Fame hasn't provided many entertainers with contentment, neither has
their kids, their lifestyles, or their friends . . . even non-stop
partying and money can't erase the reality that they face when alone,
which is the reality that they are aging, that everything is changing
and shifting about under their feet, and that nothing really lasts,
even fame. It can be frightening.
Yet we look at an entertainer's
life and say, "Yes, that's what I want to be;" I want to be rescued
from this hum-drum existence that I'm trapped in. But what happens when
we become a hit and that hum-drum existence hasn't gone away,
regardless of how famous we become or how desperately we try to escape
from our loneliness, even while surrounded by millions of fans? Then
what? That's when all the partying in the world won't help,
neither will drugs or alcohol; nothing helps. The only thing that might
help is when the bottom drops out. Then we are faced with our naked
selves, not the nakedness of pop art, but the nakedness of reality, a
reality that we run from our entire lives as we wrap ourselves in fairy
tales . . . so that we can go to sleep. Religion might step in
and say, "Give yourself up to . . . (whomever), or a counselor might
recommend a therapy of some kind, to step outside oneself for a moment,
but these escapes won't fool an intelligent entertainer for long; the
promise of fame has fooled her, and "fool me once, shame on you, fool
me twice, shame on me," applies. The questions that eat at her heart
remain, because temporary answers are no better than the fame, kids,
friends, fan clubs, parties, booze, drugs, and all the rest of it which
promised unending bliss. Promises that she now understands were false. Where
can she turn, where can she escape to? Every night she comes
face-to-face with herself, and if that becomes too painful, then she
must drug herself into oblivion . . .and the doors to her escapes
subtly begin to close. Now shift to Thailand, deep in the forest
where a Buddhist nun is washing her bowl after her one meal of the day.
It's morning, and the villagers are beginning to walk to the rice
fields with their water buffalo, to toil all day in the Southeast Asian
sun. The nun doesn't have TV to watch, or newspapers to read, she only
has the forest and her meditation, and she is happy. How can this be?
How can someone be happy with nothing? The nun sleeps easily, is
calm, peaceful and contented. She finds solace in the simplest of
things, such as a new leaf, a child's smiling face. She has no fan
clubs, few even know she's alive, and yet she is happy. She has worked
through all of the illusions of her youth, through the falseness that
convinced her to search in all the wrong places, and she finally found
a grain of truth in her solitude, and especially in her meditation that
cut through her confusion so quickly. How can it be that one with
riches and fame might be close to suicide, yet one that has nothing is
happy? How is it that the world promises so much, but in the end, we
find the world to be so contemptuous? . . . and David said, "Be
thou not afraid when a man shall be made rich, for when he dieth, he
shall carry nothing away, neither riches, nor joy, nor glory." E.
Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher
at the Southwest Florida Insight Center,
www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-eight years of
meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including
two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast
forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to
Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major
bookstores and online retailers. Visit www.AYearToEnlightenment.com
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