Changing Other People's Minds: My Shortest Post

You can't.
(the end)
~~~~~~~~~~

p.s.  Really, that is the distillation of the efforts of an entire lifetime trying to get alcoholics (and other unpleasant people) to not drink so much or be so mean to me, to be more open to intimacy or see it my way, or keep up a meditation practice or pick up their clothes.  People do change but slowly and in our own time, and many psychotherapists and Teachers have wished they could help that change; sometimes they do, but it is in our own hands, and the mechanism that makes us deliberately walk out of our old ways is mysterious. 
~
Since that is still a very short post, I thought I'd kick in something else, a brief book review.  I've been given a number of review copies of Buddhist-themed books, and I've reviewed only a few because I am picky.  But I want to mention a book I am enjoying called Journeys on the Silk Road.  This is not an erotic memoir,  though it would be a good title, but a history subtitled "A desert explorer, Buddha's secret library, and the unearthing of the world's oldest book."

Aurel Stein expedition; that's Dash front and center

I read things like this slowly, and stop reading anything that bores me.  This book is not boring, though; the authors use the techniques of fiction well to create the landscape and sentient beings involved.  I was won over by page 11 when I read that the preparations for this high-risk mountain-and-desert expedition in 1906 included a custom-made fur coat for the explorer's dog, Dash.  Dash was one in a string of seven terriers, all given the same name, that accompanied the explorer and slept in his tent.  That's the kind of detail I enjoy in history or fiction.  The "oldest book" in question is the Diamond Sutra.  So if you know a Buddhist or an open-minded nonBuddhist who enjoys reading history, especially art history, this could be a good gift.

Other than that, I have few ideas about Christmas, except that it doesn't make sense for a celebration, especially if it's religious, to be stressful.  It's not for me anymore, now that my family of origin is out of the picture.  How I suffered trying to please them! always thinking maybe this will do it. That seems to circle back around to my title, trying to get people to love you that don't.  There you are.

Where You Shop the Wide World Knows

When I was little, we chanted a rhyme picked up from radio and TV's Amateur Hour, which we accompanied with twirling like Dervishes and falling limp to the ground:

Round and round and round she goes.
Where she stops, nobody knows.

That has nothing to do with my subject today, which is actually Christmas shopping.  I want to say, Where you shop, somebody knows, and to comment further that changing habits is hard.

I have been a major user of Amazon these last couple of years, especially since I got my Kindle and my transplant, and was often too ill to go to the library, but could buy e-books, and did.  Then recently I saw a headline in The Economist - Amazon:  The Walmart of the Web. You don't have to read it to get the idea, do you?

It struck a chord in me, for I am a person who decided a long time ago never to step foot in a Walmart. I was attuned to how the appearance of one of these big-box stores means the death of a small-town pharmacy, hardware, and grocery store.  I resonate to the idea of neighborhoods, small towns, mom-and-pop businesses.  If you think about it, that's the American Dream, not that anyone can become a dot-com millionaire overnight, but that anyone can set out to make a living as an entrepreneur. 

Stepping foot in a Walmart has not been hard to avoid.  But Amazon?  That's another story.  They lure you with their service, the guarantee, one-click purchasing, consistent shipping.  With some trepidation I went looking today for someone else to sell me the book I wanted to get for Tom for Christmas (which is, of course, a book I am dying to read myself).  Ebay led me to Powell's Books.  And there I actually got a better deal, free shipping.  Done.

I am in a sensitive, open place today, having watched last night (Netflix streaming) a beautiful documentary-concert on Leonard Cohen titled I'm Your Man.  Woke up humming Hallelujah.  So I noticed the feeling in my stomach as I left the security of Amazon for a new seller.  Not really rational, Powell's is long-established, nothing to fear.  Just change.  A different path.

Now there you have the fruit of years of Zen, that little sensitivity to a feeling in your stomach, to what's happening inside you, as well as outside.  If you don't have that sensitivity, the small sensation translates to anxiety, which can lead to an instant thought-trail that justifies buying on Amazon, and Walmart, because, after all . . .

So that's a little commercial, not for Powell's particularly, but for keeping up practice, and also for shopping with an eye to karma.  And by the way, Cohen long ago became a student of Zen and a monk.  I don't know whether he wrote "Hallelujah" before that time - I don't think so.  I hope you enjoy it.  A nice break from "The Hallelujah Chorus" this time of year.