Balancing ...

As plots unfold on local, regional, national, international, maybe cosmic stages, today's offering examines ways to find escapes from the awful divide and rule game, setting families and friends at each other's throats, each defending their opinion as if their very existence depended on it ... leaving the timeless teaching of Compassion languishing ...

Why?

Well, why's the three letter word of philosophy, in English at least ... and that asks the deeper questions ... how and who follow why in the hierarchy, though many clever humans neglect the why, since how has served them well enough, and who is them these days, that is to say, solipcism runs wild and its balancing insight, the fundamental falsehood of a self separate from the whole, which is liberation, available to all the fragments in time ... let's leave the tricky philosophical issue of Time for now ... and say, perhaps, Past is known and recorded in History and Herstory, mostly by power players, but not always, Future is contingent on probabilities and shaped by choices made Now ... giving each fragment as individual or cooperating group immense power ... expressed, as reader(s) may know, by Tolle in The Power of Now ...

The well known Buddhist sage, HHDL, after decades of investigation into the nature of reality with scientists and in meditation, offers a beautifully simple teaching in two words: Be Kind ... and for world weary cynics a rider: If you can't be kind just yet, at least don't be cruel ... which brings us round or across the spiral to the simplicity of the teaching of Gautama, the historical Buddha from 2500 years ago, more or less: The 4 Noble Truths ... 1. There is suffering in the world; 2. There are the causes; 3. Escape is at hand; 4. These are the Ways ... naturally, like all reductions, it takes a while to examine each noble truth, whilst constantly paying attention to our own psychology, since the world we see reflects not so much what is as who we are ... which is tricky! Still, we try ...

So, how to be kind in our own sphere of influence? Let's call that where we are now to start shall we? Given that the Crisis is a reality, in the minds of humans at least, do we really need to fall out with friends on such questions as: Is it good to wear a mask? Is it good to seek a vaccine? An ethical view might leave each person free to make their own decision and leave the others to do the same. Being right is far less important than being kind, after all. The need to be right might be called the ego at work, whilst the right to make our own mistakes and love one another is a higher teaching.

Having established the holier than thou position, it's time to prepare for a wander over the fell and through the village, practicing being kind, smiling with the eyes and finding ways to agree, not slavishly but compassionately, the main aim currently being to help lift the Fear, which blocks clear seeing and is not the opposite of Love, which has no opposite, but Hope ... a topic for another day!