The Layman Sinks His Boat: Thoughts on (Considering) Burning Bridges

by Kevin Geiman

According to the story, Layman Pang one day took all his possessions, loaded them onto a boat, rowed out to the middle of the nearby lake, and sank the lot of them. He didn’t give them away, and he didn’t see to it that they went to some good use. He just destroyed them.

In Case 28 of the Mumonkan, Tokusan, the renowned scholar of the Diamond Sutra, came to a realization under Ryutan. He then proceeded to make a bonfire of his notes and commentaries, burning them all in front of the main hall. He didn’t hold on to them to check them against his insight or to use as materials for future reflection or teaching. He just destroyed them.

Burning in flame and sinking in water are perhaps the most common ways of signifying complete detachment. Fire and water are primordial, basic, fundamental. To commit anything to them is to lose any hope of getting it back in the future. To pass by way of them is to emerge renewed, ready to begin, free of cumber. We are given to understand that the Layman and Tokusan did, indeed, continue to go deeply in the Way, and the tradition holds them out to us with hopes that we might deepen our resolve to do so as well.

These cases raise the age-old question whether we should understand such renunciation figuratively or literally. Certainly we would not be hearing of the Layman or the Sutra Scholar if they hadn’t done such drastic things. Their actions stood enough out of the norm that they stuck fast and hard in the collective consciousness of the tradition. Let’s face it: we don’t hear tell of those who held back, who kept some reserve, who made as if they would be willing to surrender at some future time, but just not yet.

So let’s assume a matter-of-fact renunciation for the moment. What’s the harm? Quickly the objections rise: “Such things might be useful in the future.” “Those things should have been given to the poor.” “Such egos! Why the drama?” It’s this last one we should be most worried about, of course, but it might be a misguided objection here, one that mistakes effect for cause. Let’s look at the Layman again. If he were submerging the goods in order to diminish the self, then there would be a problem. If he thought that doing this would produce some realization, then he would be mistaken. If he thought he was making the difference in the world, he would have been wrong. And we wouldn’t still be hearing of him.

A different reading would suggest that the Layman’s work was already accomplished when he loaded the dinghy and headed away from the dock. John Woolman, the renowned colonial Quaker abolitionist and himself a man of some insight, put it this way: “Rather than renouncing power, wealth, and honor in a noble sacrifice, we simply discover that they no longer hold such interest for us." Perhaps it’s like what we experienced as children and adolescents, now allowed to continue into adulthood. How many of us held on to our teddy bears once we found other more age-appropriate amusements? We didn’t white knuckle our way through cleaning out the toybox; we probably wondered why we hadn’t gotten rid of the stuff sooner. We didn’t leave childhood behind in a great significant act of ego. Childhood had already left us.

Still, the Layman’s story makes the whole thing sound instantaneous. This may not square so neatly with our own experience, for there are times in life when, to return to Woolman, the interest one thing holds for us is waxing while the interest another holds is waning, not as a process of natural growth but as a matter of choice and commitment. These are the times when we begin to know deep in our bones just how different things are going to look from here on out, the times when we need to be opening ourselves completely and honestly to that difference. At these times we are rightly cautioned to not be too hasty. It’s not a matter of still holding back as much as giving ourselves over as deeply and fully in as patient and as thorough a way as possible – a matter of letting go with eyes wide open. Marrying is like this, so we have engagements. Ordaining is like this, so we have novitiate periods.

Our lineage has no Dharma equivalent of a Vegas drive-thru wedding chapel, and for good reason. Asking to ordain is not the same thing as entering on the novice path, nor is entering the novitiate the same thing as ordination.

I had no clue at the beginning of last January’s sesshin that I would be asking to be ordained by the end. (“Just where did that come from?” I still sometimes wonder….) I also had no clue how many nights’ sleep I would lose once I did ask. Little did I know what points of resistance would subsequently emerge, what aspects of ego would show up, what it was about the whole thing I was scared of. Every now and then it becomes clearer to me what further things will have to be left behind. Then I have to pause, consider, discern. Remember, the Layman didn’t wake up one day and just walk away from his home and possessions, either. That would have been too reactive. Rather, he took it all out, bit by bit, looked at it all, saw the things for what they were, and then – only then – paddled them out and away. We only hear of the day on the lake. Who knows how long he took in his mind to get the stuff out of the house? And if he had found that he really couldn’t part with the heirloom credenza, then that would have been good, too, for it would have been honest.

