TibetanMonkey wrote:
>I'm seeing the glass half empty,
Yes. You tend to do that.
Once the glass is divided, there are two.
You seem to have a compulsion to divide.
Perhaps you are obsessed. Possessed even.
> but I want to question our "march
>toward progress" as a positive step.
Progress means good.
Good implies bad or not-good.
Where there is plus there is minus.
When something is gained, something is lost.
Some folks don't quite understand
some of the implications of the process.
What's good for furniture
is bad for old growth trees.
What is an improvement, a parking lot,
destroys what was originally unimproved, sacred,
pristine, beautiful in its own nature, without blemish.
Your question can be a beginning. A journey
of twenty-five thousand miles begins with a first step.
Thinking it is positive or not-positive is a thought.
> The minute we became too
>sedentary that's when we became stupid.
Where smart exists, stupid is there too.
When or if you judge, divide, separate, carve, and sew froth,
you evoke a paradigm of your own making.
> Nowadays we only care about
>keeping the machine going no matter what the cost is in human lives
>and suffering.
Your, "we" is your fantasy. Your group. Your set.
Others may share it. You then enter the same boat.
You load it full of your divisions, your judgments, your
belongings to the boat.
> I'm sorry to say that my community is full of
>shit despite having a strong membership in church.
When a glass is divided it is at least part full.
You see it as full of shit. The division is yours.
Where you draw your lines you draw
is something of your own doing.
Karma connotes doing.
Your doing. Your karma.
While you post your cross-
posts to buddhist, zen and taoist groups,
you appear to not quite get an essence
of what is to be found within.
> I have to make sure
>they understand that Adam & Eve were kicked out for trashing Paradise.
If that's your story
and you have a compulsion to stick it
width that fashion at length, then the depth
of touching the Tree of the Knowledge of good\bad
will remain a poison and your death of sorts.
To return to Paradise, in various traditions or myths,
involves and revolves around becoming again
as a small child or infant or newborn.
As such, the Tree of Life is available. Dao. Nirvana.
You appear, however, to be stuck as you stick
your measuring stick in the mud. You are full.
Your cup, your glass, your community.
Traditions which suggest being empty,
of letting go, of doing an about face, of returning,
repenting, of not-doing what one was doing
which said doing got them in the jam they were in,
those traditions are available for those with an eye
or an ear, or a mind capable of a sense
that can sense beyond the glasses
you are unable to let go of.
You might know you are seeing the glass have empty
but do you know about the glasses you're wearing?
The spectacles you view your world view through?
In the Tao Te Ching
it could be said to say that an answer is to forget
about knowledge and wisdom. You however
may be unable to do such a thing.
You might be chained to your way.
A slave of sorts to the shit you find inside
a community you claim as yours.
The cross you bear can be a bear.
Grizzly at times. A stuffed animal too,
when seen through and through
a different light or glass.