More seriously, why is it "we" expect spiritually caring people to always be pleasant, warm and effusive? I do quite genuinely consider myself to be bad-tempered: it's just that I've been aware of it and working at managing that since I was 10. A couple of years later I started on an affirmation ("I will be kind, gentle and generous") that is a lifelong tool (I work, incidentally, at keeping whatever I consider my strengths to be as well as working on [reducing!] my faults and weaknesses: I'm not so foolish as to presume that my good points will always be with me from incarnation to incarnation ... especially if I take them for granted). The affirmation may well be working, as I had a reading last weekend while at our local spiritualist mob which started by commenting on me having a lot of compassion. Well, yeeees, perhaps, but ... when I'm driving, I have established a habit of being courteous - letting other drivers in etc. I might, however, grumble about it - e.g. "go on, get in before someone runs into you". It's not an active piece of negativity, but it's still grumbling, whether as a cover or what I don't know (and don't care, should anyone try to presume to tell me why).
It all did, however, combine to get me thinking about pleasantness vs. genuine caring. I have known too many people who put on a facade of niceness, and then stab you in the back. On the other hand, some of the gurus in Tibet have behaved appallingly towards their students - look up Mila Repa and what he endured under his guru Marpa, for instance. At one point, when building a house for Marpa (which Mila Repa built, then had to pull down bit by bit, then re-build), Mila Repa was getting sores on his back from carrying stones: Marpa told him to put a felt cloth on his back which had holes cut in it for the sores so he could keep on carrying stones.
There are other stories I have encountered about gurus in "the East". One more: a man went to a guru and begged to become a student of the guru, claiming that life had no meaning and he would jump off a cliff if he couldn't be the guru's student. The guru shrugged indifferently, and said "jump, then". The man jumped, died, and was brought back to life by the guru, who - according to the story (I think I read it in Paramhansa Yogananda's book "Autobiography of a Yogi"), was testing whether the man meant what he said, or was being a flippant manipulator (my words).
Maybe some of what seems to be unpleasantness is actually just testing us, or drawing out our potential. Certainly being at school was tough at time, and I was in absolute terror at the thought of some of the exams, for instance, a feeling which I have had at other times in this life.
Hmmmmm ....
Well, I think I'll end now with ... Christmas? Bah! Humbug!
Love, light, hugs and blessings
The Future Buddha of Grumpiness
May the world of commerce & business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.
Tags: attitudes, Buddhism, Hindiusm, presumption, society
First published: Frysdagr, 20th April, 2012
Last edited: Friday, 20th April, 2012