In our life in the sangha we really don’t compare notes with others, so it’s quite easy to make overinflated assumptions about others’ practice, depths of insight, levels of commitment and the rest. Perhaps we see someone getting ordained in the same way – that they are somehow special, have something we don’t, etc. I know I did. When I witnessed Sthaman and then Vinati being ordained, it was like watching the Layman in the boat. It seemed stark and definitive, a moment of real crossing, an act I was incapable of doing. And it was.

But looking at ordination as an isolated incident or as an expected outcome of a natural process misses something, and I now realize how profound and welcome this quiet, patient novice time is. It’s not so much a metamorphosis stage as a trying stage (in the old-fashioned sense in which we speak of trying a case to see what sticks and what doesn’t). Announce your intention to the sangha and see how it sits with them. Wear a black rakusu in a public, non-ZC context for the first time and see how that goes. Clean out everything but the blue, black, gray and collarless from the closest and come up with something to go to work in. Look ahead on the calendar one, five, ten years out and take stock of what won’t be happening that you might have had your eye on. Let the full weight of the tradition you’re looking to bear start to rest on your shoulders and see how it feels to stand.

Perhaps even all this smacks a little too much of calculation and deliberation, for there is throughout this time a growing “right as rain” sense as well. The Verse to Case 7 of the Mumonkan comes to mind:

Because it is so very clear,
It takes long to come to realization.
If you know at once that candlelight is fire
You know the meal has long been cooked.

The Layman’s possessions were already at the bottom of the lake before he packed up the first thing. By the time the novice accepts the new name, so it seems, the ordination will have already taken hold, the letting go will have been accomplished, the destruction of another form of life will be over and done with. At least that’s what I’m guessing. At this stage of the process, though, I sometimes eye my goods still on the boat at the dock and wonder…

Why the Economy Has Fallen Apart (and other matters)

by Sevan Sensei

Editor's Note: Sensei wrote this article in January; apologies for the delay. You'll have to picture snow as you read, but this shouldn't be too difficult in Chicago, even in July. -JL

I arrive at the designated room early to get my marching orders. I’ve been contacted to speak at an interfaith gathering here on the campus of a local major university. I enter a huge room which has been assembled into a lectern-versus-chairs-in-rows situation, all looking very formal. Except that behind the lectern, where there are maple panels hiding many closets for chairs and props, the panels have largely been left open so that the audience sees the speaker against a background of equipment – an area that looks as though it had just been sifted through for loose change and pop cans.

A student (we will call him Ira) approaches me, thanks me for coming, says he is the organizer, and then walks away. Eight students stand around a table, or rather shift back and forth from one leg to the other around a table. I settle into a discarded couch nearby, close my eyes, and listen to the instructions they are being given by Ira.

“You have to be willing to interrupt the speaker to say that they’re out of time, but you have to be nice. Be indirect.”

“How? Like what?”

“We would all like to hear how you feel about that, how you feel Israel should do things. We know you have super ideas, and we appreciate how much you’ve thought all this through, and we want to respect your space here, as well as your right to articulate your feelings. The thing is . . . well, we have to be sure to give everyone a chance to talk here, to express their feelings and ideas as well, and we only have so much time, so I need you to pass the talking item on to the next person . . . .”

“Ok, so what happens if they wander off topic? Like, you know, um, they, um, start off talking about their feelings about Lebanon and then wander over to how they feel about the violence in Gaza, um, something like that?”

“It’s the same kind of thing, you have to . . . . “

I close my eyes and start to fall into a pre-lecture sleep. I notice that my feet are cold from the walk here through the snow. I’ve walked a long way here from the transportation line in the dark and snow. On the way I was almost struck by a woman on a bike. She was using the sidewalk instead of the street. We have a lot of snow here in Chicago this year, and it is dangerous to walk or ride anywhere, since the already crowded streets are even narrower, the alleys are totally unplowed, and the sidewalks vary from two-lanes to goat paths. The woman never called out, rang no bell. There was suddenly a moving blackness obscuring the lights of the city ahead, like an imagined black hole sucking up the urban landscape. Bike riders here apparently have a strict dress code. Except for a few who put strobes on their bikes so that they look like mini emergency vehicles passing by, most bikers seem to prefer black outfits and no lights. They ply the streets like so many insurance liability ninjas. This makes driving (especially around universities) a kind of ESP experience. You come to know by simply using The Force that a ninja bike will appear from the left, though it is not visible through the grime of the windshield, the flutter of the wipers, the glare of the city.
I used to try hollering at the ninja bikes. I used to yell at them that they were going to get killed, cause an accident. After years of this I suddenly realized that I never once got a response. Nobody ever even threw me the finger. I toyed with the idea that perhaps they were all deaf. This was a comforting if temporary theory. Then I went through a phase of a couple of years of being a good Buddhist, working on my anger at the ninja bikes. While this was useful and fulfilling, it never helped explain why they never responded to voice or horn.

