Dance of the Afflictions

In the forest wilderness, with its bushes of distraction,
The monkeys who stretch out their arms in conformity
With the universal dance of the afflictions
Will not be interested in this.

----Jigme Lingpa,
White Lotus

Sometimes I want to think a terrible sadness is incrementally descending upon Buddhism, like a slow cloud, and that we have nobody but ourselves to blame.


We get obsessed with plans, projects, possessions, and positions, when what we should really be concerned with is overarching recognition of impermanence -- of what Jigme Lingpa called the "great lying projection." Buddhism endures because of a heart of truth, not because of its functionaries, monuments, and institutions. As the first decade of the twenty-first century speeds toward its conclusion, it strikes us that Buddhism's functionaries, monuments, and institutions are themselves the very exemplar of fallibility.


All men are in costume. Some accidentally....

Some deliberately.

No.... we are not served by plans, projects, possessions, and positions... by this or that ambition to build another edifice or endow another effort.

In the last gasp, the only thing that serves is coming to know mind by coming to know mind, and in that we can do without the catalogs, the intermediaries, the interpreters, and the untamed guides.

We can do without recycled divinity.


Because, we're all in the same boat, you know?

In different uniforms maybe, but still the same boat.

Still the same ocean.