[FairfieldLife] Quandary

Wed, 31 May 2006 23:12:00 -0700

Main Entry: quan·da·ry
Pronunciation: 'kwän-d(&-)rE
Etymology: origin unknown
: a state of perplexity or doubt 

So I've got this friend. (Really...as you'll be able
to tell, this isn't one of those It's-really-about-
me-but-I'll-pretend-it's-about-a-friend thangs.)
In some ways he's a total inspiration and a reminder
that one really can get through this life on faith
alone. In others he's a reminder of the addictive
nature of faith, and the fact that often people
other than the addict wind up paying for the latest
fix.

Basically, this fellow was a TM teacher but I never
knew him then. I met K. in the Rama trip and we
became buddies. We left the Rama trip at about the
same time, at the right time, before everything got
really gnarly and the guy offed himself. Since then,
we've mainly lived in different places but have kept
in touch via email and phone.

The inspiring part is that the man lives on faith.
Like the recently-mentioned yogis who get their
nourishment from the sun, K. hasn't worked at a
real, 9-to-5 job that pays actual money since, I
think, 1980. He decided at some point that he was
going to spend the rest of the incarnation "working
only for the dharma" and trusting in the world to
provide for him. The inspiring part is that it has,
in the form of other people paying all his bills
for him, while he works his butt off helping his
various spiritual teachers teach. He's always managed
to find a place to live, enough food to get by,
traveling expenses to places all over the world,
and even a girlfriend who shares his approach to
life. It's amazing when you think of it. It just
doesn't compute.

Another inspiring part is that K. is one of those
guys who lives almost entirely in the present. He
has to; as far as I can tell he has no memory. We
used to joke about his standard movie review line.
He walks out of the theater and says, "That was
the best film I've ever seen in my entire life."
And he says this even if the film was a total turkey,
and he's telling the truth every time, because as
near as I can figure out, he really can't *remember*
any other films he's ever seen. Therefore the latest
really *is* the best.

But that's also the thing that inspires the quandary.
K. has this thing about always needing a spiritual
teacher in his life. It's the mechanism he uses to
keep his faith yang up, and IMO to pull what he needs
to get by from the universe. He can't trust in himself
as teacher or his path as the path. We've talked about
this; he always needs someone else to be the teacher
and to provide the path for him. Because of the memory
thang, K. really can't remember any of the teachers
he's worked with but the latest one, and for the
latest one he's totally "sold out," as they used to
say in the TMO.

So every few months I get another email from K.
asking for money so that he can go to X country and
spend some quality time with Y teacher. For him its'
always a new email, one that has no history. But
for me, on the receiving end, it's the 23rd. such
email I've gotten since we walked away from the Rama
trip, and the 23rd. teacher, and the 23rd. adventure
he wants someone else to pay for. For him it's the
*only* adventure, but I, with less faith than him and
with the ability to remember all the adventures that
went before, recognize it as only the latest, and
probably far from the last.

So that's the quandary. Do I send him some money,
in honor of his enduring faith and the fact that
he still has faith in a faithless world? Or do I
not, knowing that from another point of view he's
a spiritual teacher addict, and I'm essentially
one of the people enabling him to remain an addict
by paying for it?

You people have been around the block. What do
you think?








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