” Inventing a car that runs on writers’ insecurity, the most natural and abundant energy source on earth ” said Talia Lavin on Twitter. All artists when they are not chopping off their ears are suffering, we drink, we are insecure, we worry, it’s what makes us sensitive artists “special”. Except everyone else in the world is doing the same thing too. Maybe we’re not so special.
That Buddha guy had a solution for normal people called the 8-fold Path to the end of suffering. Not pain mind you, even Buddha couldn’t stop all the pain in the world, that’s part of life. He saw the emotional and physical pain of life as just something that happens. We get old sick and die, suck it up people it happens to everyone not just artistes. But what Buddha figured out how to end was the Dukkha, the suffering or stress that comes with the pain.
That stress is when you stub your toe before breakfast and until dinner time you are complaining about that damn box in the kitchen. But as a sensitive cartoonist so I don’t cut my ears off I’ve been trying to follow this in life and now am going to rewrite it for artists ’cause we are so special.
The basic path
- Right understanding (Samma ditthi)
- Right thought (Samma sankappa)
- Right speech (Samma vaca)
- Right action (Samma kammanta)
- Right livelihood (Samma ajiva)
- Right effort (Samma vayama)
- Right mindfulness (Samma sati)
- Right concentration (Samma samadhi)