For the past four or five years certainly (but in all honesty long before that even) I've made it a personal practice to aim low on the "I want" list. In fact, whenever anyone would put the question, "What do you want?" to me, I would 9 times out of 10 be at an utter loss for words. It's not that I didn't have rather definite opinions about how things ought to be done or something like that (ask my students about writing, ask sangha members about zendo etiquette). When it would come to my personal preferences, though, I found myself taking a pass.
It hasn't helped at all that I've fallen in with religious viewpoints that take seriously the business of ego-attrition. As with most things, however, there are healthy and skillful forms of that, and there are unhealthy and unskillful forms of that. Turns out, I've been rather unhealthy and unskillful, putting up with things I really didn't need to put up with and keeping myself from doing things I would have really liked to do, all in the name of cultivating "not picking and choosing" to the point of absurdity.
What rot, made even stinkier by any association it could possibly have with practice. New leaf turning time for this, too!
It hasn't helped at all that I've fallen in with religious viewpoints that take seriously the business of ego-attrition. As with most things, however, there are healthy and skillful forms of that, and there are unhealthy and unskillful forms of that. Turns out, I've been rather unhealthy and unskillful, putting up with things I really didn't need to put up with and keeping myself from doing things I would have really liked to do, all in the name of cultivating "not picking and choosing" to the point of absurdity.
What rot, made even stinkier by any association it could possibly have with practice. New leaf turning time for this, too!
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