Sunday, January 8, 2012

Digestion





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Food is always an offering.  Not eating what is offered is not only wasteful but terrible.  Perhaps this is too harsh of a judgment.  Sharing food is a critical component of practical compassion because all people experience hunger to some degree, it is the common denominator of the suffering human condition.  To feed someone else is to care about them.  Specific health concerns may interfere with this karma, but politics should not.

Buddhist monks have been known to walk down the mountain and buy meat from the muslim communities below because they don't want the death of animals on their hands.  In their belly is fine. Life must be sustained, what greater sacrifice than to give life to sustain life?

The "serious swami" condition is a limitation to flexibility and should be discarded just as future pain should be discarded.  I can't conceive of how either is particularly useful, relevant, or actually meaningful.  It is always better to forge your own way by virtue of what works rather than to do as you are told.