Mindfulness and Bud the Buddha

There's this buddhist practice known as mindfulness where you're supposed to be aware of everything going on around you at all times. The idea is that most people sleepwalk through their lives instead of actively participating in it.

Why would you want to be mindful? As far as I can tell, the smugness. You can point at other people and say:

"You see that idiot over there, waiting for the bus, his mouth hanging open, wearing baggy jeans, headphones in his ears, his eyes yellow from not blinking? He's a mindless asshole. But not me. I'm fucking MINDFUL."

(And then you trip over your untied shoelace and hit your head on a lamppost.)

I like smugly feeling superior to other people, so I am considering looking into this whole "mindfulness training" thing. The big problem is the way Buddhists try to cultivate this ability -- by sitting on their asses for hours and hours, doing nothing. They call this "meditation", but to me it kind of sounds like working for the government. Only government workers sit on their asses doing nothing for years, not to attain enlightenment, but to attain retirement, which pays better.

But back to Buddhists. Beginner meditators are supposed to sit there and concentrate on their breathing. If your mind drifts to other things -- and why wouldn't it? -- you're supposed to gently return your thoughts to your breathing. This can go on for hours and hours.

You know, it would be easier to sit there doing nothing if there was a TV or something to watch -- something to keep my mind active. Like an episode of Jeopardy.

Personally, I would like to be mindful, but I don't want to do all this work. Isn't there a faster way? Like, a pill or something?

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The weird thing about Buddhists is that they're always talking about this guy, the Buddha. They're almost as bad as Christians going on about their guy... What's his name? Moses or something. Abraham. Some guy.

Anyway, here's the story of Buddha -- Bud for short.

Bud was a prince. His dad was super sheltering the guy, and kept Bud locked up in a compound where he never saw sickness or death. So, like Paris Hilton, only in India.

One day, Bud wanders out of the compound and sees all kinds of sickness and death and old people for the first time. This freaks him out. So to deal with this new understanding of the horrible world, he abandons his wife and kids, throws away all the wealth he could have used to make the world a better place, and goes off to learn to meditate.

Kind of like when Paris Hilton got arrested and spent half a day in jail.

Bud starves himself, sits under a tree, and meditates for years. He gets all skinny and angsty. Some say the Buddha was the first emo.

One day, Bud realizes all this meditating and suffering shit is stupid. He wasn't happy as a rich and spoiled prince. He's not happy as a starving, poor wretch.

"Wait a minute! Forget wallowing in luxury and wallowing in misery! I should do something in the middle. I'll follow the middle path!"

And thus the middle class was born -- a class of people who simultaneously sneer at the wealthy for their excesses, and sneer at the poor for their laziness. You want to talk about smugness? That's the middle class.

Once Bud was enlightened and middle-class, he went on a speaking tour, explaining his philosophy to his friends. Here are some highlights of what he said.

"If I point at the moon, don't stare at my finger, retard. Look at the mother-fucking moon."

"I don't know what the fuck to say to your stupid question, so I'm just going to hold up this flower. Look! Dave gets it! Or he's pretending to. Dave, you are such a suck-up."

"Nothing lasts. Everything changes. Get fucking used to it, you morons."

People recognized Bud was wise, so they kept him fed and clothed. And so Bud didn't have to work for a living -- not even for the federal government.

And I think we can all learn a lot from his example.