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Laura Jáuregui, Tlalpan, México, DF, maio de 1976. Já viu alguma vez um documentário sobre esses pássaros que constroem jardins, torres, zonas limpas de arbustos onde executam sua dança de sedução? Sabia que só se acasalam os que constroem o melhor jardim, a melhor torre, a melhor pista, os que executam a mais elaborada das danças? Nunca viu esses pássaros ridículos que, para conquistar a fêmea, dançam até o fim de suas forças? Arturo Belano era assim, um pavão babaca, metido a besta. E o realismo visceral, sua extenuante dança de amor para mim. Mas o problema era que eu não o amava mais. É possível conquistar uma mulher com um poema, mas não se pode prendê-la com um poema. Nem sequer com um movimento poético, aliás. Por que continuei freqüentando por algum tempo a gente que ele freqüentava? Bem, também eram meus amigos, ainda eram meus amigos, mas também não demoraram a me cansar. Permita que eu lhe diga uma coisa. A universidade era real, a Faculdade de Biologia era real, meus professores eram reais, meus colegas eram reais, quero dizer, tangíveis, com objetivos mais ou menos claros, com projetos mais ou menos claros. Eles, não. O grande poeta Alí Chumacero (suponho que ele não tenha culpa nenhuma de se chamar assim) era real, está entendendo? As marcas que deixava eram reais. Já as deles não eram reais. Pobres camundonguinhos hipnotizados por Ulises e levados ao matadouro por Arturo. Vou tentar ser concisa: o maior problema era que quase todos tinham mais de vinte anos e se comportavam como se não houvessem feito quinze. Percebe?

Roberto Bolaño, Os detetives selvagens.

If you cannot accept that all compounded or fabricated things are impermanent, if you believe that there is some essential substance or concept that is permanent, then you are not a Buddhist. If you cannot accept that all emotions are pain, if you believe that actually some emotions are purely pleasurable, then you are not a Buddhist. If you cannot accept that all phenomena are illusory and empty, if you believe that certain things do exist inherently, then you are not a Buddhist. And if you think that enlightenment exists within the spheres of time, space, and power, then you are not a Buddhist.

Upon first hearing the story of the dawn of Siddhartha’s realization, we might think that he was remarkablyunsophisticated. It seems strange to hear of a prince, raised to lead an entire kingdom, asking such simplisticquestions. But we are the ones who are naive. In this information age we are surrounded by images of decay and death—beheadings, bullfights, bloody murder. Far from reminding us of our own fate, these images are used for entertainment and profit. Death has become a consumer product. Most of us do not contemplate the nature of death on a deep level. We don’t acknowledge that our bodies and environment are made up of unstable elements

that can fall apart with even the slightest provocation. Of course we know that one day we will die. But most ofus, unless we have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, think that we are in the clear for the time being. Onthe rare occasion that we think about death, we wonder, How much will I inherit? or Where will they scatter myashes? In that sense we are unsophisticated.

Thus Siddhartha discovered that impermanence does not mean death, as we usually think, it means change.

The mind’s craving for confirmation is rooted in our fear of impermanence.

Fearlessness is generated when you can appreciate uncertainty, when you have faith in the impossibility of theseinterconnected components remaining static and permanent. You will find yourself, in a very true sense,preparing for the worst while allowing for the best. You become dignified and majestic. These qualities enhanceyour ability to work, wage war, make peace, create a family, and enjoy love and personal relationships. Byknowing that something is lying in wait for you just around the bend, by accepting that countless potentialitiesexist from this moment forward, you acquire the skill of pervasive awareness and foresight like that of a giftedgeneral, not paranoid but prepared.

One way or another, directly or indirectly, all emotions are born from selfishness in the sense that they involveclinging to the self. Moreover, he discovered that, as real as they may seem, emotions are not an inherent part ofone’s being. They are not inborn, nor are they some sort of curse or implant that someone or some god has thrustupon us.

All of these various emotions and their consequences come from misunderstanding, and this misunderstandingcomes from one source, which is the root of all ignorance—clinging to the self.

He understood that everything we see, hear, feel, imagine, and know to exist is simply emptiness onto which wehave imputed or labeled a certain “trueness.”

When presented with the concept of a man fitting inside of a yak’s horn without a change in size, we have a fewchoices: We can be “rational” and refute the story by saying that it is simply not possible. Or we can apply somekind of mystic belief in sorcery or blind devotion and say, Oh yes, Milarepa was such a great yogi, of course hecould do this and even more. Either way our view is distorted, because denying is a form of underestimating,and blind faith is a form of overestimating.

Having the courageous spirit to wake up and examine is what Buddhists call “renunciation.” Contrary to popularbelief, Buddhist renunciation is not self-flagellation or austerity. Siddhartha was willing and able to see that allof our existence is merely labels placed on phenomena that do not truly exist, and through that he experiencedawakening.

Although Siddhartha realized emptiness, emptiness was not manufactured by Siddhartha or anyone else.Emptiness is not the result of his revelation, nor was it developed as a theory to help people be happy. Whetheror not Siddhartha taught it, emptiness has always been emptiness, although paradoxically we can’t even reallysay that emptiness has always been, because it is beyond time and has no form. Nor should emptiness beinterpreted as negation of existence—that is, we can’t say that this relative world doesn’t exist either—becausein order to negate something, you have to acknowledge that there is something to negate in the first place.Emptiness doesn’t cancel out our daily experience.

Viewing our experience in this world as a dream, Siddhartha found that our habit of fixating on the mere appearance of our dreamlike relative world, thinking that it is truly existing, throws us into an endless cycle of

pain and anxiety.

What we really need is to wake up from our habitual patterns, imagination, and greed. Mind training andmeditation are the swiftest, safest, and most effective ways to work within the mindstream. As Siddhartha said,“You are your own master.”

