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Rules? Schmules!
Simonthepilgrim
Veteran
Rules, appropriate actions and karmic consequences
David Lurie, who founded the Dharma The Cat website has written a thought-provoking letter. Some of us may have received it by email already but the link above is to the Buddhist Channel website.
I have already replied to David:
David Lurie, who founded the Dharma The Cat website has written a thought-provoking letter. Some of us may have received it by email already but the link above is to the Buddhist Channel website.
I have already replied to David:
Dear David,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Every one of us who walk the Noble Eightfold Path needs to consider what is going on in Burma. Many of us are living under regimes that are taking actions, both internally and externally, to which we object. This applies in the US and in my own country, the UK, where wars are being waged and civil liberties removed. The question has always been how to mark this opposition.
The Burmese sangha began by refusing to accept government offerings - another 'breaking' of the rules. I took it as a sign that there had been long and painful debate within the communities which included a weighing of evils.
I am sure you know a book by Robert H. King entitled "Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh - Engaged Spirituality in an Age of Globalization".
There is a very fundamental question that needs addressing by all people of goodwill for whom their spiritual tradition is important. In a world where the spiritual is increasingly marginalised and replaced by Nietzschean nihilism, which is more important: guarding traditional orthodoxy or engaging with those who are lost in an entirely secular, anti-clerical and anti-religious mindset?
In my occasional role as a Spiritual Director, I have found that there is usually one of two aspects which are missing from the lives of those who come to talk to me: meditation or service to others. In some cases, both have been abandoned, with catastrophic results. At the same time there is a general sense of revulsion against the prevailing culture of ego-centrism and ego-gratification.
Perhaps we all, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, et al., need to put aside our differences and engage, as is slowly happening among the 'professionals', with the householder world in a more positive and enabling way. Isn't it time for the institutions, be they churches, gompas, schuls or mosques, to stop the long tradition of separation and, whatever they may pretend, elitism and come down into the market-place, like the seeker in the last Ox-Herding Picture?
I hope you don't mind my writing back to you: this is a topic on which I have reflected for most of my 64 years - at least 50 of them. Your 'scattergun' email may push the dialogue and debate a bit further. I hope so: it is desperately needed.
Metta and *gassho*
Simon
0
Comments
I really enjoyed reading the letter you wrote to David and I agree with you!
Kim
Palzang
Callused hands and buttocks - two outward signs of a life well lived.