Breakthrough
A while ago i was having a conversation with a friend about people changing, granted people do change but she was arguing that people needed time to change, while i was insisting that people had the capacity to change in an instant. Case in point
There is a man, lets say of the age of 32 and he has drank his whole life, never really been an alcoholic, but never been one to turn down a party either. And one night he gets beligerant and beats his wife. Now this is a man who has always thought it wrong to hit women, much less the one he cares for dearly, so he decides that he is never drinking again. And till the day he dies never touches a drop of alcohol.
Now, at what point in his life did he change? Granted he might have had concious desires to drink that subsided over time, and hell he may even have come right to putting the beer to his lips a couple times, but never acually drank. The point is, we cant judge someone on their thoughts, we simply, no matter how much psychology we took in high school or how well you think you know someone, you simply cant put their thoughts into context, you can never paint your world the same way they have painted theirs, for this reason we judge each other (mostly) on actions.
Now say this guy had a friend, who knew him since they were in diapers, had been drinking with this guy since they had their first beer behind his house on a saturday afternoon. And this whole time hes thinking, There is no WAY hes gonna never drink again, this guy LOVES to party, i give it a month tops, but on the day of his friends funeral (suprisingly lets assume he outlived him) He will probably say to himself, damn, he really never drank again, he really changed that moment he decided that he never wanted to drink again. Now granted the friend might have given up on his hopes that his friend return to the partying lifestyle after a few months or years, but the wife beater changed much later in his friends eyes than in his own. This is the nature of differing perceptions. And of course the realization didnt come till death.
Such is the way of buddha nature, within each of us we have the ability to follow the perfect way and we, like the second friend, presume we need time to breakdown those perceptions and ideas we have built up around our concept of the "self". But when the self truely dies, it seems so simple, the idea was there the whole time.
It is difficult to know when to have faith and when to not. Doubt is by far the most usefull and nessesary of all ideas. By all means use doubt to your advantage, question everything around you. Question what you think is wrong, and question what you think is right. Really sit down and think and question what this corpse is you carry with you. Find your own path. And no doubt, doubt, will slow you on the path of losing this attachment to your corpse but it is nessesary.
Thus is the balance we call hypocracy.
There is a man, lets say of the age of 32 and he has drank his whole life, never really been an alcoholic, but never been one to turn down a party either. And one night he gets beligerant and beats his wife. Now this is a man who has always thought it wrong to hit women, much less the one he cares for dearly, so he decides that he is never drinking again. And till the day he dies never touches a drop of alcohol.
Now, at what point in his life did he change? Granted he might have had concious desires to drink that subsided over time, and hell he may even have come right to putting the beer to his lips a couple times, but never acually drank. The point is, we cant judge someone on their thoughts, we simply, no matter how much psychology we took in high school or how well you think you know someone, you simply cant put their thoughts into context, you can never paint your world the same way they have painted theirs, for this reason we judge each other (mostly) on actions.
Now say this guy had a friend, who knew him since they were in diapers, had been drinking with this guy since they had their first beer behind his house on a saturday afternoon. And this whole time hes thinking, There is no WAY hes gonna never drink again, this guy LOVES to party, i give it a month tops, but on the day of his friends funeral (suprisingly lets assume he outlived him) He will probably say to himself, damn, he really never drank again, he really changed that moment he decided that he never wanted to drink again. Now granted the friend might have given up on his hopes that his friend return to the partying lifestyle after a few months or years, but the wife beater changed much later in his friends eyes than in his own. This is the nature of differing perceptions. And of course the realization didnt come till death.
Such is the way of buddha nature, within each of us we have the ability to follow the perfect way and we, like the second friend, presume we need time to breakdown those perceptions and ideas we have built up around our concept of the "self". But when the self truely dies, it seems so simple, the idea was there the whole time.
It is difficult to know when to have faith and when to not. Doubt is by far the most usefull and nessesary of all ideas. By all means use doubt to your advantage, question everything around you. Question what you think is wrong, and question what you think is right. Really sit down and think and question what this corpse is you carry with you. Find your own path. And no doubt, doubt, will slow you on the path of losing this attachment to your corpse but it is nessesary.
Thus is the balance we call hypocracy.
posted by Scruffy at 8:29 PM
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