As for your comment about turning away beggars, I remind you, friend, monks beg, but they’re not beggars, they’re monks, and the fact they, in the very least, dared to stand up and go against the grain, against delusion, then and now, is worthy of our respect, admiration and gratitude, even if they fail. As for those who are not honest about the path, they shouldn’t be called monks and shouldn’t be a cause of discussion, or of our concern. As for your idea that the must-monk mentality is poisonous, I disagree utterly, completely. It’s a commitment to liberation and one should be so lucky as to find the necessary trust and martial discipline in his spiritual commitment to become a monk. The way I see it, everybody should strive to be one, to be like one. Every single person should become a monk. I dare believe in this, why should it be different, when I believe in the Noble Eightfold Path? We would be so lucky everyone could master it. As for my own situation, indeed I’ve been lacking, I’ve been indolent, I’ve been foolish, I’ve been found wanting in faith and discipline, I’ve been, most of all, wavering, nor here nor there, too easily exhausted and unwilling, uncommitted, and I confess, friend, many are the hours, days, months and years I wished, like so many of my contemporaries, to let myself go and be crushed gladly by samsara, not giving a shit, taking scraps of fleeting pleasure at some master’s table, not giving a fuck and fuck everything, fuck everyone: escaping blindly, eating blindly, sleeping blindly, walking blindly, masturbating blindly, mocking blindly, laughing blindly, accusing blindly, thinking blindly, and so on, lacking in every virtue, uncompassionate, dulled, uncaring, unwilling, gladly abandoning every good effort and hope, abandoning myself utterly, to the very end of my days. I too sometimes wish, like many others, to be left alone, to be spat on by the demons of the world.
But then, as I’m staring at the ceiling, lying on the floor, in a self-indulgent torpor, waiting to die, year after year, a sliver of Buddha-nature shines through the walls of waste and debris around me, and under its light, I see with most piercing eyes the decay of virtue, of discipline, the growth of delusion, I see myself chewing on excrement, the people around me chewing on excrement, in a hopeless and sad situation, suffering from every malice, adapting to every malice, laughing at a matter that is not at all a laughing matter. Then I bend and cry f
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.