ISmile341 – No Such Thing as a Mistake
Ultimately, according to Michael’s talk, given at a recent one-day retreat, there are no mistakes. There are, rather, only opportunities that the mind evaluates. If we can short-circuit this addiction to evaluation we can begin to approach the way we meet the world differently. Shifting from a position where life is filled with problematic situations into a place where we find our lives filled with situations that in all cases offer us opportunities for evolution.
The talk takes place at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center and he dealves into such concepts as “No Mind,” contemporary linguistics, awareness not being the same as thought and poor zendo etiquette.
There can be little doubt that traditional religious frameworks are no longer speaking to new generations as they have in the past, especially in the West. In a recent article in the LA Times, Philip Clayton, Dean of Faculty at Claremont School of Theology, writes that the fastest growing religious group in the United States is “spiritual but not religious,” containing a shocking 75 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29. Clayton argues that young people are not necessarily rejecting a sense of God, rather they feel that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in the structures of the political status quo.
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