Example

I do not aspire to change others. I struggle to change myself for the better through my own practice.

 

I am darkly amused by punks and gangsters who demand "respect" from behind an automatic weapon. What cowards! The ugly nature of their commercial music belies their narcissism. They have offered an example of brutality and crassness to an applauding world. Yes, the world can be a brutal and crass place without the effort to live nonviolently, compassionately, humbly.

 

The drug wars in Mexico over the past 5 years have left approximately 60,000 human beings violently killed. This illustrates horribly the futility of changing human behavior with guns. It also speaks to the intensity of the drive of greed for money and power in the ignorant mind.

 

I simply live within my own practice in the hope it makes a tiny ripple of kindness and compassion in a sea of human suffering. If my example inspires one person to attempt a similar practice, I have exceeded my goal of living a life with humanist values. This blog is a part of my own practice for its own sake. I choose to share these thoughts as a way of keeping the light of my own practice burning in the surrounding dark of my own attachments, bad habits and resistance to positive change.

 

Perhaps the value of this blog is not in what I say or how I say it. Its value is the process of thinking it and writing it every day.