Deleted two posts

I need to be careful about what I say about people that is not flattering. I have deleted two posts. From now on I will be kinder about what I say about people. It's a learning experience, learning where my limits are on what I should say about people. I think that when internally I feel loving and admiring towards people, I don't perceive that writing about their external flaws is a big deal. But then I'm not being mindful and compassionate about how it might be to be them reading about themselves in this way. I feel badly that I could have inadvertently hurt someone in this way.

What is the Perfect Way to Spend a Dollar?

On our way to Sunday morning tai chi class, we pass several traffic lights where there are always one or two homeless people hanging out with signs asking for handouts.  I always turn to John and ask hm to give me money to give them.

"They're only going to spend it on booze or drugs.  I never give beggars money.  I grew up in New York, you never do that in New York."  John mumbles as he begrudgingly hands me a dollar bill or points me to the ashtray where we keep our parking meter quarters.  This has become the ritual exchange that we have whenever I want to give money to a homeless person.

I agree with John that there is a high probability that the money we give will be spent on more booze or drugs.  I have given this some thought.  In the Buddhist view of the world, an opportunity to give to someone in need is an opportunity to rack up auspiciousness in our lives.  It's a gift that the homeless person gives us that invites us to be better, more compassionate people.

I don't really buy into beliefs that giving anything to others gets us into Heaven any easier or keeps us from being reincarnated into snakes or worms.  On the other hand, from a philosophical perspective, we are all a part of the same universe.  The idea that "this is my money, I earned it, and you can't have it" somehow implies some sort of greedy attitude that says "I value money tremendously, and as such, I think I'm a better, more valuable person than you are because I have this money and you don't, and neither do you deserve it."  I might be over-exaggerating the fictitious dialog here, but my point is, does it matter exactly how that dollar is used by the person that I give it to?

If I hold a dollar bill in my hand and ask myself "how can I best use this dollar bill?", then how would I want to spend it?  Stick it in my pocket for lunch money?  Invest it in the stock market?  Save it for a rainy day?  Add it to money to buy something cool?  Take a homeless person to the local McDonalds and buy them a hamburger?  Send it to the "Free Tibet" fund to support peace on earth?  What exactly defines the absolutely most perfect way to spend that dollar bill?

Seeing Life Outside of the Blankets

Never in my past have I ever thought that if I had to live my life again I would do things differently. But in the past two years, and most especially the past 4 months, my life has changed so dramatically that I now realize that perhaps I never really ever gave the true quality of my life much thought.

I'm not saying that I have any regrets in my life, because I've come to accept that what has been and what will be are unimportant. What I'm saying is that, if you live your life under a blanket you may go an entire lifetime without ever realizing that outside of that blanket an entire universe awaits you. You can die right there -- perhaps blissfully, who knows -- but also perhaps in abject misery, pain, loneliness, and bitterness, without having ever learned that life had to offer an infinite number of possibilities and alternatives, including everything that you had come to understand as things that are fundamentally "you" in your mind's eye.

Throughout my life I've had so many layers of blankets. With each passing decade I've seen blankets added, shuffled around, maybe changing a bit in character, but mostly just sort of shuffling about overhead. I've experiences the briefest moments of life outside, but as whispers of another world that didn't actually really exist.

Now, through a series of circumstances, I've been stripping off those blankets, one by one, and gathering the momentum to actually step out into life and see it as it was, I think, always meant to be seen. The veil that I've always had in my perceptions and thoughts is lifting, and I'm beginning to change my definition of what I always thought was real and what was fiction.

It's been work. And it's been suffering. I did a 72-hour fast this past weekend, and I spent some time thinking about my life and how I really have no idea what true suffering is. Still, I don't deny that we all suffer in some way. If we didn't we wouldn't have murder, destruction, hate, prejudice, and negativity in this world.

It is my hope that I can take this strength that I feel and continue to nurture it in myself and look about at the world and see it through my new vision, and maybe so very gently and mindfully and softly touch people who are also hiding under the blankets of their own lives, blindly trying to make their way in a seeing world.