I’ve had an idea…let’s get out of passivity and form an army. An army made of ordinary people who just want to defend and protect life. There is no leader, but what happens is this….

Let’s say you have an idea-such as wanting to have more herbalists in your area, or allowing your local natural lake to allow public swimming, or have more reflexologists available in yourclocal health centre for free etc….these things are maybe too big for one person. What you do in this ‘army of ideas’ is to put your idea forward and then allow for local people to join forces with you. Basically you don’t need to wait for authority or someone up high to arrange any of this. You just go ahead and do it. As a group of even 2 or 3 a lot can be achieved. Even if your project is something that needs to go through the courts, you can read about the law through online resources and just get on with it. You don’t need to wait for ‘experts’ to tell you about common sense and what your local area needs, do you? You or your team may even end with experts in your team, experts who are disallusioned with how things are. So you could end up, for example with a group of public health doctors who are fed up and want to challenge something in public health. Let’s face it, if you stay in your field and don’t go freelance like this, those big things that maybe you have always wanted to change but couldn’t because your line manager and their line manager just wasn’t interested, may never change….
Lets say you are a researcher interested in music and health but just couldn’t get anywhere at your university, because there was no such department….why not just do it yourself? Why wait for a command from above or a job description in a newspaper? Make up your new job based on your existing skills, expertise and the task that you really really want to do. The task that would give you a lot of satisfaction. Put it out there and I am sure that people will join you. The only common thread in this army is that it is for defending and protecting life, within a world where this not taking place.

Note that this is not to deny the self-centered and self-congratulatory pursuit of no-self that does happen in the American practice of Asian religious traditions. I can’t stand that, either. But please get your facts straight before you malign one of those traditions that actually tries to get it right.

“F*** that!”, the sensei cried as he laid the lamp down on the floor, jumped up and rushed inside shouting, “I’m dancing!!!”

It always seemed to me since to be the best Zen teaching ever 😉

On another note re: the West’s usurpation and bastardization of Eastern spiritual practices, I expect you’ll be aware of the way mindfulness meditation has been co-opted for use by mental health services?

I’m not a Buddhist but I am angry at the way these trick-cyclists, their own remedies proving threadbare and even dangerous, have lifted this genuinely wonderful ancient practice from its context, stripped it of all its spiritual meaning and are now flogging this vanilla hodge-podge to their patients in an effort to help them to cope with the West’s insanity and the madness of their doctors.