--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > "The time could have been used to enlighten someone with > a smile or opening up the post office door for someone > who has too much to carry in." > > Nice.
Indeed. That is what I love so much about the Buddhist approach. It's about the small things. What is it with some spiritual teachers (and some spiritual seekers), that they can only inspire themselves with Grand Ideas of enlightening the world? And then, as they supposedly work towards that end, they look down on those very people they claim to want to enlighten, and have as little as humanly possible to do with them. Give me somebody who gets down and dirty and works with the "common folk" anytime. One of my favorite moments from my time in Paris was when I was in the store near my home, and some obviously wealthy and obviously idiotic American woman was berating the manager of the store for allowing a homeless woman to open the door for patrons as they entered and left. She never asked for anything, but sometimes people would give her a little change. The manager of the store looked at the rich woman, who obviously spent a great deal of money regularly in his store, and he said, "Madam, I know this woman. She was one of the teachers in my school as I was growing up. She has fallen on hard times, and I allow her some measure of dignity by allowing her to do what she does here, opening the door for my patrons. She will stay, and you will go. Never enter my store again." I was never more proud of a Parisian than in that moment. Those are the moments in which spirituality is made or broken, *not* in the grandiose plans that never seem to come to fruition.
