Impermanence and the Land of Hope and Glory

'The British have a long history of cultural arrogance. Going out to save or civilise the rest of the world, to convert them to Christianity, correct them, free them from their Barbarian ways, is all cultural arrogance. It is no longer politically correct to think like this, which is good. But to get beyond attachments to ideals of democracy and equality and freedom as the Western conditioned mind conceives them, is through awareness. Just recognise this stillpoint, a centered, reflective attention to the present, and then cultivate that. Practice seeing the impermanence of the self-view, the sakkaya-ditthi, the impermanence of cultural conditioning, the arising and ceasing of thoughts, the thinking process.'
From The Sound of Silence: the Selected Teachings of Ajahn Sumedho. More on the impermanence of cultural conditioning here.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2012. Any other copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Recent popular posts

Why new audiences are deaf to classical music

For young classical audiences the sound is the message

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Who am I?

Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

Nada Brahma - Sound is God

Classical music's $11 billion market opportunity

Jerry Springer rebel grabs Gramophone accolade

Why cats hate Mahler symphonies