Thought for the Week – 28th January 2018
Transition
Many of the biggest transformations come when you think that you’re just trying to reestablish the status quo
Most significant transitions involve a time in hell
Most significant transitions involve a time in hell. You go down before you come up. And most of these journeys must be taken alone.
3rd Alternatives happen when people make odd, unexpected connections.
Surrender and Resistance are opposites. Resistance is typically violent; surrender is non-violent. But Gandhi and, following him, Martin Luther King Jr. combined the two ideas into the 3rd Alternative of nonviolent resistance, a concept that has led to the freedom of whole peoples.
We cannot always place responsibility outside of ourselves, on parents, nations, the world, society, race, religion….
We receive a fatal imprint in childhood, at the time of our greatest plasticity, of our passive impressionism, of our helplessness before suggestion. In no period has the role of the parents loomed as immense, because we have recognized the determinism, but at the same time an exaggeration in the size of the Enormous Parent does not need to be permanent and irretrievable. Continue reading
Parable of Change – The Road to Davy’s Bar
The Wicklow Mountains lie just outside Dublin, Ireland. It is an area of wild beauty, a place to which, as an Irishman born there, I return as often as I can. It is still a bare and lonely spot, with unmarked roads, and I still get lost. Once I stopped and asked the way. “Sure, it’s easy,” a local replied, “just keep going the way you are, straight ahead, and after a while you will cross a small bridge with Davy’s Bar on the far side. You can’t miss it!” “Yes, I’ve got that,” I said. “Straight on to Davy’s Bar.” “That’s right. Well, half a mile before you get there, turn to your right up the hill.” Continue reading
The Idiot
In a village there was a fool. He was very upset because no matter what he said people laughed at him. People had decided he was a blithering idiot. Even when he said something right people still laughed at him.
He lived cowering, not daring even to speak. If he didn’t speak people laughed, if he spoke people laughed. If he did something people laughed, if he didn’t do anything people laughed. A monk came to the village.
That night the fool fell at the monk’s feet and said, “Give me some blessing. is my whole life to be spent shrinking and cowering like this? Will I die a blithering idiot? Is there no way I can become a little intelligent?” Continue reading
Transition begins with letting go of something
When you really want something….
One of the key paradoxes in Buddhism is that we need goals to be inspired, to grow, and to develop, even to become enlightened, but at the same time we must not get overly fixated or attached to these aspirations. If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it. Peace and equanimity come from letting go of our attachment to the goal and the method. That is the essence of acceptance.
-Dalai Lama Continue reading
Three Armies
This proverb comes from centuries of experience with the traumatic changes that accompany conquest, and it deserves at least a footnote in any organizational plan for strategic change. Continue reading
ONE TUSK 