Passing For Human

It's a long story. Walk with me a while, so I can tell it.

There are days when everything’s so cold and dark, filled with foreboding and fear.

And then there are days when everything is going right, and the world is glowing, laden with possibilities.

This is what it is like to be human, in the only place in the universe known to have humans.

The other day, I received a set of mala beads. 108 tiny spheres of shiny obsidian, strung together with special obsidian beads bearing Sanskrit symbols at intervals of 27, representing breaks in the chanting.

Meditation is one of the highest of all human activities, right up alongside sex and doing science. Mala meditation is a powerful practice to connect you to your body, your body to your surroundings, and your surroundings with the environment. Through mala meditation, you learn how to remind yourself that you are human.

And once you learn how human you are, you are reminded further that everybody else around you is also supposed to be a human. Though, sadly, you also observe that so many of them are swept away by ego, and by the allure of the trappings of status as measured by the things you associate with your life, such as fancy cars, fancy houses, trophy wives, and so on.

To bring it back to me …

I use mala meditation to connect with this world, and to keep me centered and focused on what I consider to be important - just getting through the present, leaving worries behind in the past, and not letting thoughts of the future concern me because one day, I most certainly won’t have to worry about that.

It’s not prayer. There are no gods, and even if there were, I’m not beholden to any of them. Meditation, for me, is part of the routine system of exercises I go through to ready myself for my day to day activities, going among the people, passing for human.

Whether my days are of the gloomy type, or the glowing type, the meditation is there to get me through that day and come home again, more or less intact.

And that’s enough.