THE ESSENTIAL ART OF WELL-BEING AND BECOMING AN ORDINARY MAN
THE ORDINARY MAN
Who or what is an ordinary man?
Strictly speaking, it is Homo sapiens.
Do you know what Homo sapiens means?
It means "wise man" or "knowing man."
What does he know? Not much, really, if you consider that he originated 200,000 years ago and more or less matured 50,000 years ago.
Let us begin by being what appears to be complementary.
He has a highly developed brain in comparison to other creatures. He has language, can use abstract ideas, reason, introspect and solve problems.
He is then considered capable of wisdom (prajna).
There are at the moment almost seven billion of us.
How many do you believe have "wisdom"?
It is true that he seeks to explain phenomena and indeed that is a part of his great virtue. He is a creature that has that unique marvelous combination of CURIOSITY and CREATIVITY which, in part, is the clever manipulation of phenomena. His abstract tools are science, philosophy and psychology.
He has used that curiosity and creativity, manipulating phenomena in a dreadful auto-destructive way, and carries all the great diversity of life with him in his selected career of life annihilation.
He would perhaps better have been described as a Self-serving Neanderthal.
He is far from Homo sapiens, which we really can term, when he posseses True Wisdom, an Ordinary Man.
The question then, which Buddha Dharma addresses, is "How do we transform this degenerated Neanderthal into an Ordinary Man?"
Perhaps, however, we must consider more carefully what this Ordinary Man is and how he lives in harmony with all things using this great naturally evolved gift of Wisdom.
The Natural State of Being an Ordinary Man
An ordinary man has untroubled sleep, wakes, knowing that he has awakened to his world, sensing the Life Force within himself and all things. His mind is alert and in a state of well-being.
His mind does not now force him to rise, dress and perform his ablutions, he senses viscerally an urge to rise without haste and he then follows that natural drive, dressing and performing what nature has conditioned, not the dictates of his mind.
He finds himself unhurriedly following his natural Dharma and his mind does not flow with agitated thoughts about what he must do or what the future day may hold.
He has his breakfast with full attention and a natural mindfulness or meditates first, as is his need.
Then his life unfolds before him and he begins the task of caressing life, not living it at the behest of an Identity manipulated and controlled by a Stained Samsara. He performs Natural Contemplations as they naturally unfold.
Perhaps you are fortunate and at some moment in your life you will have walked with a light step, almost as if you were walking on air. That way of walking arises in the ordinary man dwelling with an untroubled mind.
It is not that there will be a freedom from what we may call the conflicts of living, but there will be a confidence that does not search for problems or dwell upon them before they are present to be solved. He will have the full confidence in his capacity to solve all problems using his own wise nature and his cognition acts as the perfect tool to refine what his nature has directed.
He performs all tasks with equanimity and as a result is not preoccupied at any time with failure. He sees success and failure as an undivided conceptual evaluation.
He has no expectations, as he walks always with a full knowledge of the range of outomes possible, clinging to none, and is therefore never surprised and with that confidence that tells him that there are natural and correct solutions to every problem that rises. Thus he continues with that state now of well-being.
He has no ambitions and performs his daily tasks, his occupation that will bring his daily bread, and that task will be perfectly in tune with the Dharma way of life.
He will naturally without effort be continually dwelling upon the Eightfold Path without any effort to do so.
Far from being bored or overstimulated he will live first and foremost with the Sublime States which monitor his tasks and have the nature of fulfilling his Natural Curiosity and Creativity in which there is no Identity present, his only reward being the attainment of his daily bread and the well-being, bliss, ecstasy and awe that arises from this.
He will play, developing his body in sport that is with forms and is not competitive with Identity far away from his being. He will play games that maintain and develop his mind, without competition, wishing always that his opponents do well so that he can be tested. There is within him no sense of winning or losing. His joy comes from simply playing the game and melding with an opponent.
From his integration with all living things, even when alone and in solitude, there will be a full sense of belonging and he will interact with like-minded people and assist all life forms, enjoying the diversity of life, knowing that he is only at best a part of that diversity, by fortune given the opportunity, without interference, to help the survival of all living things.
He will never question who he is, what he does or where he is going. He will dwell with full well-being in the now. He may be a sesame seed crusher or a Saint.
He will know that there is never Evil in any inanimate object or in any living creature, and that the human creature with his self-inflicted virus lives with the negative karma that he builds. The only reward for doing Good is that he will continue to do Good, and the only penalty for those who do Evil is that they continue to do Evil. He will live with that Truth, knowing that there is also the Truth that declares that there is no Good or Evil.
Dwelling thus in the state of being an Ordinary Person, he will experience Gladness, True Compassion divorced from mental structure, Benevolent Affect and Equanimity.
To others he may appear as a "far from an ordinary person." He may be revered or reviled or simply ignored, but his equanimity will be unassailable. He alone may know that he is an "ordinary man" and that others somehow have lost the way that he has found.
He may dwell with a partner perhaps of his choice or live alone, but his choice, if he makes it, will be that of nature not social custom, for his appraisal will be of the true human being and the qualities that are not easily perceived.
There is, of course, very much more as he develops his natural sensitivity, his skills of discrimination and his natural intelligence. You will no doubt get an idea of his bountiful life.
He will not suffer and will be free from the agitated mind. He will not ever be embroiled with the ambition and expectation that civilization calls the pursuit of happiness, forgetting to add "with its accompanying suffering."
He will never experience Confusion, Greed or Aversion. He will know himself to be an Ordinary man, albeit of Dao.
He will at times feel discomfort and will experience insecurity, but all those experiences he will know in their natural forms and they will cause no concern and they will be without intensity. Pain, of course, will at times be present, but it will be the not-unpleasant pain that is natural, without the Identity components that make pain intolerable.
He will live his life fully and completely as a human being, being a slave to no man or condition.
He will grow older, perhaps with illness, and he will eventually die, knowing that life and death are both impostors and will give up his consciousness fighting that apparent "leaving" with his nature not a painful resisting mind.
He will die knowing that his life task has been attained and there will be no recrimination or regret.
All that is spoken of here refers of course to every woman as well who has the courage, in this very difficult world where her mind has been conditioned to a social role that is far from natural, to step forward and grasp what is readily avilable within herself.
Per Ardua ad Astra