Monday, April 13, 2009

Group Paralysis-Part 1-Sawaki Roshi

Sawaki Roshi: When a person is alone, he's not so bad. When a group is formed, paralysis occurs, and people become so confused that they cannot judge what is right and wrong. Some people go into a group situation on purpose, just to experience group paralysis, even paying a fee. Often people advertise in order to bring people together for some political or spiritual purpose and only create group paralysis. Buddhsit practitioners keep some distance from society, not to escape from it, but to avoid paralysis.

My note: This is an extremely potent teaching from Sawaki Roshi. I was born and raised(and still live) in the Washington D.C. area, so you can probably guess the type of "group paralysis" I've been exposed to. The worst of it comes from those of great affluency. Anyone looking for a great book on the nature of mass movements should check out Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer". Classic.

From now one I'm going to psot Sawaki's comment one day and Uchiyama's the next. I type extremely slow and it is taking me longer than I originally thought to enter the both of them, especially because Uchiyam was quite verbose.

Speaking of Uchiyama, I found this the other day:http://www.lastelladelmattino.org/buddista/index.php/in-english/daitsu-tom-wright. It is a book by Uchiyama called "Laughter Through The Tears" and is his thoughts on a life of Takuhatsu. As far as I know this is the only place this book exist.

Thanks to everyone who stops by.

Al

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