Sunday, January 14, 2007

Crash Course

Particularly in the Western hemisphere, when you go to a new country, you take a crash course to learn how to conduct yourself. A lot of business people get into acrash course to learn how to eat with chopsticks, how to move and behave, what to eat or not eat, what to say and whether it is polite to finish the food on yourplate or leave something behind. However, when you come to a spiritual master, you don't come having had a crash course on how to handle a guru. You havealready had a crash course of your own, which is your own neurosis, your confusion. That's fantastic. It's a very vivid crash course, a very good one. It's honest andgenuine experience. You come along as you are, as they say.

From "Tradition and Sanity in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism," Talk Ten of Fourteen, from THE TIBETAN BUDDHIST PATH, Summer, 1974, Naropa University.Forthcoming as a DVD series from shambhalashop.com.

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