Along the Tarot Path

I was glancing through a book today that purported to provide a pragmatic way to discover meaning in any individual life, to awaken energy and provide new directions. Maybe it does that. The picture that springs to mind is of a person in a lifeboat adrift on an endless sea, conjuring chores to attend to and directions to set.

In the face of an endless mystery, meaning is a coin with no value. It may exist, but it buys nothing.

Meaning is an issue in the midst of the busyness of an anthill. An ant may well search for meaning in the midst of a drudgery that seems pointless.

But for any consciousness that faces existence by itself, there are no words for what it witnesses. And without words, there is no meaning. Meaning is nothing but a word in search of itself.

So what task shall I set myself? And for what reason? Buddha set himself the task of finding the root of suffering and a way to overcome it. And then, when he had done this successfully, he set himself the task of teaching his method to the world. His reason was compassion. That’s a good reason. And it was a good task.

But suffering has not been overcome. Nothing much has changed. Had he done and said nothing, you’d scarcely notice any difference. What could I do or say or think or feel that would do better than that? Certainly, the world would not benefit or change in the slightest. However the mystery of things came to be, it will not be in any way affected by me, or anyone else.

I can surely affect myself. I choose how I wish to live. I can set my craft to sail in any direction I choose on the endless sea. Such choices have no meaning. They don’t affect the sea, and I will one day sink beneath its waves without a trace.

But already I have achieved something. This situation no longer upsets me. The situation will not be affected by anything I do or anything that happens to me or anything I have or don’t have. I am free to turn inward if I choose and ignore or become the sea.

I have heard it said that the root cause of suffering is ignorance. And what is the root cause of ignorance? I would say that it is limit. And the root of limit is the separation of consciousness into the bits and pieces of individual awareness.

And that’s the nature of mystery — the individual awareness adrift on the endless sea of consciousness. That’s how it’s set up. That’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s an unsolvable, unresolvable mystery by its nature.

The funny thing is, it’s no problem if you don’t have an obsession with solving puzzles.

— Wald

Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot, Unmesha on August 31st, 2007