…and I don’t meant that as in “BFF.” It’s more like, we watched Lost — and now we’ll stay lost. That finale was — say it with a rolling Johnny Rotten R — crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrap. (Or, wait — was it?)

Seems everything we thought was meaningful was a red herring. Seems the theory most of us had when the show started — that the key survivors of Oceanic 815 were in some sort of limbo/purgatory/bardo state — was real. Even though JJ Abrams long ago specifically said it wasn’t:

Okay, so everything on the island was true, and it was the “sideways world” that was the intermediary state. WHATever, I say. We smelled purgatory, we cried purgatory, and we pretty much got it.

I was feeling bitter about this. But then I read this fantastic appreciation of the finale — including detailed thoughts on the bardo connection at Jezebel.

(True/Slant has more on the bardo/afterlife argument here. And EW points out that the finale’s imagery was, above all, Christian.)

Still, bardo or not: What was the planned meaning of the Dharma Initiative? Of the appearance of “Dogen”? And of most of the many non-Buddhist spiritual references the show made too? …It seems it was all pretty much nothing.

But, as Jeff “Doc” Jensen writes in his near-final write-up on the show:

It’s funny that so many people cynically bitch about Lost not having ”a master plan” — the Lost story is all about the folly of ”master plans.” Anyone who has ever had a master plan on this show has failed catastrophically. Mother. Jacob. The Man In Black. Ben. Charles Widmore. Jack. Sawyer. The best we can do is live our lives with enlightened improvisation — to be so self-aware and fearless that we can live fully in the present and redeem our every moment and every human connection.

Well, that’s something, isn’t it?

If you’d like to take a trip back to when things that didn’t mean anything on Lost did seem to mean plenty — at least through the Buddhism-and-pop-culture lens — here’s some of the Horse’s coverage. (Thank goodness there wasn’t more; I was probably too busy religiously watching and reading all about Lost to write about it. The blog Breathe has some more on all this, as does the bawdy fave, The Reformed Buddhist. And Jezebel has a whole new post going deep into bardos.)

Dogen: Tuesdays at 9/8 Central on ABC

Lost Sneak Peek: Tibetan-Style Prayer flags?

Don’t I feel silly.