Topic: Shopping Mentality

[Endless~Knot]

"The most important thing is not to get trapped in what I see everywhere in the West, a "shopping mentality": shopping around from master to master, teaching to teaching, without any continuity or real, sustained dedication to any one discipline. Nearly all the great spiritual masters of all traditions agree that the essential thing is to master one way, one path to the truth, by following one tradition with all your heart and mind to the end of the spiritual journey, while remaining open and respectful towards the insights of all others. ...

The modern faddish idea that we can always keep all our options open and so never need commit ourselves to anything is one of the greatest and most dangerous delusions of our culture, and one of the ego's most effective ways of sabotaging our spiritual search."

From Sogyal Rinpoche's: Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

[Michael]

wear a hole in your pants at the bum

[Endless~Knot]

wear a hole in your pants at the bum

sometimes you say the weirdest things 

[Nichi]

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

-- Rumi, 'We Are Three', Mathnawi VI, 831-845

[Michael]

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

See?  Rumi agrees with me.

[Endless~Knot]

This was a good add to this thread, thanks Myr

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

-- Rumi, 'We Are Three', Mathnawi VI, 831-845

[Endless~Knot]

See?  Rumi agrees with me.

Rumi would think you're a nut