I Want to Be a Buddhist (Or: Reading Martin Heidegger Mildly Hung-over)

by Okla Elliott

The silver is responsible for the chalice is responsible
for the sacrificial vessel.
There is a wheel. There are two wheels—
the small wheel and the great wheel.

After a night of whiskey celebration,
a watery sense of hilarity washes over everything.
I want to leave the filthy world behind.
I want to be a Buddhist but can’t because it seems like an affectation.
I don’t want to be seen as a person who harbors affectations.
That is to say, I am too attached to my image in the world
to become a Buddhist.
But if I was a Buddhist, I could maybe overcome my attachment
to my image and to the World.

I want to be a Buddhist but can’t because I like whiskey
more than enlightenment.

Also, I can’t give up my ambitions.
I work with an icepick’s intuition.
I know Aristotle’s four causes; I know the horizon of my Being.
I have known bad faith and good. I want to want to be a Buddhist.
I have felt the green energy that erects life, the earthly pulse
that wobbles us all upright.

I want want want and want
and therefore am a failed Buddhist.
My ambition is to be a Buddhist.
Buddhist ambition is my new favorite oxymoron
(not that I had an old favorite oxymoron).

But what if this secular mysticism, this existential awe, this wanting
to be a Buddhist makes me a Buddhist? The ice crashes loud and slippery,
melts to hilarity.
Hilarity is the world withdrawing from me, me
detaching myself from the world, like a proper Buddhist.

The silver is responsible for the chalice is responsible
for the empty vessel. There are two wheels—one great,
one small.