Through my remembering of ninja bikes past I hear a voice. It is Ira. He is standing in front of me as I am sunk into the discarded couch. He is almost standing on my feet, he is so close. As he begins to talk to me I search my peripheral awareness to uncover what is so odd and uncomfortable about the position we are in here, with him towering above me, too close, and me looking way up at him, partly blinded by the ceiling lights that halo his head. I recall, while he is carefully explaining how students need to amplify their power by staying in contact with other students in other campuses and how he is just the man to pull them all together, that my Zen teacher always taught me that we should speak to other people at their level – that it was rude and bad form to literally “talk down” to someone. Or was it my mother who said this, or my Jr. High science teacher?

Deciding now that it may be important to listen to what Ira is saying, I focus all my attention on him. He is smiling at me and handing me papers now which seem to explain all the interfaith communications, connections, networks, aware nesses, bulletin boards, conferences, groups, events, teas, dinners, drives, and other forms and masses of the interfaith goliath that apparently thrives right here in Chicago under my very feet. And he launches anew into how students need more power and must communicate more, and how he is just the man to arrange it.

But I’ve wandered off again with my attention. I notice that in the corner of the room (with perhaps fifteen students present now, all wandering around, some with iPods in place) – in the corner there is a piano, and one of the students is playing the piano. He is playing a Jewish song of some kind. The tones and rhythms make clear that it is a Jewish song. Another student starts to clap along. Another starts to sing-chant along. While I’m wondering whether we may yet witness some break dancing, or maybe a wedding here, I catch myself and decide anew to focus my attention on Ira, who is explaining how it is critical that students stay in touch with each other. Apparently this is a huge problem I have not been aware of. They are in reasonably good contact with each other on their own campuses, he passionately assures me, but they need to text and e-mail each other much more between campuses. While he is driving home this point I notice that his group here is stepping up to the plate by texting even as we speak. Ira may well be succeeding in his mission.

Past Ira I spy a wall clock and realize that we are set to begin in ten minutes. So I interrupt him to ask a question. I shade my eyes from the glare of the lights, focus on his smiling face, and through the talking and music ask, “Ira, can someone tell me what I am supposed to speak about, for how long, where I might stand, where to sit, if I can get some water?”

“Sure! Awesome! No problem! I’ll go ask Hanna.”
“But aren’t you in charge here?”
“Hanna picks out the topics?”
“I talked to her on the phone this morning, and she didn’t know the topic.”
“She probably picked it by now.”

As he wanders off to find Hanna before I can re-ask him about getting a drink of water I notice two things: We have eight minutes to start now, and there are students arriving and signing sheets and getting nametags. No one gave me a nametag. I decide that in the hierarchy of unknowns here the lack of my nametag ranks low, so I ignore that problem – no, issue. I also notice that I am decades older that anyone in the room. There are to be six speakers here tonight. A jolt of fear passes through me. Can it be that I am the only one who has actually arrived?

While this kind of fear seems silly to me upon reflection, it is not unfounded. Years ago I attended a local interfaith event at a university on the last day of that school’s existence. The university was going bankrupt. Couldn’t get enough students to stay open. Closed its doors and put the property up for sale. Still today you can drive by and see the chain link fence there wrapped around the entire university, encircling Old Main and everything else. Looks rather like a prison, or maybe a prison camp. A sign says For Sale, but apparently nobody wants to buy a university, since it has stayed like that for years. When people give directions out there in that area they still refer to it as the University, even though it is only a ghost of itself now. They will say, “Turn left there on Washington Road, go past Grant and Lincoln (All streets in Chicago seem to be named after presidents.), and follow the road around the Ghost University. You’ll come out right where you want to go.”

