace and discovered old age, sickness, and death, and he was shocked like we are shocked when we are told we have cancer. THIS SHOULD NOT BE! But what can I do about it? Then Siddhartha saw a renunciate, a monk, a yogi, and was told that he was seeking the cessation of old age, sickness, and death.
Now old age, sickness, and death are metaphors for mental suffering, the surfing of time. When old age, sickness, and death come, you are out of time. Corona is a metaphor for being out of time. Being home alone is being out of time, out of the future, out of a place to go, out of something to do, out of entertainment, our of our usual habits and expectations.
Being Home Alone we confront just being here with nothing to do. I must discover how to sit with myself, to be with myself as a monk in a monastery with nothing but a room, a bowl, and a cushion.
Who are you before time began? Who are you before the future was important? Who are you before you had something important to do. Who are you? When we are lost in time we avoid relationship with the present moment just as it is. When we are lost in time, we avoid our self.
Corona is making us contemplate time and thinking about time, and time’s suffering. The Buddha said his teaching simply two things: suffering and the cessation of suffering. The cessation of suffering, of time and thinking, come spontaneously when you discover your essential goodness of Being within. You need nothing, to go no place or learn anything to be better than you are right now. If you cannot get to the Buddha, the Buddha will come to you.
The movie Home Alone is about being Home Alone, with nothing but your basic intelligence and being invaded by negative thoughts, negative mental states. Your parents are gone. All your protective systems are gone. You are home alone left to your own resources. You have to become McGyver. You have to become creative.
Corona comes to make us become McGyver, to make us creative, to invent our way out of this fix, this invasion. The Government, apparently, (thank you Mr. Trump) won’t help up. We are on our own with the invader.
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