I wouldn't even make it through the fucking day

Från Brad Warners senaste blog:

"... I'll tell you what, though, friends and neighbors, if it weren't for my steady practice I wouldn't be able to get through life at all. Forget about being all wide eyed and Enlightened. I wouldn't even make it through the fucking day. This is one of the thousand million reasons I take issue with all those assholes out there hawking meditation as the way to turn an ordinary human into Super Meditation Man, the guy who never gets his hair (or lack thereof) ruffled no matter what hurricanes life sends his way.

Yeah, yeah. I know. I know. You've seen that guy! He's on YouTube! He's got little videos in which he giggles and smiles and talks in this really sweet soothing voice about how he has found the way to be cool as a cucumber no matter what happens. He's the real deal!

You know what? Go follow that guy if you want. Buy his magic potions. I don't care. Just don't come belly-achin' to me when you realize what a scam it all was. That's all I ask.

Any decent actor can play that role for the ten minutes YouTube allows you, or the hour or two he's on stage, or for a 15 minute personal interview session where he gets to ring a bell and send you away the instant things get tense. It's not even a very impressive trick. Real life, however, is entirely different.

This is one of (again) the bazillion and two reasons I'm dead set against the whole on-line Zen Master thing. It's so easy to play the role of Super Meditation Man in a Skype interview where you can't see the mess the guy's room is just off camera (both concretely and metaphorically), where you don't get to see how your teacher acts after spending two hours in gridlock on the 405 expressway, where you can't smell the garlic on his breath. ..."