Hello Ram,
I must say Ram that
although we had a good sharing before you left I am still not happy with your
way of friendship. I found many points you made about me very useful and they
will bare fruit because I am open to looking at myself. There is a very strong
sense that you are not apparently open to seeing your stuff. How do you justify your behaviour vis-à-vis
me in terms of Dharma? This lack of honesty affects my interest in our
friendship. Your feeling OK to speak against me
to all and sundry whist emailing me to say you knew little of the gossip about
me and that you were anyway defending me rings out as dishonest and difficult
to reconcile with real friendship. It is
also noticed that it is I visit you but you never visit me even when you are
about to leave. Your idea of friendship
is quite different from mine. When I am
in Self I value our dialogues and interest in
Truth. Glad for you
that you have job and are busy in
Bye Ram,
love and light
Ted
Hi Ted,
Very good to hear from
you. I’m sorry you’re still troubled by the
gossip. I can see why you might think
that I'm not a friend but I feel that you are one of my friends…I’m quite fond
of you. We obviously have different
views of friendship. It may not be
profitable to go through this again since we covered it before but I don’t
think that love means that I should lose my discrimination. Christ is reported to have said, “Hate the
sin, not the sinner.” I think the
difference between me and the others who were talking about you is this: while they were unable to separate their
interpretation of your actions from their feelings about you, I had no such
trouble. I agree with some of the
general criticisms but this never affected how I feel about you. One thing you can’t know but should know is
that in every case where my views were solicited I offered a balanced view…I
extolled your wonderful qualities and criticised what I thought were some of
your misguided views. And I always
mentioned that you treated me with utmost respect.
The whole thing is over now so I’ll tell how
I saw it. I saw that you were trying to
get a satsang going and that it was not working properly. And from talking with you, observing you, I
identified what I thought were some views that would necessarily work against
you. Unfortunately these were largely
unexamined by you so I knew that getting you to acknowledge them would be
difficult. Since you had so much going
on we could not work on them in a patient and dignified way.
I was interested in ‘helping’ you because I
admire your dedication to spirituality and would like to see you succeed. I believe that most conflicts come from
unrealistic dualistic views one holds about oneself and the world. Vedanta doesn’t set out to enlighten people
because it believes that everyone is already enlightened. Instead it tries to remove the beliefs and
opinions that prevent one from enjoying the universal view. So I thought if I could direct your attention
to these views and the problems they were generating it would make your path
much easier.
But, as is often the case, attachment
develops when someone has been operating out of a certain idea for a long time
and this produces resistance to contradictory views. The night Mary and I tried to get at the
source of your lack of concern for people’s feelings is
an example. You experienced a ‘breakthrough’
but it was hard work and it did not lay the issue to rest once and for
all. Something that deep, something that
is part of the ego structure…will only yield to long and patient analysis.
Mind you, it is only an opinion, but I feel
that the widespread idea in the ‘satsang’ world that that gurus are meant to
bust egos is dead wrong. It is probably
due to a teacher’s lack of skill in revealing the Truth. If a person is shown the truth, they will be
able to sort themselves out. I told you
this in the beginning and I declined to get into it with you on the ego
level. But you kept asking…and so I told
you what I thought. It was not that my
opinion about your negative views was important to me. What was important was the rapport that we were
establishing. I figured if the love
between us was strong enough then you would figure it out on your own…once I
had made some suggestions what to look at.
You didn’t set out to have your retreats
work out like they did. Nor did those who attended them. We can’t fault them because by getting into
it they were admitting that they were unskilful living their lives. But your case was different because you were
basically saying that you had it together and that you would show them how to
make life work. So when you appeared to
be unskilful avoiding and then handling conflict, it caused unhappiness.
From their side it was, of course, their
fault, but it takes two to tango…you had your responsibility too. Just declaring oneself a spiritual teacher does
not set you above karma. It is no
respecter of enlightenment. The results
are appropriate to the actions. People
who are aware of how karma works avoid putting forth actions, words, thoughts,
etc. that rebound unfavourably. Sure,
one occasionally acts inadvertently and gets socked, but when there is a
consistent pattern of unwanted karma over time it means that the person is not
looking at something. But now, it seems
Ted is looking at his stuff and…good for him!
Am I not looking at my stuff? Am I a hypocrite and dishonest as you
suggest? Maybe. But if I am it doesn’t seem to be making my
life difficult for me or for any one of my many friends…except you. If I am deluded it is too late to do anything
about it. I’m in the late autumn of my
life and am not going to do one thing to fix myself. What use is it if death is knocking at the
door? I’m quite happy with who I am and
love myself…warts and all. If I heard
this kind of statement consistently from many people I would be inclined to
investigate it…but I don’t. I continue
to get more invitations into people’s lives than I can comfortably handle and
things seem to turn out very successfully over and over again. There are never more than one or two
unpleasant incidents in a year and these are usually a result of a
misunderstanding, not a character defect, so perhaps there is another reason
why you have this view.
It is not because I think you are
dishonest. Nobody sets out to purposely
misunderstand things, but when you are identified what you are doing and you
are moving very fast through life you are not always in a position to see what
is actually going on. One is often
inclined to relate to appearances and draw conclusions that are not accurate.
Your statement “In feeling OK to speak against me to all and sundry whist emailing me
to say you knew little of the gossip about me and anyway you were defending me
rings out as dishonest and difficult to reconcile with real friendship.” is
inaccurate. I never thought I was
‘speaking against you.’ I explained
above how it was with me. I’m a
fair-minded person. I don’t play
politics. I don’t curry favor. Everyone has
an upside and a downside and people discuss people. I saw a program on TV the other day…a
documentary about a ‘scientific’ study on gossip and it turns out that
sixty-seven percent of people’s conversations are about other people. Because I happened to share some of other’s
perceptions about some of your behaviour is in no way
a statement about my feelings for you.
And you are dead wrong if you think that I didn’t make it clear that I
liked you…that you had many good qualities.
If I don’t like someone, Ted, I don’t associate with them. I was always happy to see you when you
came. I was always happy to talk Vedanta
with you. I shied away from ego analysis
and only gave in when you repeatedly asked me to.
I don’t know, this is just
speculation, but maybe you believe that when differences arise between
people…when they see things differently…it is not love. Perhaps you think that love means that people
see eye to eye on everything. Our egos
are different. They were formed under
completely different circumstances, so how can everything be in harmony on that
level? And when there is real
love…differences are welcomed…the spice of life. The fact that I cared enough to talk about
you…positive and negative…means that I care for you.
OK.
Enough already.
I welcome your comments.
Love,
Ram