It
Is not easy
To stop thinking ill
Of others.
Usually one must enter into a friendship
With a person
Who has accomplished that great feat himself.
Then
Something
Might start to rub off on you
Of that
True
Elegance.
Is not easy
To stop thinking ill
Of others.
Usually one must enter into a friendship
With a person
Who has accomplished that great feat himself.
Then
Something
Might start to rub off on you
Of that
True
Elegance.
Hafiz, version by Daniel Ladinsky
2 comments:
Bad habits and dirt rub off. Hand-me-down realizations are not an attainment worthy of praise. Elegance grows from within.
Yes...
Bad habits and dirt, as regards our particular work, are mostly one's opinion, believing your thoughts to be real and judgment. They certainly do rub off. Recently seeing a very opinionated and judgmental person wreak havoc in a previously calm and open bunch of people showed this. In meditation traditions I have encountered, where it is called 'pufifying the mind' or 'removing defilements' and in what we do, 'correct practice', ie. forgetting self, is the only real way of washing this dirt off effectively. This is also relaxing the mind, or, as one of my fellow students put it 'resting in our own true energy'. There need be no fear of cathing bad habits or getting dirty if one has correct practice.
'Hand me down realisations' is a partisan judgment: one person's words inspire and completely light up an aspect of reality for one student, and leave another cold, sounding like a platitude. If something sheds light on practice or life, even if it's from a cereal box... whatever. Who are we to judge that? Does it serve us well? That's all I am interested in.
Elegance, or grace, shines from within, perhaps. But it also falls from who-knows-where like rain, even on those we mean-spiritedly judge to be not worthy of it. It can flicker into life, for real, in the most heated of conflicts, suddenly, and with no warning. It cannot be legislated for, or against, in my experience.
Thanks, Craig, for your comment.
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