Fourth Day of the World Course, 36th of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The sun came out today, the first time in, I don't know, four or five days. That trough of low pressure in the Gulf is now Tropical Depression Nine and is expected to develop into a hurricane, the first of the season, in the next two or three days. It's forecast to eventually turn north toward the Gulf Coast, although its precise route and timing cannot yet be predicted. However, the storm's strength will likely peak before making landfall, although it is still expected to be a dangerous hurricane when it does eventually hit the coast. 

We were this close to making it through a season without a single Atlantic Hurricane, much less landfall, that then T.S. Nine comes along and spoils everything.

As I noted yesterday, impermanence, suffering, and non-self are the three marks of existence according to the Buddha, although I maintain that the three distinguishing aspects of reality, of things as they are, are impermanence, emptiness and interdependence. All things are impermanent, that is, nothing lasts forever and all things eventually pass. All things are impermanent because they are also interdependent upon all other things in the universe - every atom in your body was forged in the fusion reactor that is a star; your memories, personality, and preferences were all influenced to some degree or another by other people and things; and you're the beneficiary of the languages, ideas, philosophies, religions, and inventions of countless people before you. And because all things are interdependent, they are empty of individual existence. And because all things are empty of individual existence and reliant upon external and ever changing conditions, they are impermanent, and the logic cycles around and around, again and again.

All of that is pretty fucking philosophical and abstract and is part of the reason that although I don't disagree with a word of it, I no longer consider myself a Buddhist. I consider myself a contemplative stoic. Contemplative stoicism basically takes the fundamental teachings of the Stoics but filters them though a Buddhist understanding, omitting the bullshit parts about Logos, and uses meditation practice to directly experience and realize those teachings. 

Just like any tool, a philosophy or a religious practice is worthless unless it can do something useful. Their value is precisely the usefulness of what that can do. Faced as I am with the irrefutable evidence - my ischemic heart - of my own mortality, I could fall into despair and hopelessness. But I always knew that I was going to eventually die, and every passing year it was becoming more and more obvious. 

I have to admit that the symptomatic angina has been, at least so far, extremely mild, so I'm not "suffering" the pain of heart disease. Any suffering that I do experience at this stage is simply my own mind protesting against the inevitability of my eventual demise, my not accepting that impermanence applies to myself just as much as it applied to Dolly Parton. 

As solace, a Buddhist will point to that circular logic above (impermanence > interdependence > emptiness) and maintain that impermanence is one of the Buddha's three marks of existence. Where Buddhism and stoicism align are the first three of the four noble truths: the existence of suffering, that suffering is caused by craving and clinging, that if we let go of craving and clinging, the suffering ceases or at least abates.

In short, I have to accept I'm not going to live forever (I'm not Bryan Johnson). But while I am alive, I can control a large amount of the suffering I experience. I don't have to layer psychological states of outrage and anger and regret and nonacceptance on top of what ever physical pain and discomfort eventually comes my way. 

All the world's a stage, and the script for my role in the great play is approaching the line reading "Exit Shokai, stage right." I can choose to walk of that stage with a smile on my face - or at least a dignified air of acceptance - happy that I at least got a chance to grace that great stage, or I can choose to leave screaming and crying and protesting that it's all somehow the stage's fault. 

The first option sounds preferrable to me.