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#4076 - Monday, November 15, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
The well known journalist, P.J. O'Rourke, made this rather nondual observation.
He said: "The source of the
word 'humorist' is one who regards human beings
in terms of their humors — you know, whether they're
sanguine or full of
yellow bile, or whatever the four classical humors are. You stand
back from
people and regard them as types. And one finds, especially by the
time one
reaches one's fifties, that there are a limited number of types
of people in
the world, and you went to high school with every single one of
them. You can
visit the Eskimos, you can visit the Bushmen in the Kalahari, you
can go to
Israel, you can go to Egypt, but everybody you meet is going to
be somebody
you went to high school with."
"Center for Awakened Confusion" on Facebook
photo by Mazie Lane on Facebook
Ego is a Habit
In Buddhism there is a
great respect for the power of self-centeredness to co-opt even
the most magnanimous or sublime experience for its own
self-aggrandizement. The idea of
ego is not so much a thing as a habit of using whatever
experience arises to solidify and
prop up our feeling of a solid and separate identity. It is
literally a form of ingesting
experience to fatten our own self-absorption.
The realm of spirituality is an
especially seductive form of poisonous food. In the great
spiritual traditions, there are yummy practices, exotic rituals,
beautiful liturgies,
profound texts We can attend workshops galore, hang out with
brilliant teachers, even
become teachers ourselves. We can gather students and get V.I. P.
treatment and at the
same time still feel totally virtuous and not caught, like
others, in trivial concerns. With
each helping of this meal, we build up our feeling of being
special, important, popular,
compassionate, and profound. We can even become wealthy.
As we build up our spiritual
institutions, we can feed an even larger ego, a collective ego.
We can turn the pure and nourishing food of genuine spirituality
and practice into the
poisonous food of power mongering, sectarianism, unthinking
allegiance to dogma, and
groupthink. We can create cozy cocoons and wallow in our smugness
and superiority.
Eating poisonous food feeds the ego
and poisons our spiritual freshness and innocence.
Instead of dissolving our estrangement from ourselves, each
other, and the environment in
which we live, eating such poisonous food hardens our differences
and heightens our
confusion. By eating poisonous food, instead of lessening our
self-deception, we are
fattening it up.
- Judy Lief
photo by Mazie Lane on Facebook
"My broken-down hut
leans against rocks. Why does my gate stay open all
day. People line up for government exams. No one sets foot
on an ancient
trail."
~ Stonehouse
"I lie down in the clouds, no
sign of the sky. Above high cliffs and wild
streams. I wake on a cot, the moon in the window. The porridge
done, the fire
out. All causes end without driving them off. Our nature's
full, light shines by
itself. Transparent as space it never changes."
~ Stonehouse
Mark McCoskey on Facebook