That's what I was counting on.
It was only when being without the many comforts of modern life and convenience that I stopped hating them and craved them. It was using a hand saw that made me want a chainsaw, a hand plow that made me appreciate diesel power, growing a crop that made me value grocery stores. The hardness of Antaiji is the pureness, and it made me accept my delicate ways as a prince of convenience.
Amidst all of the temptations, I lie emotionless staring at the ceiling, windows covered. The black mirror of the television bears down on my privacy and solitude. There is a slow tension, like an anemia of spirit, strangled out with no goals or will.
Having goals but not having achieved them is easy. It is a strategic problem. Having no goals and the inability to make goals is the hard part. The only answer to the shock of turning oneself inside out is absurdity. Sitting facing a wall is the most relevant thing in the world. That is the way out. All of the logical ends of my experience, that all goals are empty, that everything is just a continuation of everything else and not self-evidently valuable, they all point to right here in the present moment. Without this immediate experience, it really is all pointless.
But the goal isn't pleasure in the present, it is just being here no matter what. Pleasure or pain, it is the only place on Earth that accepts me and that I belong to. It erases all wrongdoing, all remorse and doubt, in an instant. And instantly it returns, because it is a pattern. ---
The days outside are cold. There is sun. It shines quietly through the glass of my cell. In this beautiful prison, still I dwell.
