First, this blog replaces my previous blog, thecosmoplitanlawyerblogspot.com . Second, unlike that earlier blog, the present one is primarily meant as a record of my readings. It is not meant to suggest that others will be or should be interested in what I read. And third, in a sense, it is a public diary of one who is an alien in his own American culture. A person who feels at home just about anywhere, except in his birthplace . . . America.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
"EVERYTHING IS CHANGE HAPPENING"
Sylvia Boorstein, It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness (New York: HarperOne, 1995) ("Since everything is change happening, there is no one who owns the changes and no one to whom the changes are happening. We are verbs, not nouns, experiences unfolding, stories telling themselves as sequels to other stories previously told. . . . Stories related to particular other stories ('conditioned' by them is what the Buddha would have said), but fundamentally related to all stories, totally empty of anything separate or unique or enduring." Id. at 122. "The energy of lust arises, we look around, and we say, 'Boom, this is what I want.' It's not really a problem--it's actually funny. It only becomes a problem if we forget to notice it, if we take it seriously." "None of this means that we shouldn't fall in love. Falling in love is wonderful. It probably means that when we fall in love we should wait a bit to make sure that the one we've fallen in love with is not simply an imagined person constructed out of our own desires." Id. at 77-78.).