The Slaying of Jabber

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwok, with eyes of flame,

Cam whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

-- Lewis Carroll

A major distraction and trap for humans is the Jabberwok, the burbling chatter/jabber of the rooftop brain. In our fascination with this burbling stream, we risk being eaten alive.

Standing in offish thought, the hero/ine of Carroll's story is going nowhere. No longer on the move, no longer open to the continuous transformations of life, she stands in the tulgey wood hypnotized by the movies of her mind. Like her colleague, Br'er Rabbit and his nemesis, Tar Baby, she is fast becoming stuck in something she mistakes for Reality. 

Like a fly on fly paper, like a duck stuck in a frozen pond, like a sinning pilgrim in wooden stocks, she is on cosmic display, helplessly hoist by her own petard.

Deep in the swamp of thought, she has lost her mindful way. Up to her ass in alligators, she dreams of other lands. Caught in internal illusion, she is fair game for whoever / whatever comes by. 

And something always comes by.

The Jabberwok is preparing to eat her alive.

Jabber means "chatter; rapid, incoherent, or trivial talk; gabble, babble." This poor human stands in the midst of the tulgey wood, gabbling and babbling away in high-speed incoherency. S/he is throwing away, trivializing her existence.

Certifiably insane, on the back wards of her self-created asylum, s/he is the ideal patient: tranquillized by zombie drugs biochemically manufactured through her own whiffling, cheerfully wearing a strait jacket woven of her own cortical strands.

S/he is the Living Dead.

"One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker - snack!"

Fortunately, s/he is not TOO far gone. S/he awakens, realizes s/he has (is) a powerfully effective weapon, and frees herself from the toothy jaws of Jabber.

The Jabberwok is slain as our hero/ine opens to Greater Awareness. This Buddh is for her. 

S/he is not entirely safe however. S/he keeps the Jabber's head. 

"He left it dead and with its head

He went galumphing back."

So we can see that s/he has not allowed full enlightenment. Galumphing along, s/he still needs some Budhi. (As the Blues Brothers sang: Every buddy needs some Budhi.) But that's okay. S/he's going back -- returning to the market place -- to show the Jabber head to others. S/he is a true buddy, an authentic buddysattva.

"He chortles in his joy," embodying the first stage or dimension of a buddysattva -- the Joyous. S/he is safely on the path. All those other stages and dimensions are bound to manifest.

S/he now lives with newfound skill.

S/he knows how to slay Jabber.