I just got an email from a group featuring a talk on Buddhism and Anti-mask ignorance. I’m sure the concept of Avidya was going to get worked into it.
It occurs to me to comment that, just as William F. Buckley Jr. famously said he would rather be governed by the first 200 people in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty, I think those same 200 people, in aggregate, are likely to be more authentically spiritual than most of the people who live in retreat centers and spend weeks every year meditating. Those are not people who would have your back in a pinch, but most normal people would, if it were important.
Although, as I think about it, Boston is pretty decadent. Let’s make it the working class part. The working joes and janes.
For most people, I think “spirituality” is really a partitioning. They don’t deal with their shit. They just learn to walk around smiling beneficently, becoming vegan, and hating Trump and his supporters passionately. You know, because we “hate”.
Projection isn’t just for movie theaters.
Yeah, you can quote me on that. I think I just came up with it.
And the thing is, if you have an internal screen where all you see is your sensitivity and compassion, all the evil that we are ALL born with comes to seem like wild beasts OUT THERE. That is how projection works.
I think I am even going to assert [yes, I did] that Trump is a sort of Rorschach. How you feel about him is in large measure proportionate to your own emotional awareness and development.
For myself, I like him even when he is crass, but I can see what people might find that off-putting. But these people who are calling him a Fascist are emotionally ill.