So I showed up that day, years ago, there for the interfaith forum at Ghost University, and it was the last day the school was open. It was also the last day my first Zen teacher and dear Dharma guide Roshi Kapleau was alive. I found the room in Old Main, attended the reception, sat on the Panel, met a Hindu teacher and an Imam and various ministers. But almost no students came. Perhaps it was asking too much of them to show up for such an event when they had just been told two weeks ago that the school would be closing immediately. Perhaps if they had more power, perhaps if they had been better connected, perhaps if they had had Ira there working hard so the students could communicate more, then the school could have been saved. But none of these things happened and the school closed, and we religious leaders bore down on the few students who came and gave them what for about interfaith issues. I swore that day, right after I was able by cell phone to whisper words of goodbye to my old teacher, that I was through with the interfaith world on university campuses. So the fear that perhaps all other ministers, imams, rabbis and gurus had taken the same vow swam through me this night. I could see no other speakers.

Hanna stood staring down at me in exactly the same way Ira had done: “Ira says you have questions.”
“What’s my topic?”
“Oh, Peace and Non-violence.”
“How long do I have with this?”
“Four minutes. But you can go over a little if you need to.”
“I have four minutes to speak about peace and non-violence. Great. Any suggestions?”
“Just tell everyone why we shouldn’t kill people.”
“I see.”
Then, before she escapes I ask, “Where can I get some water?”
“Oh, um, a, I don’t know. I have a bottle.”

But wait, this last part is said, of course in an interrogative, rising-tone manner, completely as though she is asking me a question, so I’m not sure if she’s asking or telling me about her bottle. It’s hard to communicate this low-level confusion, but I find myself often now noticing how almost all of these students don’t seem to say anything, but rather appear to be asking everything with a clearly rising and sometimes even shrill tone. One will be “saying” to another, “So I asked him like what was covered in class?? And he like said nothing new?? And I said like how y’know like boring she is??” I feel the urge to lend a hand here after each interrogative, especially because each seems to end with a pause. “I woke up this morning with a headache??” (rising tone and then a pause)

I find I just want to jump right in there at the end and assure her with, “Yes, go on. Yes, about the waking up with a headache. Please, go ahead. I’m all ears.” But I have come to realize that I am alone in this low grade insecurity about the true state of mind of the speaker. Apparently these statements are not questions at all. The other day I was walking behind two students who were talking, entirely in interrogatives like this, and while suppressing my urge to run up and emotionally rescue them, I came to realize that they were not only confident in their remarks about a third student who clearly must be sleeping with every man and woman on campus and the surrounding area, but they were being forceful and sure in their pronouncements. “I think she’s such a bitch??” (rising tone and then a pause) This is then agreed to with, “I can’t stand her??”

“No, please, I wouldn’t want to take your bottled water.” (even tone, no pause) “Is there a fountain nearby?” (rising tone and then a pause)
“I don’t know. I’ll send Sid over. He needs to talk to you.”
With that, Hanna melts into the crowd which is forming there at the sign-in nametag area. I spy a man in his thirties wearing a suit and feel relieved. I will not face these folks alone. The piano music has stopped now, and Sid arrives. Like the others, he practically stands on my toes, but he offers a firm handshake and a smile. I’m encouraged.

“Hey. I’m Sid. How do you spell your name? What is your title? What organization do you represent?”
“Hanna has all that.”
“I will be introducing you.”
“I see.”

I stand now, move further away from Sid, and ask, “Where do I sit?”
“In the front.”
“Are there special chairs? Do we face the audience while each of us addresses them? Is there a ceremonial component here? Are prayers being offered? Where can I find a drinking fountain?” (rising tones and then pauses throughout)

But he has walked away, so I wander off to find water. Most students seem to have water bottles, so the uninformed would think that there must not be a place to drink water for miles, but of course this is not the case. As I lumber down the hall I recall Yasutani Roshi’s now famous analogy for teaching the truth of the Dharma – selling water by the river. While he is my Dharma Grandfather, I more often consider my family grandfather in these situations. Old Dominic Russo would raise those eyebrows and utter something simple on seeing all these people pay for water when it’s free everywhere. He would stare in disbelief and shake his old coal miner’s head. “What-a the hell! Stupido! Such a Cut-a-butch! (his version of cabbage – meaning cabbage head) All dis-a money you pay out, and-a for what? So you pay some-a Big-a Wheel bastard for the water? You get-um for free, no? Just-a look!”

