One last comment on this topic. The person who gave the talk that my comments are based upon was a monk. His entire *life* was dedicated to spending as much of his time as possible working for the welfare of others. This entailed spending as little of it as possible thinking about himself and his problems with a few fleeting emotions.
In general, Westerners are self-obsessed. They get into all these trips that "process" their emotions, that talk about them or deal with them or "confront" them. This implies either a great deal of spare time, or a certain level of self-obsession. Having the luxury to sit around and ponder or "work on" one's fleeting emotions implies that this process is some- how more important than other things, that the enlight- enment of the person doing all this stuff is more important than anything else. One of the things that I find most refreshing about many of the Tibetan monks I have met is that they spend almost NO time "working on themselves." Their own enlightenment is SECONDARY to helping others. Given a choice between pursuing some technique or process that would get them, personally, enlightened a little faster and just getting back to work helping others, there is simply no question which path they would choose. It's a matter of personal preference, I admit, but I found it refreshing after decades of "seekers" who would blow off ANY responsibility to others to pursue something that they thought would get them to enlightenment faster. In a way, it's related to a comment I heard from some programmers I worked with who used to live in Cambodia, during the Pol Pot period. We were read- ing some newspaper article about America and how many people suffered from neuroses. They started laughing. I asked why. They said, "Neurosis is a rich person's disease. You have to have a lot of time on your hands to care about neuroses. When your entire day is being spent just trying to survive, you don't have time for this kind of indulgence." Unc To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
