Following up on the exercise I rapped about in my previous post, here's one that might be fun, and even uplifting. On this forum, due to its focus and its very nature, we hear a lot of stories about the spiritual teachers past and present who have inspired us. But what about the *other* people who have inspired you? Who were they? What about their lives or their words uplifted you and affected your life deeply?
I ask because if I were to attempt to compile a "Top Ten List" of the people in my life who have most inspired me, Maharishi might not make the list at all, and Rama -- as interesting as he was -- probably wouldn't make it into the top five. Nor would any other spiritual teacher I ever met in this life. I think that Tsangyang Gyatso (the Sixth Dalai Lama) would make it into my top ten, because he was such a *character*, and so much his "own man." As someone on this forum described it, he suffered from "terminal uniqueness." Named as the next incarnation of the most important person in Tibetan Buddhist history, he refused to take his vows as a monk and treated being the Dalai Lama as his "day job," while his "night job" consisted of being a poet and hanging with sinners in Shol-town, Lhasa's red light district. My kinda guy. I love that he took a path that was literally forced on him and found a way to turn it into one he preferred more. Besides, the dude wrote some awesome poetry under his "pen name" of the Turquoise Bee, and great writing always inspires me. Definitely in my top five would be the singer-songwriter I mention here far too often, Bruce Cockburn. Although he would be horrified to hear it, and would run away from me like some kind of deranged stalker if I ever said it to him, I consider him one of the most important of my teachers in this life. I base this on two things -- his love of language and the beauty with which he encapsulates the beauty of the world in his songs, and the way he "walks his talk" in his daily life. His life is literally about traveling the world and writing down what he sees in it, not to preach (he's a Christian, and I am anything but) but just to record what it's like to try to live a fairly conscious life on a largely unconscious planet. That inspires me to try to do the same. A couple of my best friends would also make the list. One is the polar opposite of myself in terms of spiritual practice; we laughingly think of ourselves as Narcissus and Goldmund. We both left Rama's study about the same time, and I dived into life outside the realm of spiritual pursuits; I have formally studied with no spiritual teachers since, and have not even sought them. He went to the other extreme, and has become a devotee and follower of maybe two dozen of them. I don't teach at all, and he teaches full time, relying for the financial wherewithall to do so on God, or nature; he hasn't worked at a "day job" in 13 years. Recently we've gotten back in touch over the Net (he lives in India, I live in the Netherlands) and have found to our mutual surprise that both of us have come to pretty much the same conclusions about the teachers we studied with (both Maharishi and Rama), and about spiritual practice itself. Although I would never adopt his lifestyle of total seva, I can be inspired by it, and he can be inspired by some of my writing, even though I'm on a personal path that many would see as the opposite of his. Go figure. Another good friend would definitely be in the top five, up near the top, if for no other reason that she's been my friend for over 20 years. We've seen each other's "good sides" and "bad sides" and avoided the temptation to "bag" each other using one or the other. It's a relationship based on mutual respect, and a great deal of shared laughter. Because, when you come right down to it, what is more inspiring than laughter?
