What does the Buddha say?

I remember this moment very distinctly: I was living in Chicago, in a posh downtown apartment, and I remember being a one-person actor to the audience in my head… dancing around my apartment with a bottle of wine in my hands, sipping from it and being that imaginary hero, a lonely urban person with many interesting thoughts and nobody interesting to touch, a living line from a Tom Waits’ song.

I remember it so vividly as if it happened yesterday but now I can look at that moment and see the entire history of Western civilization in it, with all its confusions and beautiful mishaps.

The reason I thought of that ancient, culturally significant wine bottle, was because I was thinking about the culture of being fucked up, the glorification of being fucked up, and those who set this particular lie in motion a long time ago, and those who carry it along, and the beauty that comes from it, and the streets full of diseased people with dim eyes, and beauty, and disease, and all the zen in the world.

If we were to skip to the coda, I would ask a question: Why is it that we have no culture of enjoying life and feeling all sorts of interesting things without getting fucked up? Is it because an independently happy person is hard to monetize? Yes? No? Yes, plus stupidity, minus the math?

“Minus the math” is important, because there is more to life than what we see, and “linear” doesn’t always apply, and what the Buddha says.

Oh. What does the Buddha say?