Revisiting an old, forgotten post

Recently, I was checking my Google stats page on my blog, as I often do, when I noticed that someone had stumbled upon an old post of mine. When you do a lot of blogging, sometimes you forget what you write, and this was no exception. It’s a very small post, but the quotation from the book, Dune Messiah, really struck me:

Paul: Did any of them see beyond rigid beliefs? Where was the one man who’d escaped the narrow destiny of his prejudices? Not even an Emperor escaped.

I wrote that original post in January, five months ago, shortly before I deleted the old blog. I believe at that time, I was becoming concerned about the path I had created for itself, and what pitfalls I’ve made in the process, which led me to question a lot of things, and then later to make the drastic move of deleting that old blog, and retiring the Level 8 Buddhist name, as well as the “Gerald Ford” identity.

However, when I read this post a second time, now five months later, and with a new blog, this quotation still has a powerful impact on me. I hope anyone who reads this also takes a moment to ponder this quotation. When I started re-reading Francis Cook’s book Hua-Yen: The Jewel Net of Indra, I found a good quote that really blew me away yesterday as I read it on the couch. Here it is in full:

Second, totalism refers to a manner of experiencing events in which room is allowed for all kinds of events, and in which nothing is excluded as alien or “bad,” as was discussed earlier. This is difficult to accept for the person unaccustomed to Eastern thought, for it demands of him that he make room not grudgingly or fatalistically, but joyously and with profound gratitude, for the horse urine and lice [from a haiku by Basho] that do in fact coexist with fine champagne and beautiful butterflies. The totalistic view [of the Huayan school] sees these as no less real, and no less wonderful, once we have transcended a petty, partial view of existence in which our comfort and unslakable thirst determine what has and has not a right to exist. In the totalistic universe, which is one organic body of interacting parts, it is an act of self-defeating madness to insist on a never-ending diet of vintage champagne, sunshine, and laughter, and to insist vehemently and with no small amount of hubris that urine, darkness and tears be banished forever. In every contest, there has to be of necessity both a winner and a loser (granting an occasional draw), and all that Hua-yen asks is that we realize, and appreciate, the fact that we cannot ever have one without the other.

So, when I read this Dune quotation above, about the limited destinies we create with our own views, in light of what Francis Cook is teaching us about Huayan/Kegon Buddhism, I amazed at my petty and limited view of the world. Even my “Buddhist” views are still predicated upon what I think is right, and what isn’t, and what I think Buddhism should be. When I meet someone whose view of things differs from mine, there is a sense of conflict. We all feel this. We feel that this other person is wrong, and we are right. We get mad when things don’t go our way, or we encounter something unexpected. What arrogance and stupidity!

Everything I believe about my identity and the world is founded on prejudices and rigid beliefs. They have no intrinsic substance at all. As long as I continue to believe what I believe, I will just continue to create a destiny, and path for myself that I have to keep living out. Thus, I lock myself into a single path because of my own beliefs. Until I appreciate that these beliefs are partial, limited and contingent, then I will never be free.

P.S. Other Dune-related posts I had forgotten about. I rather liked the Seeing yourself as you really are, Accepting things as they are, and Reverence.