Comments on “Visceral dislike”

Hooray again! I share your revulsion for the exaggeratedly sweet. I experience this less in relation to Thich Nhat Hanh-- who seems to have earned his sweetness the hard way-- than to the unreflecting legions who ape his demeanor and make the APPEARANCE of gentleness, humility, and imperturbability the sole criterion of Buddhist validity. This is a lamentable state of affairs (certainly not limited to Buddhism among religions or belief systems) that impedes actual practice.

The Zen folks have a koan about 'taking one step off a hundred-foot pole' that evokes, for me, that primal terror of stepping out into the immeasurable uncertainty of practice 'with no direction home, a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.' (To steal from a different master.) I think we all want guarantees-- that we will achieve results, that our teacher knows what he or she is talking about, that we're somehow going to triumph over whatever we think is the 'samsara' that propels us to take up the Way in the first place. People who don't stay solidly in place as Revered Masters make us very nervous; it takes some doing to consider the possibility that sooner or later we must take that one vertiginous step. Guaranteed results seems much the safer choice.

The operative word, of course, is 'seems'.

Cheers.