Useless Stuff?

When it really gets down to it, how much of our activity is quite simply 'useless'?

I don't mean that it has no use at all on a mundane level, but that it is so conditioned, so led by instinct or habit, so unconscious or below awareness or choice, or simply so trivial, superficial and transient that one wonders how on earth one gets caught up in so much 'doing'.

How is this stuff so powerful? Has does it exert so much attraction that we are seduced into activity, into wanting or not wanting, into trying to gain, have and sustaining?

In a way, this 'stuff' isn't so seductive or attractive as such. In a way, nothing is inherently more or less attractive as such. In a way, it's just conditioned co-production, it's the sum total of all influences at that moment, of all conditions at that moment, that bring to bear the ability of that 'thing' to transfix us and tranform us, to encourage us to lose our natural abiding, and trade it for ignorance and duality.

But then again, it's not the 'thing' is it? It's our minds, our consciousness, our awareness that counts. It's 'us' inasmuch as their is an 'us', it's 'me', inasmuch as their is a 'me' which gets lost in this duality and illusion of solidity, which chooses or not to dive into the pool of unawareness and transient 'honey on a razors edge' pleasure.

In that moment of awareness, how does it come to be that we either abide in our natural state, we rest in minds natural state, we are Buddha Nature, we recognise Ordinary Mind ... or we get caught up in allowing appearances to well up into apparent solidity, to seem to not be merely alluring illusions, and become hard and whole happenings and things ... which seem inherently worth chasing after/away?

Mind is open, expansive and without centre. Appearances come and go ... seemingly, but do they?

When mind's nature is lost, appearances take on an entirely different nature, or so it seems. They solidify, then become 3D, they become real, and then attract and entrance.

And yet, they don't. They don't solidify. They remain empty.

Whether lost from Original Mind, temporarily, or abiding it its nature, those appearances remain the same ... empty, free of solidity or self, and illusive and like a dream. Their nature never changes. But our perception of them, and their nature appears to change. So much so that we get lost to ourselves, lost to our nature, and chase after those dreams as though our lives depended on it.

Our lives depended on it? Our lives depend on recognising the nature of all this, and helping all beings to the same, doesn't it?

Or does millions of years of evolution on this planet come down to Pop Idol, Home Makeover shows, and an endless procession of passive consumption of what you need to make your life complete entertainment?

In the moment, our awareness, mind ... appearances ... how are they?

In the moment, which road do we take .... to the heart of things, or lost in illusion?

In the moment, what enables us to take that choice, to wisdom, or to ignorance?

In the moment, the whole universe lays before us, where will we go?

In the moment ... in the moment ....