[Buddha-l] Buddhas Meditation

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 8, 2011, at 4:30, Lidewij Niezink <lidewij at gmail.com> wrote:

> (we are in Holland after all, compromise is our way of life,
> nothing gets ever done)

Thank you for the lucid explanation, Lidewij. Your parenthetical remark puts a finger on why I felt so comfortable during my semester in the Netherlands. I, too, am a devotee of compromise and never get anything done. Mind you, the Dutch are better than I at getting things done. If things were left to me, most of Holland would be under the sea. 

Last night my indecisive compromising wife (she's Norwegian, you see) and I watched a movie on the life of Temple Grandin, a famous autistic woman who redesigned slaughterhouses so that cows would not be frightened in their last few minutes of life. She said something like this: "The cows are going to die and be eaten. That's why people raise them. If we didn't eat them, they'd just stand around and look stupid. But if they're going to die for us, we can at least treat them with respect." Although I would probably be among the disgruntled Dutch Buddhists who wanted a complete ban on all killing of animals, I quite applaud those who have listened to Temple Grandin and built more humane abattoirs. 

By the way, when I was living in Leiden, I learned that a Dutch friend of mine was in the habit of eating a sausage for breakfast every morning shortly after waking up. I tried to break him of the habit by saying, "Don't you realize that you are only going from bed to wurst?"

Richard