I walk perhaps twenty feet to a water fountain. The water is cold and wonderful and I linger there. Briefly I wonder about fountains. Will these disappear because of the bottles? After all, TV used to be free. All one needed was a set. And consider phone booths. I was at Chicago’s huge train station recently without my cell phone. It felt like going back forty years, back to when one had to find a working public phone where there were few and they were far between. I’ve been assured that there’s no money in public phones anymore. Everyone has a cell phone. So I wonder what may happen to this fountain when everyone pays for bottled water. I bend down to enjoy one more cold drink. I have to bend down pretty low, even though I’m short. The fountain has been strategically placed so that children could drink from it. As I walk away I wonder how old you have to be to get your first water bottle. Perhaps one might say it is directly after breast feeding.

I arrive again at the lecture area and sit at the front, facing the open closets. All the action is behind me now, and so again I close my eyes and try to conceive of a way in which I might speak of peace and non-violence from a Buddhist perspective in four minutes. But I’m interrupted by a young woman who sits next to me. We say hello. She is clearly Muslim, perhaps 19. I ask her what this is all about. She tells me that this is a dialogue.
I sit up and offer, “Interfaith dialogue?”

“No, just dialogue.”
“But dialogue about what?”
“Our feelings.”
“Our feelings about anything particular?”
“I think about Gaza.”
“Oh, Israel’s invasion?”
“Yeah, the violence in Gaza.”
“I see.”

I close my eyes again. Peace and non-violence in four minutes. Maybe I can talk about anger and how to see it as . . . .

“Hello everybody!” A young man has acquired the podium. “Is this too loud?”
It is. He adjusts the mike and introduces two other men. They are co-presidents of an organization I never heard of. I mentally toy with the concept of co-president. There is a five-minute presentation of all the dialogue events coming up over the next six months, all of which are presented as “super” or “awesome.” I turn in my seat and try to figure out who the other speakers could possibly be. I’m assuming now that the Rabbi is one, though he is seated in the middle of the thirty or so people who have come. I alone am in the front, except for the woman next to me. I begin to search the faces of those who have shown for dialoging. They are young, in many cases child-like. Everyone is white, and I see no trace of Hispanics or Asians. Chicago is over 60% African-American, and there are over one million Hispanics in the area, and many Asians. So clearly I am in a room of Muslims and Jews. I guess the Hispanics and Africans and Chinese don’t feel like dialoguing about Hamas or Gaza or Israel. Maybe they were not invited. But I was invited, and I’m an Italian-American Buddhist. As I’m asking myself what they could possibly want with me the first speaker begins.

He is Jewish, looks as if he is twelve, uses “um” for every other word, inflects every sentence as an interrogative, and takes ten minutes of his allotted four to basically say that we shouldn’t kill one another – that God doesn’t like this. People erupt into applause. The MC submits during the applause that the talk was awesome. Then the next speaker – another young student – announces that he has been asked to speak on Muslim finances and he launches into a dizzyingly detailed account of how a Muslim bank helps a person with a mortgage, and assures us repeatedly that this makes the bank a partner in the house purchase in a manor quite different from the way Western banks approach things. I get so lost in the numbers and percentages that I forget that he talks for what must be twenty minutes. While convincing myself that he has made a serious math error in his explanation I hear my name from the podium and I’m up.

Never preparing for spoken remarks, classes, teishos, etc. is one of my many great flaws. Long ago when I was a classroom teacher I had a great awakening one day that it never improved things to prepare, and so I just stopped doing it. Just dive deeply and selflessly into the moment – you will always know just what to say. And so here is the moment, and I have nothing whatever to say. As I look over the little group I am struck dumb by how many are playing with electronic devices. And so I begin with, “Once there was a Zen master named Hakuin . . . .”

As I speak I see people text messaging. Ira is in a non-stop conversation with someone in the back, loud enough for me to pick out words. Everyone seems to have a water bottle and they all are apparently very thirsty. Everyone seems snug and comfortable. But then I ask if anyone can name for me any war in history which was fought directly in the name of Buddhism. All ticks are stilled, all eyes return to me. A few people shift in their seats. I say I will wait, they can take their time. Silence. I wrap up my remarks and assure them that a good handle on one’s anger will help control violence. The moderator moves on to the next speaker through the applause. The next speaker turns out to be the young woman next to me who was tasked with the question “Love Thy Neighbor.” As she speaks I notice that I never got an “awesome” from the MC. Maybe I should not have brought up the war remark. I look back to see if anyone is staring at me or pulling out a knife, but they are blankly watching the speaker, texting, drinking water. I notice that the Rabbi is texting on a Blackberry.