“It is not the appearance that binds you, it’s the attachment to the appearance that binds you.”

“Those who see Buddha as a form and those who hear Buddha as a sound have the wrong view.”

Even though happiness is considered a mere concept, Buddhist texts still use terms like great bliss to describeenlightenment. Nirvana can indeed be understood as a joyful state, because having no confusion and noignorance, no happiness and no unhappiness, is bliss. Seeing the source of confusion and ignorance, the snakefor example, as never having existed, is even better. You feel great relief when you awaken from a nightmare,but bliss would be to never have dreamed in the first place. In this sense, bliss is not the same as happiness.Siddhartha emphasized to his followers the futility of seeking peace and happiness, in this world or in theafterlife, if they were serious about freeing themselves from samsara.

the four noble truths: know the suffering; abandon the causes of suffering; apply the path to the cessation ofsuffering; know that suffering can end.

His realization that all compounded things are impermanent was his ultimate triumph. Instead of flauntingvictory over some externally existing enemy, he found that the real enemy is our clinging to the self; anddefeating that self-clinging is a miracle far greater than all supernatural miracles, real or imagined.

the Lord Buddha has not stated that after abandoning samsara there exists nirvana. 

The nonexistence of samsara is nirvana.

What Makes You Not a Buddhist - Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

“Three nights later, I went to his room again, this time with him. But our companionship was not very strong now. It did not go much beyond the appearance of companionship. There was this appearance, and there was also a certain familiarity, though even the most complete familiarity would not have removed all the awkwardness between us. On the way there, we stopped to buy a pack of playing cards, a few bottles of beer, and a bag of corn chips. I can see now, and I sensed then, though I tried to ignore it, that I was bored, and that without the cards, the beer, and the chips I would not have known what to do with him, that these things were a distraction from the emptiness that would have been there in the room between us, they were a distraction I had to have in order to want to stay there with him at all and not prefer to be at home alone eating and reading and more fully engrossed in that than I could be in him.

I was probably there in the room with him then only because there had been something different earlier. If he was still there, with me, the same person, and I was still there, and there had once been something between us, certainly something ecstatic from time to time, it was hard to believe that that ecstasy was not still within our reach. But what we made together, now, was the form of a thing not alive anymore – a thing left behind that showed what the living thing had been like.

Now the very thought of those things we bought and took to his apartment fills me with a queasiness that tastes of tepid beer and stale chips and slides around like a playing card with warm grease on it. How miserable that attempt was. What weakness of character it showed, that I could not simply admit there was nothing I very much wanted to do with him, nothing left to do, that the only thing left was to say goodbye with all the friendliness I really felt for him. But instead I went to a store with him, one of those large, brightly lit stores, so vast they are disheartening, and bought with him things other people bought to have a good time together, as though by doing that we would have a good time, whereas I had no illusion that I would enjoy myself, or maybe I did think I could achieve something that would feel, at least for a little while, like a good time simply by going through the motions of it, that if I just carried on like that, my mood would suddenly change, and what had not been enjoyable would become enjoyable.

Now I would like to be in that room again, on that night. I am curious to see what he would say and what I would answer, because I have forgotten so much of the way he talked and the things he might think of saying to me. Now I would bring so much interest to the meeting with him that it would be full of a kind of life it did not have then.”
…

“The next day was his birthday. We went to a movie. After the movie, we went home to my house, ate thick sweet cake and ice cream, and sat on the foot of my bed while across the room, so large and empty that the bed at one end, and the piano, the card table, and the ugly metal chairs at the other seemed small on the expanse of dark tile floor, Madeleine, sitting on one of the hard chairs, read aloud to us in the light from one of the bare bulbs attached to the white plaster wall long, complex horoscopes from a magazine. Again I was uneasy, and sensed that without the food and Madeleine’s company, there would have been emptiness between him and me, and boredom, that the presence of Madeleine, in fact, who was so separate from us, drew us together a little, at the same time that what she was reading was so entertaining, and beyond that, her own reactions to it were so sharp. I ate too much, and I laughed too much. But the food held most of my interest and attention as long as it lasted and I was restless as soon as it was gone.

What did boredom mean then? That nothing more would happen with him. It wasn’t that he was boring, it was that I no longer had any expectations for this companionship with him. There had been expectations, and they had died.

 And why did that boredom make me so uncomfortable? Because of the emptiness of it, the empty spaces opening up between him and me, around us. I was imprisoned with this person and this feeling. Emptiness, but also disappointment: what had once been so complete was now so incomplete."― The End of the Story, Lydia Davis.

“You should remind yourself that what you love is mortal, that what you love is not your own; it has been granted to you just for the present, not irrevocably, and not for ever, but like a fig or bunch of grapes, for a particular season of the year; so that if you long for it in the winter, you’re a fool.” 

(Epictetus, Discourses III.24.86)

A crise se aprofunda. Faz um mês que não trabalho e custo a achar o ritmo. Nesta época eu me deixo estar, durmo, tento escapar.

Viajo para La Plata. Viajo pela cidade, mania ambulatória. Viajo para Androgué. Melhor dizer assim: compreendeu que algumas opções que havia encarado cegamente aos dezesseis anos eram a única luz em meio à escuridão que ele mesmo havia escolhido como uma maneira de ser fiel ao que imaginava que queria ser. Pode-se duvidar de tudo, pensou, mas não se pode duvidar do que se escolheu sem motivo, sem sentido, mas com a certeza e a convicção de que tudo o que viria seria para ele um modo de se aproximar do lugar que a luz pessoal lhe mostrara. 

Piglia, Ricardo. Anos de formação: Os diários de Emilio Renzi: Ricardo Piglia