the laid.back buddhist

(A note from Judd: This writer was awarded last month for a dif­fer­ent post by another mem­ber of our review team. This is not a “repeat”. We do not repeat our reviews.)

Yes, I too won­dered what a laid back Bud­dhist was. Angry, vio­lent Bud­dhists seem few and far between. Well, I found out.

Laid back is maybe an over­state­ment, for Joanne seems to be too busy think­ing to have time to be laid back. But in this post, she touches some­thing very cru­cial. And that is our desire, not only to cat­e­gorise oth­ers, but to cat­e­gorise OURSELVES in rela­tion to oth­ers. Why it is well thought through is that Joanne acknowl­edges that the title of her own blog, is a self-categorisation.

The ini­tial cat­a­lyst for her thought, is some­one she has come across who appar­ently describes as a ‘bleed­ing heart human­ist.’ It cer­tainly makes one reflect, because I think we can embrace labels with mul­ti­ple pur­poses, and one of which, is to partly embrace the terms those we dis­agree with label us with. Bleed­ing heart can be one of those terms used in con­tempt, or pride, and when peo­ple use such a state­ment about them­selves, are they not only stat­ing what they are, but what they ARE NOT?

Joanne reflects fur­ther on her own descrip­tion of her­self and val­i­dates it. The main issue really seems to be about hon­esty. When we use these descrip­tions, are we being frank or pre­ten­tious? Or are we think­ing about what we are say­ing? Are we embrac­ing these labels to impress, or describe.

I think the best para­graph of the post must, surely, be this; ‘Or maybe, I just inher­ently doubt all peo­ple who claim to be some­thing when there is rarely a term that can fully accom­mo­date all inter­pre­ta­tions and nuances…especially when our per­cep­tion of things change as we con­tin­u­ally add lay­ers of knowl­edge to our experience.’

Yes. Any per­sonal phi­los­o­phy that can be summed up in a three word expres­sion, is pos­si­bly not as deep as the bleed­ing heart human­ist thinks.

The blog is the laid.back bud­dhist. The post is Some­times I Over Ana­lyze the Most Ran­dom Things. It was writ­ten on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2008 and is The Ris­ing Blog­ger Post of the Day.

Review writ­ten by CRUSHED BY INGSOC.