Oh, it is so easy to condemn someone we know for sure is wrong. eh?

Gathering together for mutual support makes the condemnation even stronger, and more "right" - see all these people who agree with me? It feels good to be on the "right" side. eh? i am away from "pile" (home) for a couple weeks, and wow! such juicy chances to condemn: what she wears, what movie is worst, what spouse should know better, what child is naughty, what president is wrong, what country is evil, what terrorist should burn in hell... i do not always resist, the logic sometimes sounds good, and i join in... immediately heart and mind start shrinkin', gettin' leaner & meaner, contracting into delusional world while ole "I" is jumpin' up and down with delight!

What would happen if we let labeling people and stuff "wrong" go? "Any" condemnation tightens our shackles. And why are we here, but to be free?

- dharma grandmother on DailyDharma, Zen story from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, by Paul Reps, published by Shambhala.

When Bankei held his seclusion-weeks of meditation, pupils from many parts of Japan came to attend. During one of these gatherings a pupil was caught stealing. The matter was reported to Bankei with the request that the culprit he expelled. Bankei ignored the case.
Later the pupil was caught in a similar act, and again Bankei disregarded the matter. This angered the other pupils, who drew up a petition asking for the dismissal of the thief, stating that otherwise they would leave in a body.
When Bankei had read the petition he called everyone before him.
"You are wise brothers, " he told them.
"You know what is right and what is not right. You may go somewhere else to study if you wish but this poor brother does not even know right from wrong. Who will teach him if I do not? I am going to keep him here even if all the rest of you leave."
A torrent of tears cleansed the face of the brother who had stolen. All desire to steal had vanished."

- Zen story

The Bible of the Christians, like the Koran of the Moslems, never seems to consider that the spiritual experiences in the form of hallucinatory visions by prophet or devotee, reported therein, may, in the last analysis, not be real. But the Bardo Thodol is so sweeping in its assertions that it leaves its reader with the clear-cut impression that every vision, without any exception whatsoever, in which spiritual beings, gods or demons, or paradises or places of torment and purgation play a part, in a Bardo or any Bardo-like dream or ecstasy, is purely illusionary, being based up upon sangsaric phenomena.

- W. Y. Evans-Wentz

The prison of the good

It has been said that the good "sanskaras" can be a medium for maintaining the limited self. When a person looks upon himself as good, he is experiencing self-affirmation through identification with an opposite. It is a continuation of separative existence in a new form. This new house which the ego constructs for itself is difficult to dismantle because self-identification with the good is often more complete than self-identification with the bad. Identification with the bad is easier to deal with, because as soon as the bad is recognized its grip on consciousness is lessened; but to loosen the grip of the good presents a more difficult problem, since the good carries a semblance of self-justification.

The ego changes identification with the evil for identification with the good because the latter gives a greater sense of expansion. But sooner or later, the aspirant perceives the good to be no less a limitation. The difficulty concerning evil is not so much in perceiving what it is, as in dissociation; the difficulty concerning good is in perceiving that it is a limitation. This difference arises because animal *sanskaras* are firmly rooted, owing to ancient origin and long accumulation; but it is important to note that the good binds as much as the evil.

- from "God to Man and Man to God" by Meher Baba

Compare with Yeats, from 'The Sorcerors', below:

IN Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers, and come across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were they to unite them either with evil or with good. And yet the wise are of opinion that wherever man is, the dark powers who would feed his rapacities are there too, no less than the bright beings who store their honey in the cells of his heart, and the twilight beings who flit hither and thither, and that they encompass him with a passionate and melancholy multitude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or through accident of birth possesses the power of piercing into their hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth, moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic have been but little practised.

- W. B. Yeats

Blessed is the poem that comes through me

but not of me because the sound of my own music

will drown the song of Love.

- Rumi

"Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,it is better that you should leave your work and sitat the gate of the temple and take almsof those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference,you bake a bitter bread that feedsbut half man's hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes,your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels,and love not the singing, you muffle man's earsto the voices of the dayand the voices of the night."

~ Kahlil Gibran

We first Americans mingle with our pride an exceptional humility.Spiritual arrogance is foreign to our nature and teaching. We neverclaimed that the power of articulate speech is proof of superiorityover "dumb creation"; on the other hand, it is to us a perilous gift.
We believe profoundly in silence - the sign of a perfect equilibrium.Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind and spirit.those who can preserve their selfhood ever calm and unshaken by thestorms of existence - not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; nota ripple upon the shining pool - those, in the mind of the person ofnature, possess the ideal attitude and conduct of life.

Ohiyesa
The Ways of the Spirit
The Wisdom of the Native Americans

> I think the U.S. Right/Left divide can
> be loosely predicted in individuals by the question: "Is Man
> naturally evil? Yes or no?""

By couching the issue in the normative term "evil" (or "good/bad") they cannot understand the science. Ask instead wheither it is "true/false".

Is it "naturally evil" for a male lion to murder his predecessor'scubs when he takes over a pride? Who Knows? Who cares? It's true."

Jay -- www.dieoff.org

Overcome your uncertainties and free yourself from dwelling on sorrow. If you delight in existence, you will become a guide to those who need you, revealing the path to many.

-Sutta Nipata, from Buddha Speaks

All prosperity and all adversity, childhood, youth, old age and death, as also suffering, what is known as being immersed in happiness and unhappiness and all the rest of it: all these are the extension of the dense darkness of ignorance.

- Vasitha's Yoga