a zen buddhist monk's blog about things almost zen and telling it the way it is - zen or not (yet)

March 17, 2010

So righteous; so wrong, us!

It's so easy to be righteous, isn't it?

Someone says something about someone that somehow makes us angry... or sad, or embarrassed or etc. etc., so we slam them in our gossiping at the water cooler, or in emails to the boss or...

Our feelings about the "something", someone said are just that; our feelings. No-one forced them upon us, no-one makes us feel the way we feel; it's entirely our doing! So we should look at ourselves first when we feel affronted. Admittedly, without this social construct we would fall irrevocably into chaos, but, perhaps we could try a little harder to make sure that our feelings are not for nothing! We all feel terrible about what happened in Tahiti and the like, and that's good because we leap into a collective action to help! BUT, there is of course the downside.

This "someone" posts "something" on the net; a blog, a tweet; and we jump into action to criticise, to condemn, to attack! OK so there are two sides to every story and everyone has the right to be "right" n'est ce pas? But why is it that negativity is so much more appealing to us? The story of a famous couple splitting, or a man's indiscretions, or a film failing at the Oscars, or someone's opinion that doesn't tally with ours?

There's someone I know who scours the net for information about his work colleagues so that he can use it against them to advance his sorry little life. Just another free-loader sucking on the breast of society's inexorable thirst for negativity; a low life that only exists through others' hard work and dedication and waits for them to make a mistake; a self-centred little parrasite that needs validation - I hope he's reading this! I know who you are and your worm friends who propigate your negativity. Take a close look inside and think about what values you bring to the world; this world that's falling apart around our ears - Oh! And don't forget your fiddle!

- seiun hosei joza

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Do your thoughts lead your feelings to the same place you want to avoid? We are all in some ways conceited,we are all human are we not?

Seiun Hosei said...

You are soooo right!

Our thoughts lead us everywhere but, they can lead us to strong negative emotions like anger, greed, conceit etc. These emotions in turn lead us to places (as you said) that we should have avoided.

The difference (hope) is that if in retrospect we understand what happened, there's a good possibility that we can work on it and not repeat the error. _/|\_