The People's Record

peaceandphilosophy:

Samsaranmusing,

Your words are brittle, and you speak without understanding because you think it is unimportant to understand what is being said to you. You parrot the lines of written wisdom at someone who speaks to you plainly—the passions of your interlocutor do not excuse you from making your spoken actions vehicles of compassion—and you do not show compassion when you fashion your words into a brick wall of empty exhortation. One cannot be compassionate by merely speaking of compassion or using words and familiar sounding sentences that often show up in wisdom literature. 

What knowledge do you have ensuring his words indicate a future of violence?

What knowledge do you have of his fate?

What knowledge do you have of even the words he is using to communicate to you?

You are not concerned enough to act with knowledge, so you are not concerned enough to act in wisdom, so you are not concerned enough to act in compassion. 

Your words poison the impression of wise teachings for a great many. 

Your words dismiss compassion in talking of compassion. 

Your words stonewall the transmission of love that heals hearts.

Your words exalt exhortation without wisdom.

Wisdom rarely and with great caution condemns, it is concerned to invite. It always shows compassion which in the first instance requires A SINCERE STRIVING TO UNDERSTAND.

In the Suta-Nipata it says:

You argue to defend a point of view but if you’re free of set beliefs - no need! You’ve nothing to deny or to assert, quite purified right now of worldly views. The wise have no such view about what is or what is not. They know both thought and pride are meaningless. Nothing defines them. The wise see your failings if you blow your own trumpet, skite about your virtue and awareness…

If you can see and hear without clinging, nothing ties you down. If you’re wise, Ignorance can’t bind you but if you get stuck in the senses or beliefs you roam around the world causing trouble…

When you get stuck in your own beliefs & argue with others, you’re likely to say, “If you agree with me you know the truth & if you don’t, you’re just not realised!”…

Dogmatic people are hard to teach. They honour some set opinion, say they’ve seen the truth that purity lives where they say it is & their beliefs are best.

To everyone reading I promise there is more to this tradition/literature than blind, empty and vain exhortations.

Samsaranmusing, I respond strongly because black people and the discourse(s) that arise(s) from their lived experience do not deserve to be dismissed as you have dismissed humanformat and because the wisdom of these traditions can be lost on my/younger generations because of ugly actions exactly like yours.

(via queerencia-deactivated20130103)