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Post by laughter on Oct 29, 2013 10:11:39 GMT -5
Yes, I agree. The simple verbs 'to give' 'to take', are nothing more than a communication of an action. If it leaves my hand I am giving, if it comes into my hand, I am taking. So what is being discussed in this thread, isn't the acts of giving and taking, it is the conceptual attachments people make to those actions. For example, Taking seems to equal greed, selfishness, bad; Giving seems to equal generosity, selflessness, good. It is the age old battle of good/bad, right/wrong. But then where does selling, swapping, exchanging fit into these polarities? I'm not sure how enlightenment ever creeps in to such discussions. To even do so suggests a false idol or image of enlightenment. The polarities don't exist except in imagination. A man decides to take his wife to dinner. He starts driving toward a nearby restaurant, but then thinks, "This is a very expensive restaurant I'm driving towards. Is it fair for me to spend a hundred dollars on dinner for two people when there are starving people in the world? Maybe I should take my wife to a less expensive restaurant and donate what we save to a world hunger charity." He changes direction and starts toward a less expensive restaurant, but then he thinks, "Even this restaurant will charge us fifty dollars for dinner. Maybe I should select an even less-expensive restaurant and donate the money saved to some homeless person." He changes direction again, but then thinks, "Hmmm, maybe we should just eat at home and give a hundred dollars to a local food bank." Finally he stops the car, and his wife asks, "Why have you stopped the car?" He replies, "Because I can't decide where we should eat dinner." If you are the man driving the car, (1) where should you drive? and (2) what should you do? If the answers aren't crystal clear, then you're probably paralyzed by imagination, just like the man in the car. The way this first occurred to me years and years ago was that there's always going to be someone to envy, and always going to be someone to pity. No change in social status or condition will alter this. Seeing this for what it is includes the possibility that these bits of imagination might still arise, but now they arise in the context of that seeing. |
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Post by laughter on Oct 29, 2013 10:31:21 GMT -5
Giving requires no concept or comparison, and I think that's what you're pointing to in your following comment. As Adya often says, "If we stand in our own two shoes and know who we are, then we know what we have to do." The knowing to which he refers is non-conceptual and direct. Yes, I agree. The simple verbs 'to give' 'to take', are nothing more than a communication of an action. If it leaves my hand I am giving, if it comes into my hand, I am taking. So what is being discussed in this thread, isn't the acts of giving and taking, it is the conceptual attachments people make to those actions. For example, Taking seems to equal greed, selfishness, bad; Giving seems to equal generosity, selflessness, good. It is the age old battle of good/bad, right/wrong. But then where does selling, swapping, exchanging fit into these polarities? I'm not sure how enlightenment ever creeps in to such discussions. To even do so suggests a false idol or image of enlightenment. Yes, I'd agree. The false image takes the form of a set of expectations as to how a person should act. |
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