Leap from Ignorance
A clown is walking in circles. He is old and seems retired. I guess this because his clown outfit faded long ago and has holes. He is dirty. If there was a red bulbous nose or wig, it was lost long ago, just an old man crying, muttering endlessly, “Best not to begin, best not to begin.”
He says this with great regret. His suffering is so immense I try to comfort him, but he is inconsolable. He can barely speak. I ask him what happened. He says he started down the path of the Pied Piper of ignorance but recognized it to be all lies, so he backtracked and escaped to the fork in the road, where he has been for millennia, too afraid to take the other path. However, he knows it to be the only path worth taking, the path that leads home, but he is scared.
He wants a path with no suffering or hardship, preferably something he can purchase with a limited budget. He wants written guarantees of lasting happiness, inner peace, freedom from death, and he wants someone to carry him on the road.
I say,” I get why you have been here for millennia. There is another fellow I know who has been pushing a boulder endlessly up a mountain (Sisyphus) I am trying to help out. Like you, he has been at an impasse, seemingly fixed, endlessly doing the same thing, trying to maintain a sense of meaning in life.
I am going to tell you what I plan to say to him.
Just leave the past behind, get on the path. That line you mutter “Best not to begin,” comes from Trungpa Rinpoche, he was playing, you see, some paths once you begin there is no going back, you either go up or down, but this is good news, once you have started this path you eventually will reach the destination. There is no going back when you take that first step. There is only the path. It will be harrowing and full of hardships, but nothing like your suffering now. You must make your own choices, but this seems like the one thing you have not tried, despite your fear, what other choice is there?
But I can’t carry you. We all are connected but walk this path alone until slowly things begin to change, but not until we have nearly given up on or run away from the path, only when least expected does change happen, only when we surrender when we let go and be.
I can’t say I know this to be true experientially 100%, but I know those who have taken this path, they brought back treasures and showed me, there was something so different about those who had indeed taken this path. They had no fear. They were waterfalls of love and compassion. They were lightning wisdom bolts capable of blowing up ignorance and the notion that anything is fixed, solid, or just one unmoving set way. They had a particular joy I had never witnessed.
Most remarkable was their equanimity. They were there equally for everyone without exception. Because of this, especially the experience of a love that is undying, I trusted, and that’s why I walk this dusty road, my family and others think me crazy, but in the end, I never felt there was any choice.
I went down so many dead-end streets, I went to hell and learned the meaning of the “Fear of God,” I hurt others and suffered the consequences, I thought myself so special, fixed myself in some lofty place, only to have the clouds pulled out from underneath me, to be humbled and realized “I” knew nothing. Somehow after a lifetime of trying to figure out things, this was liberating. Life was not what it appeared to be. Somehow not figuring out allowed the spontaneous self-arising answers to questions I did not know I had.
So I apologize for all the words but take the first step. Trust me. I share this to tell you it is worth it.”
The clown looked at me differently, he said, “I have been waiting for someone to tell me it is ok to walk this path for so many lifetimes, sitting here at this fork in the road, being made fun of by the Pied Piper, who by the way stole my red nose. But fuck it, enough wasting life, who needs a red nose anyway.”
Then in the sky appeared the faces of all those suffering, all sentient beings, the earth, worms in a storm gutter, cluster flies in the window, people in high powerful places choking on gold and money, vomiting up economic systems that suck up the life force of all living, it was unbearable to look at, also for the clown.
hen said. “Don’t be overwhelmed by the endless suffering you see in the sky. Let it open your heart, not shut you down. Let that suffering be the reason you take this path because this path will not only end your suffering but allow you to be of true benefit to those suffering, not some worldly bandaid or new belief system. This is the real deal, Mr. Clown. This is your moment. Take the leap.”
The clown then took his first steps on the path not taken, turned around, smiled, then vanished, leaving a rainbow ring around the sun, which was mid-conversation with the moon. I missed the conversation, something about “shining” and “guiding.”
Oh, the North Star appeared as well as what seemed to be three wise men, at least from how they dressed, but they quickly took a left out of sight by a cloud in my peripheral vision.
I had not seen the clown since before he vanished, he was skipping singing, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow."
I am optimistic.
I think the depressed clown will make it.
Written by David Penn Trinley Arndt August 2019.
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