To Read a Book...

I love reading books. I even had a dream once, that I was feeding my yoni pages from a book. Wouldn't you like to know?! It IS like making love—meeting something so intensely—caressing it, pouring over it, dog-earing it, tasting it—that you don't know where the book ends and you begin. And then, collecting quotes to carry around in the afterglow.

I like to share these quotes with others. These quotes are often articulations of my intimate thoughts. But I just realized how prophylactic they are! I am using someone else's name to say what I want. How I yearn to love people the way I love books—to have juicy conversations.

But if, and when, these juicy conversations do arise, the prophylactic goes back on, walls are erected and wars are started.

Here's what Thich Nhat Hanh says:

"Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.

If you have a gun, you can shoot one, two, three, five people; but if you have an ideology that you think is the absolute truth, you can kill millions."

It is in definitions that wars get started—when you start to identify something—or yourself—as being a certain way. We say--I AM my: ethnicity, gender, religion, temperament, socio-economic status, country, degree, likes and dislikes…thus forgetting that you're a being in flux. Then these definitions become dogma and pretty soon you believe that Earth is the center of the universe. Are you willing to kill to "have it your way"?

The juicy conversation is left there, withering…. Baited breath. Small deaths.