THE IMAGE IN SAMSARA

-4. The Male making his Self-Image in Samsara

 Really when women speak of woman’s liberation today it is really appears to be an issue of Equality in the marketplace, but really that is putting the cart before the horse. The problem is the projection of image. 

                                              It is the same for men. 

Life can be divided into three distinct areas of interaction between men and women: home, work and play. Let there be no doubt that the image projected by women in these three areas is distinct from that of a man. 

Athletes sell their images as do Hollywood stars, top models and anyone in the news, but these images have one thing in common. They are all stereotyped images.

The male images are of two types. First there is the handsome and rugged masculine type, without muscle exaggeration, though there are exceptions. 

Second is the “interesting” type.  Clearly the image is used to sell a product. Who buys that image? Women of course. 

Clearly if that was not what women desire the leading edge of the sale would not be presented. So there is nothing startling there. 

                          Women like fit, rugged and interesting men. 

                                Are you a fit, rugged, interesting man? 

You can’t do much about being handsome or rugged, but being more interesting is possible.

             So what exactly is this characteristic “interesting” all about?

It is not being the same as every other idiot. It is being alive to what is without trying to be actually different. That in itself will make you different.

Jack London said,

 “I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by a dryrot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in a magnificient glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

Everyone  around you is existing in a state of “dryrot” as a sleepy and boring planet. If you could soar a little you could be interesting. A person is interesting if he is different.

                                                   POSTAGE STAMPS

Have you ever collected postage stamps? In 1841 in Hawaii the native government issued a set stamps. The rarest of the set was worth 2cts, but in the 1890’s only fifteen were known to exist. Rare is interesting. A Frenchman who was a collector murdered his best friend when he would not sell him his single copy of one of those stamps. When you are different you will be rare and sought after just like this stamp. A man may kill for a stamp but beware, many men too have found their rarity fatal when the collector is a jealous woman.

Maybe some time ago some female may have picked you up. You were bright and new, looked good, perhaps not worth much but you were collected.

Then the romance went out of things. Does that describe any situation that you have known? It is an old story.

She, like a young boy in London in 1873, found a pretty interesting 1 cent magenta stamp from British Guiana. It was just like you. Not worth much but attractive. Everybody is attractive to somebody. The boy didn’t know its value or he tired of it.  He sold it for six shillings, about sixty cents.

Does she know your value? Is that about how much she thinks your worth?

Actually, how many times a have men heard the words, “you aren’t worth a dime”? Anyway, the kid sold the stamp for what he thought it was worth. 

It sold later for two hundred and eighty thousand dollars. You probably aren’t worth much, except as sentimental value, so let's look what may happen. 

First, she won’t want to sell you because she has found nothing better and she is after all a bit over the hill herself.  

You are after all the man about the house and a habit.

Yes, you were originally interesting and now have been told for so long that you are now on the dusty shelf and off the pedestal and now you feel that life is over for you. 

Maybe for a moment, somewhere, sometime, for some unknown reason, you may slip and your old self may sparkle for a moment. You know what may happen, someone else, even a young thing may pop out of nowhere and may see your true value and find you interesting

This new chick will find you so interesting that you can’t imagine why you are not appreciated.

You will have forgotten of course that she is just another woman and you will perk up and feel young again.

Perhaps you’ll even throw away that stupid suit, shirt and tie you’ve been wearing for years and buy yourself some blue jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt with that grand tongue hanging out like your own will probably be. 

She is willing to pay the price. You felt worth something again. 

But the human game, my poor foolish friend, is not like the stamp market game. 

Your owner may have given you up for dead my friend, She might not have much time for you. She may think you are not worth much, but the moment someone else values you she will want you back and will scream bloody murder if you don’t come running.

You will be called unfaithful. You will be a rat. A lousy father for the kids. She will throw the book at you. 

           No one will want to know how you felt being undervalued. 

                         What did you ever do to be devalued. 

Do you notice that women are like cats? Well then look at this little gem from Jay Leno, host of The Tonight Show:

“I've never understood why women love cats. Cats are independent, they don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they're home they like to be left alone and sleep. In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat."

That is life with women, my friend. Get into horse and carriage and you will have to get yourself out.  But no luck. That is because you haven’t caught on how to be interesting.

                             YOU HAVE TO BE INTERESTING AND DIFFERENT

In 1918 in the US they printed an Air Mail stamp. I think it was worth just 8 cents. There were thousands of them. No one wants them today. But one sheet of stamps was printed with the Curtiss "Jenny" biplane on it flying upside down. A wise buyer bought the sheet of a hundred stamps for $24. 

Work that out. That is twenty four cents each. Each stamp today is valued at more than $42,500.

       You, I hope, catch the point. You have to be interesting and different. 

But don’t believe for a moment that flying a Cessna upside down is going to do the trick for you. 

Being interesting is more than that. It is to be a human male creature who has discovered within himself two aspects that to women are important. 

They are the capacity for humor, particularly to laugh at oneself, and the capacity to be curious and creative.

But beware, for although one must be able to laugh at one’s own folly one must do so from a position of strength and not simply as a mask. That means that you really must be able to see profoundly within oneself and see that folly.

                                              THE BITTER QUESTION

But then the problem is you must ask why you are with her. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive even ourselves.

That is the problem you see. You now, every second of every day, are weaving a web of deception. Who are you really? You don’t know. Where are you going? You don’t know. What do you know? What you have done? 

Do you really call that pack of lies and masks that make up your image what you have done? 

