Once upon a time I was going to write a book called "Why the revolution hasn't come"

It's name was taken from the title of a show on WBAI a long time ago, hosted early Saturday mornings by a guy named Simon Loekle.   The show morphed into "As I Please," which was very literature-centric.

Ah that was then.

I knew why the revolution hadn't come: the revolution hadn't come because the revolution was a manifestation, a projection of what we thought we were lacking in ourselves.  What I didn't see is why the revolution hadn't come was what I was not seeing and living from in my own life; or to put it another way, we included me.  And I certainly couldn't put in motion anything like a revolution because it wasn't operative in my own life. The revolution happens when the Wheel turns.  If you are personally stuck no wheel is turning.

Emma Goldman might not have said, "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!" Apparently she did say,  "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."  But it's not clear that her revolution ever really came.

Somehow, somewhere along the way I lived a life and met some remarkable people, and somehow somewhere along the way I actually did participate in a revolution, and you may have benefited from my participation in that revolution.

Some folks are still stuck.  Some folks may not know what Mazu was talking about, and think that cultivation is unnecessary.  Some folks may be too concerned with polishing a tile or not polishing a tile.  It's possible to get stuck in the notion that you're complete as you are without X, because it seems so good, right, on the side of the angels.   But of course having that expression is still attachment.  And what I wrote is still attachment.  Take the I out, or replace it with you or some other noun; play Mad-Libs with it, and it's still 90º off target.

I don't know about anyone else (though I have conjectures), but as for me, the encounter with my own suffering, and the idea that this suffering could be everyone's (see last paragraph) was useful for me to get beyond that. And beyond that is something wonderful.  

There is a heck of a lot of suffering out there.  Some people are in a particularly difficult place; they feel (often with justification) that they have been marginalized, and feel impotent to act with those who are seen as marginalizers.   

The revolution comes when the First Noble Truth is begun to be apprehended.