"After a few years of strenuous retreating, I ordained as a Buddhist monk and went on a pilgrimage to Bombay in January 1980, to visit the renowned sage Nisargadatta Maharaj. I had known of him years earlier through his book I Am That. After a few days of bantering back and forth about my attachment to being a monk, he said, “You are like a man holding a flashlight, trying to run beyond its beam. The view you are holding…is undermining your intent.” Rodney Smith
http://www.tricycle.com/dharma-talk/undivided-mind
Q: how much does what we know already (or clinging to what we know already, i.e. having fixed views) - undermine our ability to be open to new learning? On the other hand, we don't have to examine the teachings of every new faddist new age spiritual teacher who comes along do we?
Weekly homework discussion group! NEW TIME: TBC at Buyeo
"After a few years of strenuous retreating, I ordained as a Buddhist monk and went on a pilgrimage to Bombay in January 1980, to visit the renowned sage Nisargadatta Maharaj. I had known of him years earlier through his book I Am That. After a few days of bantering back and forth about my attachment to being a monk, he said, “You are like a man holding a flashlight, trying to run beyond its beam. The view you are holding…is undermining your intent.” Rodney Smith
http://www.tricycle.com/dharma-talk/undivided-mind
Q: how much does what we know already (or clinging to what we know already, i.e. having fixed views) - undermine our ability to be open to new learning? On the other hand, we don't have to examine the teachings of every new faddist new age spiritual teacher who comes along do we?
Weekly homework discussion group! NEW TIME: TBC at Buyeo