Brian’s Reflection: Monday, August 30, 2010

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic
that likes to make easy things difficult.

Warren Buffett, multi-billionaire, philanthropist,
born on this date, 1930 (he is 80 today)


Warren Buffett is reputed to be the second richest man in the World, next to Bill Gates ….. though I hear rumours that a Mexican gentleman may have surpassed them both. Warren Buffett recently gave about $31 billion dollars to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, so that the Foundation can assist in helping to improve the lives of the World’s peoples in various ways.

Sounds evolved and gracious to me ….. like something that someone who has learned a certain Wisdom about what it means to be Human would do.

And it sounds like something that any of us could do on some level, including both money and other ways of gifting the World.

I agree with Mr. Buffett: we human beings perversely like to “make easy things difficult”. We lie – to ourselves and to others - and the tangled webs we weave grow and grow until we are all trapped, wrapped, and ready to be devoured. I feel it is like that now in the World. Perhaps it has always been so. It really is easier to be simply Honest. Easier to apologize than to be defensive. Easier to be generous than to be fearful. Easier to accept a new “truth” than to become stuck in stubborn habits of building barriers. “Easier” meaning that we can learn that Simplicity is freeing and perverse difficulty destructive. You can build your own personal list.

But we must do the Work. Starting with – and persevering in – self-knowledge. We must do the work of shedding self-deception and assumptions and greed and pride and envy and self-righteousness – all the things that great teachers and sages and deities have “told us” over the millennia.

I recommend this Path. Mostly because it is a joyous and inspiring and giddy and deeply humanizing Path. I haven’t risen to great heights on it. But I have had tastes. You probably have too. And even tiny tastes are a foretaste of ….. well, “Heaven” or “Nirvana” or “The Celestial Banquet” or “Ecstasy” or “Transformation” or whatever you want to call it. Right here, on this Earth.

Jesus said, “My yolk is easy and My burden light”. We perversely have made it “difficult”.

Those who have ears to hear, let us hear.

Brian+