Unexpected Freedom

Alone Togetherincreased willingness to receive the present moment in itsfullness – without interpretation, indulgence or avoidance.In any experience our mind can imagine all sorts ofpossible outcomes, some agreeable and some disagreeable.We can become very anxious because of these imaginedpossibilities. However, if we practise rightly and truly, wefind ourselves increasingly capable of accommodating allsorts of eventualities – both the frightening and thewonderful. I have found this to be true throughout my yearsof training and have observed it growing in many withwhom I have lived. Witnessing such increase of capacity isalways a joy.I received a letter today from someone who lives inEastern Europe and has been practising for a few years. He’syoung and very enthusiastic in his practice and has justrecognised that he’s been attached to the conceited view thathe is in the best religion. There is nobody in his family andhardly anyone else in his immediate environment who is aBuddhist, so he’s very much a solitary Buddhist. He’s beenholding onto an idea of himself as a Buddhist in a very tightway, which is quite understandable – that’s generally how weall begin. But because of his right practice he has reached thepoint where he’s started to loosen the way he holds theperception of himself as a Buddhist, and has come to realisehow conceited his view was that ‘I am a Buddhist andBuddhism is the best religion there is.’In his letter he described how, having seen his conceit, hebecame caught in terrible doubt. He thought, ‘I’ve beenbrain-washed. Buddhism is just another system of brainwashing.’He wrote that he’d been watching a video of Nazisin Germany in the 1930’s, in which the Nazi youth weregoing round teaching the young people to sing nationalisticsongs praising Hitler and so on. The Nazis were skilled at161