Soon we find ourselves broken out into small groups, each arranged in a circle for dialogue. A toy football is passed around and we are instructed to speak only when we hold it. For the first go-round we are to tell everyone only what our emotional reaction has been to the violence in Gaza. We are to make no political statements. The first student speaks so quietly that I cannot understand what he is saying. He is Muslim. Then me. Then a Jew, then a Muslim, and so on. I pick out statements I hear which do not seem to match the assignment and I remember the instructions given to the moderators before the event. The moderator for our group is a very young woman who giggles after everything she says. She never interrupts any speaker. She never redirects. When someone offers that Israel is the most awesome place in the world, she says nothing. When someone lists specific statistics counting the number of civilians killed, soldiers killed, etc. she says nothing. When the oldest (except me) of our circle carefully couches his statement that Israel has the right to impose itself on the people in Gaza because the Jews have been looking for a homeland much longer than the Arabs have in personal emotional terms, she says nothing.

I excuse myself and leave the building, stopping at the water fountain for a cold drink before walking to the train. But before I can make good my escape I am again confronted by Ira, who assures me again that he is empowering students to communicate with each other, to dialogue. I want to ask him what exactly will be the impact of this dialoguing, seeing as people seem inattentive and thirsty. I want to ask him where the change in behavior will come from in these interactions. I want to suggest to him that when dialogue process itself is governed by the more powerful or popular side of any issue or stance there must be exceedingly more care taken to be tender and fair to all concerned. I want to take him by the ear and force him to come to the Religions in Dialogue course I and others offer at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. I want to run back up front and close the closets, step to the mike and holler, “It is not about ME or I! It is about US!” (even tone, no pause, emphasis on US)

But I look at his smiling face and I realize that he can’t hear me, not any more than the people on the ninja bikes or the students who failed to show for the interfaith dialogue at Ghost University. So I wish him luck and walk away. As I walk down the hall I see more students, each packing an iPod, each listening to something I am not privy to, each listening to something different. On the train many are texting. But they seem to be well hydrated.

What to Do With Our Assets in These Troubled Times

by Sevan Sensei


Interest is up and the stock market’s down,
And you only get mugged if you go downtown.

But I live back in the woods, you see,
My woman and my kids and my dogs and me.

I got a shotgun, a rifle, and a four-wheel drive.
A country boy can survive . . .
Country folks can survive.

-- Hank Williams Jr.



In these troubled economic times we regularly wonder if we will survive. We worry about our self, wonder about our home, job, family, status. We are concerned with our place in society. Are we slipping? Are we adequate?

We wonder spiritually too. Where we have always been somewhat self concerned – how many koans have I done, will I ever get anywhere in this practice – we now play these ego tapes even more, largely because we are beginning to consider everything in life as more of a struggle, and everything can be lost. We are growing more insecure about everything outside the zendo and off the mat, and so our more-or-less native insecurities about our spiritual “progress” start to grow too.

This breeds more self concern and even deeper insecurities. In economic terms, our stock starts to fall. Stock in the spiritual corporation we call “I,ME,MINE” starts a slow and steady decline. We seem to be failing and losing value pretty much everywhere these days. While our company used to borrow funds – take heart and encouragement, that is – from our teachers and the masters, from the tradition, and from the mat, we increasing feel as though we can’t raise much spiritual cash now. Our sitting suffers. And so we slough off more assets and personnel (effort), make fewer investments (sit less, sit with less vigor), make poor purchases (like books filled with gimmicks about practice instead of books by real masters, or workshops promising Great Mind in an afternoon), and we stop auditing ourselves as closely. We start subscribing to the “outside consultants” (magical thinking drifting in from the hustlers of the New Age).

While our bond rating suffers and we can’t even get credit, we complain to the teacher in dokusan that we are spiritually powerless, that outside market forces have somehow brought our I,ME,MINE company to near ruin. There we are, crying out in the interview room about how we are losing our spiritual market share. It is as an embattled CEO of an old and broken down ego firm that we ask, “What can I do?” Poor teachers may offer a “Now now, there” kind of government bailout while they hold our hand. Better teachers may offer tougher-to-swallow, bitter tasting business advice – sell out while there’s still time! Merge with a far better firm!

The teacher advises us (assuming for a moment that we are working on MU) to go with the smart money – sell all stock to MU Inc.