Debate to meditate

Doubt: You’re not going to get enlightened, you’re wasting your time.

Shradha: How do you know I’ll not get enlightened? How do you know it’s a waste of time even if I don’t?

Doubt: You’ve still made colossal mistakes and created countless problems.

Shradha: That’s not because I meditated, or studied dharma, or talked with a noble friend.

Doubt: Maybe you gained some concentration powers, but then they were not natural and you ‘flew to close to the sun’.

Shradha: Or maybe not.

Doubt: You are not 100%. Maybe you need to rest. Mindfulness takes energy.

Shradha: Maybe I want to be all I can be.

Doubt: So you’re in it for your personal gain?

Shradha: Before you interrupted me, I was going to say, for the benefit of others.

Doubt: You want to raise above the sheeple. You want to be an individual.

Shradha: For the benefit of all beings.

Doubt: What do they get out of it?

Shradha: When I’m more open, soft, aware, then I’m more likely not to hurt someone, and I’m more likely to act from more pure motives, for the benefit of everything.

Doubt: Purity, that’s a funny concept for human action. You can’t eat a meal without thousands of insects dying. And anyway, why benefit everything? Nothing does that.

Shradha: That’s better than cows and chickens dying. I’m trying to evolve in a positive direction. To grow up.

Doubt: Purity is a metaphysic, I thought you were against that. Growing up sucks, too.

Shradha: I mean purity as a move towards acting more from metta, karuna, mudita and equanimity.

Doubt: So you’re going to reduce motivation to those 4 things?

Shradha: No, but moving towards the heart’s release, which is nothing special, is a move towards purity and you seemed to want me to define it.

Doubt: OK, forget the bollocks of purity. You are puny, a flickering speck in the universe, why would improving yourself a little matter. A marginally better flicker.

Shradha: It probably doesn’t matter that much in the scheme of things, but it matters to me, and that’s important. What matters to you doubt?

Doubt: Being the same, not potentially wasting energy, or having false hope. What about all the bad things you’ve done in your life? Think about the movie reel that plays in your head, all the lowlights of your life.

Shradha: So? I seek to avoid unskillfulness, and wish to more towards being more skillful. Doesn’t mean I’m perfect or actually arrive there. It’s human nature to want to improve things.

Doubt: Isn’t that just spiritual materialism, you want want want.

Shradha: If you’ve got to be greedy before you’re enlightened, then greed for deepening real spirituality is a good place to put it. I’m not enlightened yet. I just want to move towards point B.

Doubt: You don’t even really understand why you don’t want that.

Shradha: But to the extent that I do understand that, as I try to gain control over myself, that is what I want.

Doubt: Your past actions don’t say that.

Shradha: But I’m developing the intention.

Doubt: We’ll see.

Shradha: Yes we will.