You think that old St Peter is waiting up there with that little book marked “John Doe” and is going to look at the pages where you worked for general Motors and say... "Well, he was a good worker so let him in." No, my friend, he is going to say:

                   “Where was your compassion and benevolence?”

It is no use pointing out that you supported Greenpeace, adopted a child from India by sending money every month or that when you were a boy scout you helped a little old lady across the road. No, I have bad news for you. Old Peter is going to look at all those intentions and attempts to be “the good guy” and say "Brother, I know what you were really thinking."

I hope you have a good suit of asbestos to wear when you give up the supposed Holy Ghost that gives you that halo made of spaghetti that dissolves the first moment that it rains.

                     He is going to say, “Tell me about these women.” 

What a lousy question for an angel to ask a man who is dead and trying to get into heaven for a bit of peace away from women with hopefully angels who he can play tag football with and not sit around with clumsy wings playing on infernal harps.

So what do you say? “I thought I was in love”, “She turned me on,” or perhaps even closer to the point, “I lusted.”  Maybe you could be clever and say, “I was only trying to cleave like God said.” 

 He is only going to open the celestial dictionary and show you that cleave really means “to be as one with all things”. Bad luck. 

                                           CLEAVING CORRECTLY

So why not get your act together today and try “cleaving” correctly. If you really do have a mental problem that makes you chase after women, ogle them, whistle after them or turn to your mates with a knowing grin then just turn around and take that elevator right down to the basement. You will find all the “hot” chicks there.

O what a surprise, my friend, Inferno is full of women. Why, because what you don’t know is that Old Saint Pete up there is a homosexual and knows women better that you do. Do you know what his first question to them was? "Why did you lie?" That’s it you see. It is not that God made them that way, it is that she started off that way. Go back to that Garden of Eden scene. 

                                                       THE APPLE

When God came out of the clouds (in those days without impressive burning bushes or trumpets), he shouted, “There's an apple missing!” Do you know what Eve did first? She pointed at Adam and said, “He ate it”. 

Of course our Adam was there all naked with the core of the apple in his hand and nowhere to hide it. 

She lied. She did it so well that it didn’t seem like a lie. 

You see, Adam did eat the apple. Not all of it, but he did eat the apple. 

The lie was a very clever lie and all women’s lies are clever lies. They even invented a term “little white lies” .

                 Do you really want to know what a “little white lie is”? 

It is a big black lie shrunken down and painted white. It is a lie that says nothing. It is avoiding the truth, which is a bigger lie than stretching the truth. 

What women have never really realized is what La Rouchefoucauld presented as a condemnation:

“Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we think up to hide them.”  

Anyway, it was lucky that God didn’t give a damn who had eaten the apple, or it would have been Adam who had to hit the trail. God just wanted the apple back on the tree where it belonged, and that was impossible. 

         Well, perhaps not impossible for God, but still hell of a lot of work.

                                So he kicked them out of the Garden.

Of course the legends don’t tell us those details, because they were written by men and they, as usual, with folly born in Deva worship, were protecting the honour of women.

                            What honour? What a lying image that is. 

Do you know why most of the women are in Inferno? It is for those lies and mental cruelty. I don’t have to tell you who the victims are.

Did men duel and do men defend the honour of Women? It sounds romantic but they did not. They are defending their own image. 

                    Aristotle spoke about young men, declaring plainly, 

"They are passionate, hot-tempered, and carried away by impulse, and unable to control their passion. For owing to their ambition they cannot 

endure to be slighted, and they become indignant when they think they are being wronged. They are ambitious not for honor, but more of victory; for youth desires superiority, and victory is a kind of superiority."

Honor then sets a respectable base to test superiority. It is never a woman who is insulted, it is the man himself that identifies with her that feels the insult.

Does a women ever defend the honour of a man? Sometimes perhaps, but rather as one defends one’s pet dog or as a foolish employee defends the disreputable behaviour of his or her owner, for, make no mistake, she is  owned in your eyes.

Of course she does not like being owned, yet she adores being your treasure. Helen of Troy was treasure. The story has been turned into a love story. What was it really, pathetic egoism, foolish glory, absurd pride, ugly motives and deeds, all camouflaged by the story of love and a wooden horse. 

                                      Who won?... Helen, of course.

So men fight and kill, steal and generate mayhem, work and live for their image.

Women do not fight and kill, do not generate mayhem, but work and live for their image, loading the rifle so that the poor idiot man will fire it. 

The natural man and woman has no image and needs no image; they simply are what they are, human creatures.

But you and she are not human creatures, you are an abomination. But since most men and women have little interest in returning themselves to the state of being truly human we will mention how one can continue being a more acceptable abomination to the opposite gender.

We have said that you have to build your image. The problem is that you have to admit that deep down you are not really special at all and that will really hurt. 

Of course they are not special either. There is an old phrase that says if you turn all the women upside down they will look the same. I suppose there is some reason in that, for feet are after all just feet if there are no shoes upon them. It’s the rest of their body that’s the image part.

So Mr America in a tango (or is it tangle), you also have to be unobtainable. Now that’s not easy when you’re running like a cockerel after all the hen chickens. 

There is a Chinese proverb that declares, “Men do not trip on mountains, they trip on small stones.” 

You are tripping over grains of sand. You must watch where you are treading. 

You must be different and unattainable, but remember what London said:

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

You will probably ignore that and will be foolish enough to burn yourself up externally with the meteor-like look that is individual but really the same as everyone else, and delude yourself that you are different. 

But she will be trying to give the image of a shining star. So go out there and collide... You deserve each other.