The Frame

Chapter 1

Once upon a time there lived a Buddha* who never fit into any frame.

How many times was he trying to curb his edges, to squeeze himself in one way or another! But all for nothing – there seemed to be no frame of the right size. Until one day he realized: it doesn't exist.

At first, he felt desperate. Looking at the world hopelessly, he was asking himself: "Why me? Why does this have to happen to me?". That was the first stage. Then, sitting by the window and staring at the tropical rain with "All by myself" playing in the background, he reflected on how this happened: why everyone around had pretty frames that they fit and look so good in... While there seemed to be none for him. And that's when he decided to make the One of His Own!

But how? He wasn't skilled in carving wood or other materials... Suddenly YouTube came to help – thankfully, it was possible to use YouTube without a frame! – and soon enough Buddha learned to carve not only frames but other pretty things, too. So he called his friend Ananda, who was lucky to have a carven frame with gold and precious stones since birth, and asked him to do his body measurements from all sides. Once the measurements were done, Buddha immediately got to work, despite YouTube's encouragements to watch more and more videos. After all, it was him who created the Middle Way and understood that everything's good in balance: therefore, he closed YouTube and immersed himself in the process of frame creation.

***

Three days later a beautiful carven frame was ready. It looked fascinating and smelled amazing as well.

Buddha couldn't take his eyes off it. He was staring at it, charmed for a few minutes, diving into meditation... at first, he was perceiving the beauty and then reflected on frame's existence: "The frame exists based on so many factors! It wouldn't exist without my desire to create it, without this wood, the tree that has created it, without people who posted tutorials on YouTube... without those who've created YouTube. Without the grapes I was eating during breaks to give me energy to continue. And without my consciousness, which created a vision of this frame in the first place. Clearly, the roots of this frame come from my mind. I had to have a concept of what a frame is and then to have a vision of what kind of frame I want. So does it exist independently?"

"Of course no.", he thought few moments later. "There is no independent frame – but there is a product of many factors coming together in one point in space and time that have become this object we called 'frame', thanks to conceptual consciousness. And all these factors have come together just for some time..." Those were Buddha's reflections, but he didn't feel like diving into philosophy too much yet.

His intuition was telling him that the most interesting part of the journey is yet to come: "I'm ready to try this on!". Anticipating what would happen, he stepped into the frame...

***

First few seconds were amazing: he felt so proud about himself and satisfied that he finally had a frame! Something to define himself by in this world.

Five minutes after the initial delight, he noticed that the left corner was squeezing his foot and the right elbow was itchy. "That's alright," Buddha thought. "I'll break in the left corner or just get used to it, and I can scratch my elbow within the frame, too." However, it turned out to be more difficult than he expected: to reach his right elbow, he had to move the left hand; but when he moved it, it hit the frame's walls and painfully scratched on wooden carvings.

– OUCH! – cringing with pain, he grabbed his left hand and right away hit his right elbow because of this movement. – AH!!

The pain suppressed the itchiness in the right elbow for a few moments, but now the elbow wasn't just itchy – it hurt, as well.