Gil's talks are delivered with such down to earth clarity. Love it.

@Spiritcacti

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed!🙏

Thank you Gil. You make a difference to peoples lives. The explanation is very easy to comprehend.

@Spiritcacti

3 жыл бұрын

Well said! 🙏

We humans have largely lost our way in the woods of society. An ancient spiritual wisdom reclaimed in silence is a path to peace not yet well worn by lonely travelers of millennia. Tao Te Ching tells of this loneliness.

After making a choice, the reality of the past becomes clear. You made the choice you choose because it's was the only choice to make. Choice is an illusion and you will walk what ever path is placed before you. Always thought it was odd to here seekers talk of "not being on their path' or how a teaching brought them back to their path. You are never not on your path.

Gil appears to miss a key part of the poem in his line-by-line commentary. Frost wrote about the two paths saying that the one he chose was grassy and wanted wear. Then he catches himself and says, "Though, as for that, the passing there had worn them more or less the same and both that morning equally lay in leaves no steps had trodden black." Prior to that he has admitted that the two roads were "As just as fair". The road he took had "PERHAPS the better claim..." Frost's poem is a very prescient illustration of a cognitive bias called choice-supportive bias. Wikipedia defines this as, "The tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were, where people tend to over attribute positive features to options they chose and negative features to options not chosen." The poem is a welcome addition to the buddhist canon because it highlights the illusory nature of self. Again, from Wikipedia: "People's conception of who they are is shaped by the memories of the choices they make; the college favored over the one renounced, the job chosen over the one rejected, the candidate elected instead of another one not selected. Memories of chosen as well as forgone alternatives can affect one's sense of well-being. Regret for options not taken can cast a shadow, whereas satisfaction at having made the right choice can make a good outcome seem even better." Note how Frost sat down to write a poem about the road *not* taken. Look at what he did write: a poem about the road taken! The mind has deflected his intent, as if it were saying, "Don't write about what might have been; write about what we did; tell everyone how it proved how heroic we are! The other road is not even worth remembering." Knowing now how slippery and misleading mind can be and how distorted memories can be, we turn to the present to observe it. As we do so, we find no self, no heroic narrator, no life-changing choices. We just find life being lived; paths being walked.

@jdd8687

5 жыл бұрын

THIS! great comment, was hoping someone would clarify this point and this also ties it into Buddhism really nicely