XPost: alt.philosophy.zen, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.taoism   
   From: tanghuyen@gmail.com   
      
   On 8/21/2016 1:33 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
      
   > The interesting thing for me is that you seem to want me to have a   
   > preference as to how you should be.   
   >   
   > We have all changed over the years though.  I seem to see now that   
   > you were right about Fu and Evelyn after witnessing them for some   
   > years on Facebook.  They have changed too, but not in response to   
   > anything you might have told them, wise or not.   
   >   
   > I suspect that nobody is more aware of a person's failings than the   
   > person themselves.  We stay the same because we feel unable to change.   
   > In spite of that and everything else,  we do change though.  Sometimes   
   > for the better, sometimes not.   
      
   Noah my sweet and loving son, if we are   
   aware of ourselves enough to know our   
   own failings, we should already be lucky.   
   Mental culture is predicated on such   
   self-awareness, which is rare. Some   
   people in mental culture pretend to   
   have reputable teachers, though what   
   benefits they get from them is not   
   obvious, regardless of the length and   
   depth of the claimed associations.   
      
   I often say that many grooved-in   
   practitioners of mental culture seem   
   worse off than sinners in the street   
   who have never heard of mental   
   culture. Whatever aura of mental   
   irradiation that they get from their   
   long-term mental culture seems   
   beyond thin when compared to the   
   average person in the street.   
      
   It would behoove mental cultivators   
   to stop and take stock of how much   
   they have benefited from their mental   
   culture, once in a while. But they   
   cannot perform such self-review if   
   they don't know themselves!   
      
   Tang Huyen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)