Samsara and Walmart
by Andre on Oct.15, 2009, under holodoxy
People of Walmart
A friend of mine recently told me about the People of Walmart website, featuring pictures of Walmart shoppers in various states of dress as they go about their business, and occasionally, their vehicles. Some of them are silly, some are disturbing, but most of them are simply a slice of someone’s life, replete with all the assumptions you can make about that life based on a photograph.
But there’s something terribly, tragically human about these photos, and it occurs to me that Dukkha is never more apparent than in a Walmart. Dukkha is a Buddhist word from the Pali language that usually translates to “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It refers to the desperation of the human condition as we pass from life to life through the cycle of Samsara.
Dukkha is the sense that no matter what you do, your life is never complete; that we are never quite whole. Dukkha is in all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we overcompensate for our insecurities, and for the endless longing we wish we didn’t feel. Dukkha, the Buddha says, arises because of craving attachment—wanting, or desiring life to fit our ideals when it cannot realistically do so. Dukkha is the siren song that calls to us, compelling us to fill that hole in our souls with money, objects, sex, drugs, and so on, as we attempt, quite unsuccessfully, to address existential concerns with material things.
So there are those people in the Walmart, lost in a desperate struggle to get by, to belong, to figure out who they are… spiritual refugees of a globalized, consumerist world. They are a mirror for us all.
I’ll leave you with a song: Blood, Milk, and Sky by White Zombie.
The siren sings a lonely song / of all the wants and hungers
The lust of love a brute desire / the ledge of life goes under
Divide the dream into the flesh / Kaleidoscope and candle eyes
Empty winds scrape on the soul / but never stop to realize
Animal whisperings / intoxicate the night
Hypnotize the desperate / slow motion light
Wash away into the rain / Blood, milk, and sky
Hollow moons illuminate / and beauty never dies
Running wild running blind / I breathe the body deep
1,000 years beside my self / I do not sleep
Seduce the world it never screams / dead water lies
Ride the only one who knows / beauty never dies
Songwriters: John Tempesta, Rob Zombie, Jay Noel Yuenger, Shauna Yseult Reynolds
October 15th, 2009 on 10:07
Constant craving wastes the energy needed to understand Life. On the other hand, it’s also part of learning about Life. Ergo, constant craving does have its uses, for a time.
October 15th, 2009 on 14:49
Yeah, it’s a funny thing. Part of growing up means going through those earlier stages where you don’t know any better. And even when you do know better, it’s still a very hard habit to break, making life an often embarrassing affair.
October 17th, 2009 on 10:05
Yep, I stumbled across that Walmart sight too.