I tend to think of myself as not being particularly ego-driven.  But just now I was fooling around, re-reading a few of my old posts from a year ago, and this one hit me in the right way.  Like, I need to consider this all over again.  So I’m reprinting it!  Not the Taijiquestion yak-yak, just the meat of the article (see below).

I had a strange reaction to the Olympic torch being carried to the top of Mount Everest.  I’m an amateur mountain climber and rock climber, as I’ve mentioned before.  I do not use equipment, so Everest is forever beyond my grasp and also most of the expert-level climbs around the world.  That doesn’t bother me.  I just want to get higher than I am.  Also, as Captain Jean-Luc Picard once said of climbing, “There’s just something about holding your own life in your hands”.  And how, Brother!

But what I usually think about Everest in recent years, is that the world’s highest mountain ain’t what it used to be.  It has been climbed solo, it has been climbed without oxygen tanks, and it is climbed all the time now.  I think this is called progress in climbing science.  But it ain’t progress in exploration, it ain’t progress in new frontiers, it is not even progress in adventure.  So — what’s next?  That’s a question we must all answer for ourselves.

But climbing to new heights is always the goal for some of us.  I’m a Capricorn by the way.  One of my co-workers who’s very knowledgeable about astrology ran a professional chart for me, after I provided my exact time and place of birth.  The results were very startling.  Someone who didn’t really know me at all well was able to penetrate some deep aspects of my personality… things I barely tell myself, but which are clearly true once examined.  I’d like to remain skeptical — but results speak for themselves!

In the Chinese zodiac I’m a Rooster.  I’m still looking into that and don’t have much to say yet, except that luckily I’m not incompatible with my Rat wife and Tiger son.  Meanwhile I try to understand things like this here exposition:

>>>>> ”Before beginning this instruction, it is important, I think, to understand the difference between Host and Guest.

 In the Surangama Sutra, Arya Ajnatakaundinya asks, “What is the difference between settled and transient?” He answers by giving the example of a traveler who stops at an inn.  The traveler dines and sleeps and then continues on his way.  He doesn’t stop and settle there at the inn, he just pays his bill and departs, resuming his journey.  But what about the innkeeper?  He doesn’t go anywhere.  He continues to reside at the inn because that is where he lives.

 ”I say, therefore, that the transient is the guest and the innkeeper is the host,” says Arya Ajnatakaundinya.

  And so we identify the ego’s myriad thoughts which rise and fall in the stream of consciousness as transients, travelers who come and go and who should not be detained with discursive examinations.  Our Buddha Self is the host who lets the travelers pass without hindrance.  A good host does not detain his guests with idle chatter when they are ready to depart.

 Therefore, just as the host does not pack up and leave with his guests, we should not follow our transient thoughts.  We should simply let them pass, unobstructed.

 Many people strive to empty their mind of all thoughts.  This is their meditation practice.  They try not to think.  They think and think, “I will not think.” This is a very difficult technique and one that is not recommended for beginners.  Actually, the state of “no-mind” that they seek is an advanced spiritual state.  There are many spiritual states that must precede it.

 Progress in Chan is rather like trying to climb a high mountain.  We start at the bottom.  What is our destination?  Not the summit but merely our base camp, Camp 1.  After we have rested there, we resume our ascent.  But again, our destination is not the summit, but merely Camp 2.  We attempt the summit only from our final Camp.

 Nobody would dream of trying to scale Mount Everest in one quick ascent.  And the summit of Chan is higher than Everest’s!  Yet in Chan, everybody wants to start at the end.  Nobody wants to start at the beginning.  If beginners could take an airplane to the top they would, but then this would not be mountain climbing, would it?  Enthusiasm for the achievement is what makes people try to take shortcuts.  But the journey is the real achievement.” <<<<<

(This text is from a website called J.Crow, it’s now in my links as “Empty Cloud”)