the destruction business

Today the construction crew at the Temple are working on the handicap ramp. They're making the entry way level so that people can enter the main hallway from the porch without having to go up steps. I've been curious about how they were going to manage this, not being someone who understands even the basics of building, and have been mighty impressed with a number of things. One is how Will, the volunteer foreman of the crew, gently and directly explains tasks to his (mostly) unskilled volunteers. And another is how, in order to make this new entrance, the old entrance has to be destroyed.

It's probably pretty obvious -- the need to destroy something to allow something new to emerge. And it pretty much describes how everything seems to be emerging in this new Temple life. Personally, I've been finding that all my old ideas, habits, patterns, are slowly but surely being eroded by the demands of this amazing project. The new life arises through the destruction of the old. And through this wide and spacious new door will come people who never knew the limitations of the old narrow entry.

Privacy

Living in Boundless Way Temple is strangely freeing. Although I feel that I have lost some of my privacy, I find myself feeling more at ease and present. As if in confirmation, I came across this quote from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in the November Shambhala Sun: "The point is that when you give up privacy, that is the only time you can be with yourself. Our normal version of privacy is not really privacy. We say, "I need my privacy." If you are bottling yourself up with your so called privacy, you find yourself getting in your own way. There is no privacy in that situation. The privacy does not exist. Instead, you feel completely bombarded with internal emotions and thoughts, which take away from your chance to be with yourself and relax with yourself completely. Once you begin to give up privacy, you open your heart and your whole existence to the rest of the world, and then you find greater privacy. You find that an actual discovery of yourself is taking place."