So get this. In the second ring of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the people are consigned to spend all of eternity split into two sides, trying to roll huge boulders at each other. While doing so, each team shouts ragefully. (If I remember right, one team is made up of people who, when alive, were hoarders; the other side had been spendthrifts.)

You’d think the two sides would come up with more effective ways to attack each other. Especially given the ungodly amount of time they have on their hands for brainstorming. But, nope. Rolling huge boulders it is. 

Okay. So first of all, just…weird, right? I mean, two teams pushing boulders at each other. As far as eternal punishments go, that’s some objectively random shit right there. Whatever else he was, Dante was plainly one trippy dude. Either that or Satan is, if Dante was just doing straight reportage. 

Second of all, though: I’m astonished by how many people in my country, meaning the good old US of A, are split into two sides, shouting ragefully at each other, doing more or less the exact same thing as the damned souls in Dante are doing. Except – and this is key – no one is making them do it. No one has consigned them to it. 

Millions of Americans are literally choosing what amounts to Dante’s second ring of hell. They consign themselves to it. (I even saw some footage of a recent protest, Lefties vs Righties, where the two sides of the crowd were struggling to shove a huge dumpster at each other, pushing it back and forth, shouting ragefully…almost an exact re-enactment!)

On the other hand, these people are just doing an exaggerated form of what, according to Adi Da, all of us un-Awakened people do. He says that to presume to be a separate, subjective someone – a “me” – is to be inherently in conflict with all so-called “others.” It’s just that some of those others, at least for a time, please and flatter us enough that we’re nice to them.

Similarly, in the Upanishads it says, “Wherever there is an other, fear arises.” And once we’ve pulled off this idiotic ontological stunt – presuming to be a separate “self” trapped in a madhouse cosmos of separate “others” – the rolling of the huge boulders and rageful shouting is never far behind. All of which reminds me of this passage of Adi Da’s (try to get around the unusual usage of upper-case letters…long story…suffice to say Adi Da uses capital letters in this odd way in a few of his Source Texts).

“Every ego-“I” (or ego-Possessed body-mind) Is Involved In A Passionate and mortal Struggle With The Force and The Forces and The Parts and The Patterns Of conditional Nature.

Every ego-“I” Is Active As The Opponent Of All Opponents, but There Is No Final Victory—and Every Opposition Is An Irrational (or Fruitless) Search For Equanimity, Peace, and Love-Bliss.

Every ego-“I” Always Tends To Desire and Seek An ego-Made Refuge From Irrational Opponents. That Strategy Of self-Preservation Is Entertained In temporary pleasures and solitary places, but It Is Not Finally Attained. Only the ego-“I” (the Separate and Separative body-mind) Is Opposed and Opposing—and Every Opposition Is An Irrational (or Fruitless) Search For Freedom.

The ego-“I” Is Inherently, Always, and Irrationally (or Meaninglessly) Opposed. The “other” Is Always An Opponent (In Effect, If Not By Intention). The ego-“I” Is Confronted Only By Binding Forces, and it Is itself A Force That Is Tending To Bind every “other”. The “other” and the ego-“I” are mad relations, Always together in the growling pit, Bound By conditional Nature To Do such Nature’s deeds To one another.”

The idea that every opposition is an irrational (or fruitless) search for Freedom stopped my mind for a moment. I’d never thought of it that way. But I can feel something primally true about that. For some reason, it makes a wave of compassion for all of us go through me.

So I guess the prescription, as always, is to plunge into some sort of wild, juicy, lively, ruinous spiritual practice, and, thereby, start to have this grim-assed illusion of subjective-selfhood washed off of us with the Holy Firehose (not to be confused with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, for which the number of the counting shall be three). Or, if you’re already so plunged, pray ferociously for more plunging.

‘Ever feel like you’re trapped in the growling pit, pushing boulders around and shouting ragefully? Why not get swell emails there by subscribing to this very blog? I mean, as long as you’re in hell anyway.