The Dharma Force

The Moment Between Contraction and Expansion

This entry is dedicated to our friend runningwolf04.
Happy Birthday to Miss SensualRoses!
It is for your happiness, my dear friend, that I took a moment from my daily enjoyment of my daily life to shine a light to your gloomy stormy state of mind. (OK, granted, the light is the size of a firefly's butt, but ... hey, what the hell? I am not allowed matches ever since I tried to put out a kitchen fire with a fire extinguisher. I thought it was like a little grenade. You threw it, it would explode and put out the fire. Perfectly sensible, right? I mean, it is not like I would need to read an instruction to operate it, right? )

Have you ever had a day of pure happiness?
A pure happiness is by definition, happy. But not just any happy day, but a perfect, meaningful, and no regret happy day! That from morning to night, just happy, happy, happy!
A vacation, maybe?
No, a vacation cannot be that perfect. From long hours of flight to long hours of car driving, to long hours of waiting in line. Especially if you are living in Vegas or Reno, that was itself a tourist destination. When you looked at them, standing in 100+ degrees of heat, just for a few minutes of a fake ship battle that happens every hour or so. Or you can watch a dirty looking white tiger that was showing you its butt, did that make your day a happy day?
Don't get me started with Disney Land!
For my wife, (not even my kid, mind you?) I have to kiss up to Piglet. "My wife is your biggest fan," I told the fluffy pink pig, "Can we have a picture with you?" Of course, it nodded its head, and we got the picture.
Now, here is a moment. I, Josh Cham, a grown man, 6+ feet tall, with glasses, tried my best to put up a smile to talk to a little guy/gal in a pink puppet suit, trying to get a picture. What is the meaning of this? Is that a true happiness?

What about movies? What do I care if Jason is slashing Freddy or the other way around? Neither of them will die!
What do I care if Yao Ming only had 9 points last night for the Houston Rockets? He did not even know me.
All of these are just distractions, basically. Distractions from daily life.
Where is that pure happiness then?

How about other stuff? Supposedly good stuff?
You have a job so that you will get money. You will have an education so that you can find a job so that you will get money.
What if you already got money? What if you won a lottery or something?
There was a documentary that was talking about how the lives of lottery winners had changed. Not too pretty, I might add.
So, it solves, once for all, money can buy stuff, can buy crap, but it really really cannot buy you a happy day.

What about family? What about children?
Why do we have kids?
Why do they resemble porcelain dolls at one moment, and scream machines the next?
If life has a lesson, a purpose, what is the purpose of raising a young?
You try your best to shield them from harm. But that is a losing battle, and sometimes, a wrong battle even.
Instead of flourishing, they will turn into spoiled brats that will be good for nothing leeches on society.

To have children is to suffer for all your life. From babies to toddlers, you worry about whether they were hungry, cold, sick, sleep alright, lonely or not, and even if their BM are right on schedule. Then when they go to school, then in addition of all that, you start to worry how are they interacting with other kids, whether the teachers will like them, how are their grades, and on top of that, if there are drugs or violence in their school. Then they start to be in heat. Oops, excuse me, then they start to be teenagers. You, as parents, generally, cannot even help on that. All of your experiences, all of your heartaches and pains cannot even transfer to them. You will have to watch in pain, all the mistakes they will make that you had already done. If they are lucky, they can find good mates, and if they are smart and lucky, they get to keep them. Then ... with the heaviest sign I can make, the cycle starts again. Kids for them and grand kids for us.

OK, Miss Sensual Roses, please reflect on this. From my gloomy assessment here, the peace and quiet of a cemetery is not that bad at this moment. All you have to do was to just lie there. If you are bored, you can push up some daisies. (OK, that is from a unreliable source. We had no confirmation on that.)

But, what about my first question? Have you ever had a day of pure happiness?
What about an afternoon? An evening? An hour? A minute? A second? A moment?

A moment of happiness? Pure and simple, and meaningful. It is not one of those comedy moments that you laugh, but afterwards, you thought, "Hey, that is not really that funny. What the hell did I laugh for? Boy, I really regret that laugh!"

No, not that! Not a distraction! Not any kind of false happiness! Not something that you will regret later. Not something that you will feel sorrow later. Not one of them, "As long as I have this memory to sustain me, I will be happy." That is one of the biggest load of ... that ever invented by a writer.

NO! None of that! A happy moment! A truly peaceful happy moment, that you can experience on reflection with a smile, and it was just sunny, sweat, and everlasting!

Have you ever had that?

Hey! I can tell you, I am having one of these moments right now. It is now 9:16PM 25 seconds and tick!
Tock has not come yet. I am enjoying that moment between tick and tock.
All is quiet in the house. My daughter is asleep in her room, finally, after whining about cannot sleep for 45 minutes. My wife and my son are asleep in the their room, finally, after the little guy invented every trick he could think of, not to sleep.

Alone at last, in this moment, between tick and tock. I have slowed down the time just so that I can write this one out. 9:16PM 26 second will not come for a while yet. And I am inviting you, my friend to enjoy this moment with me.

You don't need to do a thing! Just relax your mind, and let the sound of my dull typing, tapping fingers take you to this moment.

The pure happiness is there all along! Without a penny to purchase, without any pretension and without any distraction.
It is there, between every tick and tock, even with every tick, and every tock, but the sounds are too thundering, so I am only showing you the gap in between!

Go, find it, my friend! Just like the good master Yodda once said, "The force is with us, surround us, bind us ..." or some crap like that. Anyway, substitute the word "force" with the word "happiness" and you are a Jedi master as well.

Or, like the black robed Neil said in "Matrix", --- "Wooh!" ...
Ok, he is not that big on speech.
But he found his happiness when he was about to die, and his world changed from physical to a digital matrix, right before his eyes. And that also happened between tick and tock, mind you!

With me, it is at this moment, right now. 9:16:26 is still waiting. A sinkful of dirty dishes and bottle still waiting. A hot shower still waiting. Some TV, some chip and salsa still waiting. It is at this moment, the moment between contraction and expansion, pure happiness can be found.

It is there, every moment of every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every year of every life!
Go find it.

It is even in your sickness. In your 102 fever, the little dizziness, the last cough.
Slow it down! Slow it down to the point that only your heartbeat is heard, and even that is slowing down, down, down until you can not even hear that. It is slowed down to the single never cell that is discharging...

Enjoy that moment!

Hey, if I can enjoy my moment while I am sitting on my ... throne in the bathroom here, thinking, "Man, I need to eat more bran!" ....

You can enjoy every moment for what it is!

Nothing is normal! Nobody is healthy! Everyone is unique, and everyone is given the best life he/she can handle. YOU just have to know how to enjoy it! Sometimes you will have to look small to understand big.

OK! Now! Off you go! it is officially 9:16:26. Excuse me while I go and check to see if it is a sinker or a floater.


P.S. Terribly sorry about all the crudeness in my nature. But one of my favorite author said his best ideas comes when he was in bed, on horse back (he lived somewhat hundreds years ago, so... still I think he was bragging. With his financial status at the time, the best he could afford was a 3 feet tall jackass.) and on toilet. And you have to understand, at that time, toilet was just a hole in the ground. So I think he probably need some fiber in his diet as well.
But still, the tone of this entry is exceedingly bad taste even for my standard. So ... I sincerely beg your pardon on this. I think the smell is getting to me!
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The above entry is brought to you by:
Rasin Bran! The every day, right on schedule kind of breakfast.
And by:
The colorful toilet you saw at the start of the blog.
May your every flush is a AquaFlush.
And by the letter "P".
And by Viewers like You!
Thank you!
And Keep Regular!