The Buenos Aires Blues

When I was a kid, I had a Shelley Berman LP (okay, little one, that's a big, black wax disc on which sounds used to be stored.) I used to listen to it over and over and crack up laughing every time. I knew it off by heart and chunks of it still surface in my thoughts, any time I board a plane (“...in case the plane comes to a sudden stop – like against a mountain” or have a hangover, “... my tongue is asleep and my teeth itch.”) Laughing was my preferred pleasure and up until very recently, I used to hope that when I died, it would be from laughter. But I've changed my mind. Diana, my new landlady, told me about a time at an open air Sunday milonga, the Fería de Mataderos, when she witnessed a elderly lady, leathery, yet luminous in her partner's arms, totter on her Comme Il Faut and slide to the ground with a blissful smile on her face as her soul floated up on a favourite air. As soon as the ambulance came and carted her away, they put the music back on and carried on dancing. Yep, I thought, sounds good to me. Please dance to Milonga Sentimental as the ambulance pulls away and write “Seguimos bailando,” my favourite phrase, on my epitaph.

I am at “I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth,” though not at "To be or not to be." The last couple of milongas have been a little bit dead for me. I don't know why. Perhaps sitting at a table with a group of friends is not the best thing to do. I get a lot more dances when I go out on my own. This is the ego being polite to itself. Maybe I've been having bad hair days or my shoes have had too much exposure. This is the ego being in denial. Maybe I'm just not pretty enough or young enough or good enough. Aha! That is the bottom line. Whatever the reason, today, feelings of frustration and abandonment have been surfacing, the Buenos Aires blues. So I have been chanting and pondering and here I am now, with a cup of tea. It's Sunday and like it or not, you're getting a sermon.

I could try to figure out why I feel the way I do, or I could just pick a different feeling, (like choosing chocolate or vanilla), but understanding something or choosing to feel different do not necessarily enable you be the way you want to be. Let's face it, we all understand what we need to do to lose weight or give up smoking and we might choose to do these things, yet we often fail to get there. Me, I find it more dynamic to chant, “to turn poison into medicine.”

In the Buddhism of Shakyamuni Buddha, “Desire is the cause of all suffering.” In other words, if you embrace life as it is and as it isn't, instead of wanting things to be some other way, you will not suffer. Naturally, this does not mean you should not be committed to progress, but that you should not be attached to any particular outcome. This is all very rational, but such restraint is no longer in fashion. It hardly sits right with modern living, which is founded on great expectations and instant gratification. If things don't work out the way you want, you sue. Now that's a popular religion. Or chuck it away and get another one. Also very popular. This is the kind of competition we're dealing with.

The Buddhism of the Soka Gakkai, on the other hand, is designed for modern life, or “the Latter Day of the Law” as it is called in the writings of Nichiren Daishonin. It takes a different stand: “Desire is enlightenment.” Ah, that's more like it! I hear you think, but how? I find a breakdown helps to get there:

There is no enlightenment in caves, not even in the Himalayas: enlightenment exists only in thought, word and deed, within the context of our relationship with our environment.

Enlightenment has to be desired before it can come into existence.

Desire is part of the human condition.

If you are a human being and you have no desires, you are not Buddha, you are dead.

Because you have desires, you earnestly seek the way to realise your wishes, hopes and dreams. (You get up for yoga, dance more tango, eat fewer empanadas, seek guidance, have therapy, pray, meditate or chant, for instance.)

It is this desire-driven seeking spirit that leads you to enlightenment.

Enlightenment is therefore latent within desire.

If it is latent, it already exists.

Therefore, desire is enlightenment.

Enlightenment in this Buddhism is referred to as Buddha nature, which manifests as the combined qualities of Courage, Wisdom and Compassion. These are the universal qualities we summon forth when we chant before the gohonzon. Mindful of these, there is no room for suffering. It can inform your way of being in any context, even your tango and its spin-offs: the milonga, the cabeceo, the embrace, your touch, the way you feel and make your partner feel, move and use the space, smile, talk, walk, look, dress... Oh, I feel good already.