Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

So my doctor's appointment was a total bust. I went there and discovered that through some error he had been double booked. The other person was a lot younger than me and had come from farther so I gave him the appointment and rescheduled for tomorrow. I think they'll have to take me off this mood stabilizer. I've been really cranky and have been fast-cycling through moods on it.

Anyway, I was reading The Trouble With Being Born today (at the doctor's office while I waited for my non-appointment). There was a passage that I thought some people reading this might appreciate:

When Mara, the Tempter, tries to supplant the Buddha, the latter says, among other things: “By what right do you claim to rule over men and the universe? Have you suffered for knowledge?“

This is the crucial, perhaps the sole question we should ask ourselves when we scrutinize anything, especially a thinker. There is never too great a distinction made between those who have paid for the tiniest step toward knowledge and those, incomparably more numerous, who have received a convenient, indifferent knowledge, a knowledge without ordeals.

If Cioran is right, I suppose I must be doing OK because I've had a couple of “ordeals” and whatever knowledge I have seems to have been aquired painfully (not that I'm complaining).