Notes from the other side of Buddhism.

[Mundus Imbroglio]

I was a Buddhist for most of my life.  I was a Zen Buddhist for most of that time.  Zen Buddhism is a community practice, with half of the year being dedicated to Ango—literally translated as "dwelling in peace."  During Ango, you work hard on yourself, and work hard to fit into the group.  In the chanting, your voice is lost in a sea of other voices.  In working, your work is done selflessly and with no hope or idea of ever finishing.  A teacher once compared Ango to the process rocks go through in a polisher—they bump up against each other, wear down the sharp edges, and come out more beautiful than before.  In a way, I suppose that's true.  When you give up your will, things go swimmingly.  No need to think about your work assignment, food, clothing, or what you'll be doing for basically all of your time.

Life is a rock tumbler, and when you take the metaphor out of the carefully curated and maintained monastic environment, you can see its dark side.  It's not polishing—it's grinding down.  Wake up early, spend the day at work, go home and sit in front of a screen until it's time to go to bed and do the whole thing over again.  The Ango of everyday life grinds the fundamental nature and vitality out of a once-dignified, unapologetic, and real person.

What can you do?

Get the hell out.  Maybe you're stuck in a job or a city or a circumstance from which there is no immediate prospect of extrication.  Realizing it is the trick—once you understand what's going on, you get to make the choice of "in" or "out."  Choose "out."  Spend your eight hours a day at your job, because you're an adult and you don't shirk your obligations, but understand on a deep level that you're moving upstream against a lie that washes all of us straight to hell.  It has to take time, and it will be subtle, but every person that moves against the stream puts pressure on the damned thing.  The lie is that "success" lies in how others perceive you, or the size of your paycheck.  The lie is that success is something that you need to get from Them.

Fuck Them.  The rock polisher changes you into something that other people find appealing.  Let them dive head first into the machine if it's what they want to do.  Plot your escape; make good your escape.  Be wrong—vigorously, go to somewhere that makes you uncomfortable, find something important to do and do it like it's the last thing you'll do.

I escaped from the rock polisher, and I'm deeply okay with being lumpy and pointy and not nice to look at.  Ugly pointy rocks are the kind that people remember when they see the scars on their knees.  The pretty ones get tossed in a sack in a box in a drawer and are promptly forgotten.

What is enlightenment?

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Some rocks will never be beautiful. You can chuck a hunk of feldspar in a tumbler for ten years, you can grind it and polish it and buff it but it will never, ever be beautiful. Some rocks can't survive the tumbler at all. Try throwing some limestone in there and see what happens. Some rocks are beautiful until you mess with them: peacock ore and pyrite and gypsum roses come to mind. All glittering and precious in their own way, and utterly ruined at the first well-intentioned intervention.

And some rocks? Some rocks are pretty after a day or two in the grind.

And it's important to remember that the rocks that aren't beautiful are no more or less special than the beautiful ones, and the rocks that are beautiful until they are fucked with are no more or less special than the rocks that are ugly until polished.

The value of a rock is what it can do. The same can be said of a person.

[Junkenstein]

That was pretty good. Interested in reading more, please do continue.

[Freeky]

I like this.

[Mundus Imbroglio]

The value of a rock is what it can do. The same can be said of a person.

I disagree.  The value of a person is, I would posit, found in what s/he does.  You don't have to cure cancer or invent a new musical genre or...I dunno...invent a pair of self-removing pants.  You just have to fucking do something.  And do it as hard as you can, then do it harder.

Love cooking, but you're piss-poor at it?  Do it anyway.  "Skill" is a fancy word for the huge pile of failures behind you.  Maybe you'll never be the best, but dammit you did something, and that's more than most of the people around you can say.

It's not in the mastery, it's in the doing that a person becomes a human.

I've been exploring the forums and I must say I'm a fan of your work.

Cheers.

Note: Modified in the face of a very good point.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's not in the mastery, it's in the doing that a person becomes a human.

I'd argue that the default position is "human".

[Mundus Imbroglio]

It's not in the mastery, it's in the doing that a person becomes a human.

I'd argue that the default position is "human".

Maybe so.  Language is clunky and imprecise sometimes; I don't know of a good way to write that sentence.  Perhaps "...that a cabbage becomes a person"? 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's not in the mastery, it's in the doing that a person becomes a human.

