I haven't had much time in the past few months to post here; there's been a lot to do at work, so much so that even home life has not been given the attention I should have given to it.
It's not that I haven't had ideas of what to post...for example, the nature of giving and charity, and what that ought to mean from my meager understanding of Buddhism.
For another example, I have thought of posting about holiday blues and family turmoil in light of the Lotus Sutra.
It's been so that I haven't even had much attention to give to the rest of the Buddhist blogosphere, and with the notable exception of Barbara's blog, it looks like the same old same old.
I think much of the Buddhist blogosphere is overly attached to the "Zen master scandal" stuff and there's a kind of inverse guru fetishism implied in it.
And I really don't have time for that, although I did comment on a post by Gracie Myoan Schireson regarding a review of a book on the Shimano scandal here; and I stand by those comments.
My own practice has been woefully inadequate of late, or perhaps I'm realizing that it's been woefully inadequate to begin with (and a knee situation hasn't made sitting easy of late, to put it mildly).
It's time for compassion.
It's not that I haven't had ideas of what to post...for example, the nature of giving and charity, and what that ought to mean from my meager understanding of Buddhism.
For another example, I have thought of posting about holiday blues and family turmoil in light of the Lotus Sutra.
It's been so that I haven't even had much attention to give to the rest of the Buddhist blogosphere, and with the notable exception of Barbara's blog, it looks like the same old same old.
I think much of the Buddhist blogosphere is overly attached to the "Zen master scandal" stuff and there's a kind of inverse guru fetishism implied in it.
And I really don't have time for that, although I did comment on a post by Gracie Myoan Schireson regarding a review of a book on the Shimano scandal here; and I stand by those comments.
My own practice has been woefully inadequate of late, or perhaps I'm realizing that it's been woefully inadequate to begin with (and a knee situation hasn't made sitting easy of late, to put it mildly).
It's time for compassion.
3 comments:
I haven't written a lot lately. And the one piece I wrote that fits into the "scandal" obsession was really short. Because I don't really have much else to say. It seems like this obsession is in part, an effort to work all of this stuff out in public forums.
People want answers and solutions. And many also want to pontificate and moralize. I think there has been some value in these public discussions, but now I feel like less is more. Reading the same set of admonishments and moralistic points again and again in different forms doesn't seem helpful. At the same time, it all does speak volumes to what American zen in particular is like right now. For better or worse.
Hey Nathan,
Good to hear from you, though I wasn't actually that intensely focusing on your post about IP troll Bikram.
I totally agree with you, less is more. Yeah, mention the scandal, and in the case of Adam's Sweeping Zen stuff, report the stuff about that guy in Jacksonville FLA.
But from an exchange I've been having on facebook, it seems there's a lot of "teacher" fetishism.
"I wasn't actually that intensely focusing on your post about IP troll Bikram." Yeah, I didn't figure my post was of focus here. There's so much other noise going on.
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