It seems like an odd thing, the fact that we have these bodies and minds and with them we are capable of the most fantastic things. Olympic athletes push their bodies to the absolute limits, training them for hours upon hours every day. The feats they are capable of astound us. Creative inventors push the limits of their minds and their imagination every day, whether it be by designing new technologies or expressive poetry. So much potential, yet much of it goes unharnessed, especially for those of us who do not specialize in a field of training like diving, figure skating, or writing. It is likewise amazing just how much we don't know about the most immediate thing in our own respective universes, ourselves.

The complexity of our being is astounding! We have yet to come close to understanding exactly how everything in this fascinating machine we call the body works, and our brains are even more a mystery. This is not even touching upon the spirit, of which we know the least. Some people don't even believe in anything ethereal, i.e. the 'spirit,' at all!

I bring this lack of knowledge up to illuminate the point that there are things that happen inside of us, and we have not the least idea what they are, what they mean, how they happen, or even why they occur. We are the greatest mystery we have ever found. I will be the first to admit that I don't understand myself. Well, not completely; certainly not enough to be any authority on the subject. Which is sort of sad, for if anyone would be an authority on me, I should want to be the first.

In a roundabout fashion this brings me to my point. For a long time I have been experiencing what I would only describe as an emptiness of the mind-off and on, that is. That is not to say it's 'stupidity', or imply that I have no mind, or that it malfunctions. Rather, this emptiness is more characteristic of an eastern usage of the term, where 'emptiness' is the potential from which other things come, almost a powered-up-and-ready stage. It is the pregnant space from which anything can manifest.

That is one way of thinking about it, which maybe just an ideal way of looking at the situation. It is a situation, though, which sometimes distresses me. Back in high school, when life was fast and complicated with a plenitude of thoughts going through one's head, one knew not what to think. I thought worlds in those days, and though most of those worlds were backwards and round-about and confused, they were there almost constantly. What is distressing is that I no longer think those worlds-on-end. Whether it should be a cause of worry or not is my question.

For the most part, I don't think so. One reason for that belief is that this 'quieting' of the mind seems to be almost Buddhist, for lack of a better term. It reminds me of Moksha, a word that means liberation, specifically liberation from the suffering of Samsara. Samsara is the cyclical world in which we live, which has its 'ups' and 'downs,' its joys and pains, its hard climbs and easy rides. For the Buddhist, Samsaric life is always moving upon this Ferris wheel of successes and defeats. While sometimes it can be extraordinarily enjoyable, other times it is extremely painful. Moksha is what happens when you get off the wheel, and you leave the carnival. No longer are you bound to go up and come down. That's the best way to explain my understanding of it right now.

Think about this, for it has some interesting ramifications. It is great that upon attaining this 'liberation,' if possible, one won't be subject to all the painful, negative, 'going down' experiences. However, there is a cost. All those joyous, happy times, the ones where you just shout and jump and dance and smile for no reason... are also gone. Can't get rid of one without sending the other down the disposal, too. It's the nature of our Ferris wheel existence: go down, come up; go up, come down.