My son went on another extended trip this time to a debate camp 2000 miles away from home and I am theoretically on vacation. Vacation from what? Before he left we had a spat because he always waits till the last minute to pack. I was particularly mad because I have ten thousand things to do and his flight was at 6 o'clock in the morning the following day. When I came home from the airport and took a look at the house I almost cried because there was no space in the house that was not cluttered with paper. And then it hit me. All the clutter was mine! The chairs and the tables were all filled with paper. Everywhere there was paper. His room was, though not meticulously clean, uncluttered, just like his mind. I could not even blame the dogs for the clutter. True, there was hair everywhere from our maturing black labrador, but all of the paperwork was mine!

It finally dawned on me. It seems that I am always waiting for something which I can never really define. I am always so caught up in the mini-dramas of everyday life that I had failed to notice many things around me.

Today I ran out of excuses. My dogs were not cluttering the house. My son's clutter is confined to the burlap carpet in his room and if one opens his drawers they are meticulously in order, with the exception of his clothes drawers.

There are some people that do not have to go through the same arduous paths towards realization. They are spontaneously enlightened and do not have to be affected by the projected matrix of suffering that the Buddha spoke of . They come to this world and see it just as it is, nothing more than a playground. So they play and act their respective roles and go on, but unaffected and as mentioned by Thomas Cleary in Minding Mind, those are the people that have already gone through the evolutionary process many lifetimes over and only come back to help others in the path. So they live and they play never forgetting that their role is to help others get out of the bondage of suffering.

They do not have to go through hours of sitting in meditation anymore. They are compassionate and detached, kind and naturally forgiving, and although clothed in the personality of this shared reality's birth, they never once forget who they are. Boddhisattvas. They always know that enlightenment is exactly where one is, and all one has to do is see. No more seeking, just seeing and being.

© 2007 by Melinda M. Sorensson