Someone asked me ‘why don’t you post much on IG and social media much anymore?’
I think one of the reasons I’m focusing on writing and not going on social media much was the ‘stoic coin’…a coin that you can buy to put in your pocket to, I guess, remind you to be stoic? Somewhere Marcus Aurelius is rolling in his grave. It blew my mind someone tried to market a stoic coin…it’s like ‘buy our Magic 8 ball of stoic sayings.’
That and seeing Noah Levine struggle through the accusations from the #metoo movement and knowing that something that is ‘consensual’ when it happens between a teacher and student might not be if you take psychology into it. CLM 3 is all about that.
There are abusive teachers out there (I’m not saying Noah is…I have a lot of respect for him and hope he clears his name)…but popular media Buddhism seems to be dealing with it’s popularity chickens coming home to roost with a string of #metoo accusations toward popular Buddhist teachers.
That is one of the reasons I wrote CLM 3 for Pramek, ‘The Teacher and the Student’…that maybe someone, somewhere, would use CLM 3 to stop a psychic vampire from draining their mental blood…or in some cases, being manipulated into something physical because they believe in the ‘it’ someone is teaching them…and think they are ‘close’ to a manipulator. I know what it feels like…we all do, as martial artists, to have a teacher use us in many ways to further their system or agenda. Luckily, I never ended up with any physical scars from it, but only psychological, which I used as a muse for the CLM. To make sure that someone, a student, a teacher, had a method of teaching that cut through the mysticism.
That is Pramek, in the end…science, reality, no curtains to pay (in one form or another) to peak behind.
I’m reminds of something Werner Erhard once said (paraphrased) – ‘The thing you think you believe, that ‘it’, that ‘it’ you don’t know why you believe in it, that ‘it’ you arrived believing in because of your environment, that you never thought about why you believe in ‘it’…but you believe in ‘it’…’it’ is using you. It is using you. It is using up your energy, your identity, ‘it’ is using you. ‘It’ is using up your life, ‘it’ is using you to survive. You are just a host for ‘it’ and you don’t even see it draining the life from you.’
I’ve felt like this a lot lately as I approach 40 and question every ‘it’ I believe in. No where do I feel ‘it’ more than when I’m marketed to by FB and IG…marketed bs products like the ‘warrior book’. My likes, my dislikes, my searches, my purchases…social media, the thing that we thought was just to connect us to others…it is an ‘it’, using us to survive.
So much internet marketing…so little authentic work.
CLM means something to me, beyond Pramek. It’s a path, and though sometimes a little too wordy and some grammatical errors…it’s a path to take to supplement ones training. To have a way of measuring without looking to an instructor, coach, or teacher and saying, ‘do I have it right?’ We all want to be right…and some people will do anything to be right. And some teachers…no, that’s not the right word…some sophist charlatans will use this need to be ‘right’ against a student to further an agenda.
CLM was always meant to be a virus that infected other systems…that gave the student a chance against the teacher…and the teacher a way of making sure that they create a positive experience for the student.
Back to editing Pramek’s CLM 4, my own ‘it’ creation, but an ‘it’ that doesn’t use people, but they use it.
