[Buddha-l] Buddha-l and me

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 14:15 -0600, Andrew Fort wrote, in response to my
observation that it irritates me that I can never catch him saying
foolish things on buddha-l:

> That's mostly because my nature (or at least my e-nature) is pretty
> even-tempered and cautious. 

I'm cursed with a temperament like that, too. At least that's how I
operate in daily life. But I discovered long ago, when I was about eight
or nine years of age, that writing gave me a wonderful way to escape the
narrow boundaries that my timid, cautious ego imposed on the rest of my
psyche. In almost everything I did around other people I was so afraid
of disapproval from others that I went overboard seeking ways to placate
people and soothe them when they earned someone else's disapproval. The
way I found to deal with my shadow, that is, all those parts of my
psyche that did not meet my timid ego's approval, was to write fiction,
to put dialogue into the mouths of fictitious adventurers, scoundrels,
jerks, fools, villains and megalomaniacs who never had a care in the
world about what others might think of them. To this day, that is how I
manage, except now I put the dialogues not into the mouths of characters
in short stories and novels and plays and skits, but into messages I
write to buddha-l and various other e-venues.

> I find reading Buddha-l a useful "sadhana" in that it gives me the
> opportunity to observe my responses to a variety of people and ideas
> at a comfortable pace. 

I also find buddha-l useful, not so much as a sadhana, but as a place to
take brief vacations from the tepid persona I usually present to
strangers, friends, colleagues and my dog. Buddha-l provides me an
opportunity to escape from mindfulness, shoot from the hip, be reckless
in what I say and how I say it, and try out positions I find outrageous,
just to see what it feels like to state them and try to defend them.
(Teaching philosophy and comparative religions provides many of the same
opportunities to try to defend indefensible positions, but in classrooms
one has to be careful not to offend people, so one cannot be as free
there as one can be here.)

> Anyway, buddha-l is not for everyone

You're goddamn right it's not for everyone, Andy. It's not for
Republicans. And it's not for all those piety-saturated devotees who
waste the best years of their lives flopped on their bellies in front
groping the feet of those whom they imagine to be saints, swamis,
roshis, gurus, ascended masters, illuminati, arhants, bodhisattvas and
Linux wizards.

A book I've mentioned before but might as well mention again is Patricia
Wallace's study called <cite>The Pyschology of the Internet</cite>
(Cambridge University Press, 1999). It has a lot of insight into the
opportunities the Internet provides for doing shadow work. I recommend
it highly to people who find themselves scratching their heads and
trying to figure out why people on buddha-l spew such nonsense and
tripe, without even having the excuse of being Republicans.

-- 
Richard Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu>
*** 
"If you want the truth, rather than merely something to say,
you will have a good deal less to say." -- Thomas Nagel