Wheel on Fire (Part I)

I’m reluctant to address the mild suffering of the price of gas in the face of the enormity of suffering by the humans and nonhumans in the quake area of China (this morning’s news: China requests 3 million more tents to house 5 million survivors without housing in addition to the more than 51,000 people dead) or the unfolding catastrophe in Burma (paranoia will destroy ya) … but I saw an oil expert on CNN last night and it reverberated through morning zazen. He predicted $15 a gallon gasoline and rationing as we go past half oil and into the major transition to a post oil economy.

The American economy, of course, is based on cheap oil and now the party is in the serious wind-down stage. And as a country we’re still in thick denial. I’m reminded of how beings in God realm, in the old Buddhist story, enjoy enormous bliss at the whiff of a flower and linger in extraordinary states of mind, rocking with other Gods for eons. Then subtle signs of decay set in (bad breath, stinky underarms … ) and their friends drift away before the big fall. This could be us.

For about fifty years we’ve delighted in ignoring the real impacts of our actions based on a false entitlement that cheap gas was one of our American rights. Think again. I’m worried about what our politicians will try to sell us in order to get oil. What more inane wars and environmental assaults lie ahead? An unimaginable sequence of cause and effect may well unfold and no one, in my view, can see where this will go.

Close to home, towns like the one I live in are designed around cheap gas. I live twenty-five miles from work like many of my neighbors. As gas prices continue to escalate, housing values in places like this are bound to drop. Retirement investments could plummet in value. 5 million baby boomers in tents? I fear for the life of my children and wonder what I can do to help prepare them and others for what lies ahead.

I think it was Alan Ginsberg who said, “Hang on to the edges of your gowns, ladies. We’re going through hell.”