Based on some non-specific emails, I gather some fellow plans to take me up on an offer for a cup of coffee this Sunday. He wrote to ask about the zendo. I told him its days were mostly in the rear-view mirror but if he wanted to stop by for coffee, that would be pleasant.
So....
I once read a slim book called "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment" by Thaddeus Golas. It was an easy read, accessible both by language and length. All I can remember reom its pages (and that only approximately) is, "When you learn to love hell, you will be in heaven." Short 'n' sweet, right?
At about the same time I read that, I was also reading books that were positively viscous with the twinkling facets and disciplines of Buddhism. They were the mirror image of short 'n' sweet. No matter: I gobbled the one; I gobbled the other. Which had more effect, I haven't got a clue.
Funny how the gathering and collating and ingesting and digesting of spiritual writings can be useful and simultaneously have about the usefulness of a fart in a wind storm.
Either way -- short, long, bright as a penny or dulled as old copper -- still, what counts is what anyone is willing to do about it. No criticism, just fact: Put up or shut up. Get it right; get it wrong -- put up or shut up.
I guess people get together as much as anything in spiritual endeavor to prove to themselves that they are not starkers ... or, if they are, at least they have company.
Group vindication. It's hard to be sure of yourself, but easy to join the chorus. We are pack/herd animals after all.
ReplyDeleteThere's a term known as groupthink in Singaporean papers today. It's basically what some citizens feel are awkward when they have company that they like. Humans are strange, when you get them the right company, they long for something else other than what is right. Since we are all animals I can neither say no to those that dislike groupthink, nor can I suggest that I would be reading this article if you'd typed in Russian.
ReplyDelete