We Already Have the Tools

Photo: me at the honey stand, Piermont farmer’s Market, August 7 2023

We already have the tools to undertake the practice of loving kindness. External considering is the practice of loving kindness. The fact that it has been renamed with something that sounds more clinical does it a disservice; and although Gurdjieff, who was very nearly egoistic in his devotion to originality, may have been right to do so, originality can eventually become its own vice.

While we’re examining these many questions we should ask ourselves whether that selfsame danger is in fact, what divorces us from the world at large, and consigns our work to a corner smaller than it ought to live in.

There are times when things can be too original for their own good. When this happens, they acquire an unseemly cupidity. It may not be evident at first, but eventually it reveals itself; and if one finds that this is so, even if the cupidity served a purpose when it was introduced, there’s a time when it needs to be retired.

As always, I’m asking questions. And if we wish to revitalize our work, and what it is, we must challenge it, and find its weaknesses, because they're our weaknesses. Everything has weaknesses.