The story is told of the Buddha that once, while the community of monks were gathered in the meeting hall in Jeta’s Grove, in the town of Savatthi, waiting for the Lord to emerge from his morning meditation, they idled the time away talking about a wide range of topics: “conversation about kings, robbers, & ministers of state; armies, alarms, & battles; food & drink; clothing, furniture, garlands, & scents; relatives; vehicles; villages, towns, cities, the countryside; women & heroes; the gossip of the street & the well; tales of the dead; tales of diversity, the creation of the world & of the sea; talk of whether things exist or not.”
When the Buddha emerged and asked them what they had been talking about, they told him. He gently pointed out that such topics of conversation were not skillful, not appropriate to the path they’d chosen when they went forth from home to the homeless life. And he gave them, as was his habit, a list of ten topics that were more appropriate to those on the path to understanding: “Talk on modesty, on contentment, on seclusion, on non-entanglement, on arousing persistence, on virtue, on concentration, on discernment, on release, and on the knowledge & vision of release. These are the ten topics of conversation. If you were to engage repeatedly in these ten topics of conversation, you would outshine even the sun & moon, so mighty, so powerful….”
It’s easy, in the sangha that is the blogosphere, to find ourselves caught up in the kinds of conversations that the monks were having, and to give the sorts of topics they were discussing much more importance and much more substance than they have, and to neglect the topics that are really important: how to be good, how to be content, how to bring an end to suffering.
As I’ve gotten caught up in those conversations, I’ve put aside a lot of what I want to say, what I started this blog to say. And the longer it stays put aside, the more coherence it loses, and the more difficult it becomes to say it well. So I am going to heed the Buddha’s words, at least for the time being (which is the only time we really have), and I am withdrawing from the blogger’s game of spinning the latest revelation about “kings, robbers, & ministers of state; armies, alarms, & battles;… the creation of the world & of the sea; talk of whether things exist or not.” Posts will be less frequent, but they will be longer and less dependent upon what others are blogging about.
So. Visit Kos, Jeanne, Josh Marshall, the Whiskey Bar, PZ Myers, and the mostly smart folks at Arianna’s conversation pit. They’ll keep you informed and your juices flowing, much better than I. I’ll try to get my thoughts together and report back soon.
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