It’s Okay

Of course, a lot of people right now think it is very much not okay, and I do not wish to argue with them. I do not wish to argue with anyone.

Alan Watts, who gained fame in the United States primarily as an expositor of Zen Buddhism, made the interesting point that, whether one sees order or chaos depends heavily on the level of magnification. His mother apparently was expert in embroidery and working with fabrics.

He noted that, just looking at a piece of unaltered fabric with the naked eye, one usually sees order, which is the point. In nearly all cases, people who make fabric hope to achieve a visually pleasing result.

But, if one looks at the same fabric under a microscope, one will see a tangled welter of threads that is anything but orderly.

Increase the magnification, and one will again see the orderly organization of the individual threads.

Increase the magnification again, and the components of the thread will again look very disorderly.

People on the Buddhist path usually make a similar point, at least implicitly, that one should adopt the most macro perspective possible. At least one very important Buddhist figure said so outright: “Re: Though the view should be as vast as the sky, keep your conduct as fine as barley flour.

Or, as Ajahn Sumedho likes to say, pure consciousness does not judge. It only witnesses.

Our judgments are but thoughts, and individual judgments will not likely have much impact on…