Consider two people, one screaming his or her head off out of excitement over a football game on TV and another sitting in a meditation hall with a sore back.

Some will say that the smart one is the one enjoying the game and some will say that the smart one is the one engaged in cultivation.

Avoiding life is the easiest thing to do. All we have to do is run after the things we want and avoid the things we don’t want. Our so-called life becomes the sustained pursuit of pleasure, interrupted by periods of non-pleasure that we don’t like.

The cultivator facing the wall is confronting his or her own desire to avoid life. The mind wants to leave the zendo (meditation hall) and go catch a ball game in high def. The mind wants to watch a movie and eat popcorn. It wants to go outside to toss a Frisbee.

The cultivator practices discipline until such desires go away. Then the door to emptiness opens and the world of delusion is gone like darkness exposed to the sun.

The person watching the ball game is not confronting anything – he or she is enjoying the decision to pursue the pleasant, hoping that nothing unpleasant lies ahead. In the absence of any effort to awaken, it never happens. Ignorance grows. Such a lifestyle is easy. And many people actually take pride in their pleasure-driven, non-introspective life. As Jim Hightower says, even a dead fish can go with the flow.

The cultivator wants nothing more than to sit, to practice, for the sole purpose of waking up for the benefit of all sentient beings. The side effects of increasing wholesomeness, mindfulness, happiness, loving kindness, compassion, and finding satisfaction in the success or accomplishments of others may appear, but the cultivator practices to wake up, not to get those benefits.

The non-cultivator wants to be a good person but wants to avoid anything that seems like an unpleasant activity, like sitting in a zendo. Avoidance of the unpleasant is avoidance of life. Ironically, the desire to avoid the unpleasant creates the unpleasant and the desire to confront the unpleasant dissipates it.

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