I'd argue that the default position is "human".

Maybe so.  Language is clunky and imprecise sometimes; I don't know of a good way to write that sentence.  Perhaps "...that a cabbage becomes a person"?

Okay, so today alone, 175 children under the age of 3 died in Equatorial Africa, from either violence or plain old starvation.

They were or were not human beings and/or persons?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Boy, I wish I was a person.   

[Mundus Imbroglio]

It's not in the mastery, it's in the doing that a person becomes a human.

I'd argue that the default position is "human".

Maybe so.  Language is clunky and imprecise sometimes; I don't know of a good way to write that sentence.  Perhaps "...that a cabbage becomes a person"?

Okay, so today alone, 175 children under the age of 3 died in Equatorial Africa, from either violence or plain old starvation.

They were or were not human beings and/or persons?

That's not what I'm saying at all, and I sincerely hope that isn't how you read that.  However, your point is well taken and perhaps I should have taken more care to clarify that the above rant is my particular view of the particular culture in which I find myself.  Everything has a context and I was careless when establishing mine.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Thing is, there are no cabbages.  Just billions of people who more or less all assume they are one of the few awake people in a world of sheep/robots/cabbages/whatever.

Fact:  Nobody is a cabbage all the time.
Fact:  Nobody is a fully-functioning human all the time.
Fact:  No special religious (or any other) training will change those facts for anyone.

[Mundus Imbroglio]

Thing is, there are no cabbages.  Just billions of people who more or less all assume they are one of the few awake people in a world of sheep/robots/cabbages/whatever.

Fact:  Nobody is a cabbage all the time.
Fact:  Nobody is a fully-functioning human all the time.
Fact:  No special religious (or any other) training will change those facts for anyone.

I concede that point completely.

[rong]

I like the opposing perspectives on the rock tumbler analogy.

can one conclude, that what makes you beautiful is also what kills you?  (or something to that effect - it reminded me of a bukowski quote about finding what you love and letting it kill you . . . is what i was getting at i guess maybe)

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

The value of a rock is what it can do. The same can be said of a person.

I disagree.  The value of a person is, I would posit, found in what s/he does.  You don't have to cure cancer or invent a new musical genre or...I dunno...invent a pair of self-removing pants.  You just have to fucking do something.  And do it as hard as you can, then do it harder.

Love cooking, but you're piss-poor at it?  Do it anyway.  "Skill" is a fancy word for the huge pile of failures behind you.  Maybe you'll never be the best, but dammit you did something, and that's more than most of the people around you can say.

It's not in the mastery, it's in the doing that a person becomes a human.

I've been exploring the forums and I must say I'm a fan of your work.

Cheers.

Note: Modified in the face of a very good point.

I think you're right in dropping the "can" from that sentence. We Are What We Do and all that.

I've been falling into the same cabbages/SHEEPLE trapinoneof my other series, too. It's such a common one I should probably start digging to see if there are any good essays already written about it to help. It really is a challenge to talk about "my personal path to being a less shitty me" without disparaging the shittier version of yourself, and by extension the shittier versions of people you see around you. And Roger's right that it's unfair, because we're all shitlords from time to time, and you might just be catching someone on a shit day, or you might just not be paying attention to the bipedal stuff they're doing right in front of you. At the same time, self improvement takes work, and motivating yourself or someone else to do the work (whatever it is) almost always relies on DON'T BE A SHITHEEL ALL THE TIME.

[P3nT4gR4m]

It really is a challenge to talk about "my personal path to being a less shitty me" without disparaging the shittier version of yourself, and by extension the shittier versions of people you see around you.

Excellent point. I am guilty of this although, hopefully, less so than in the past. I try to remove the value judgement from the equation and especially any anger this value judgement may cause. Hard to do sometimes but I have to remind myself that it isn't the other persons fault that they're trapped inside a pernicious reality tunnel, choking on dumb memes and sneezing bad signal. Personality can become infected just the same as biological machinery.

If you wouldn't blame someone because they were infected with aids, why is it okay to blame them because they're infected with Ayn Rand or Adolph Hitler? People are just dumb apes (me too) it's not really their fault.

Also - holding other people up to ANY standard is a hiding to nowhere. Best you can hope for is to live up to your own standards