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Roger Spitz

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“Our little movement, we were always too fragile, always too dependent on the whims of our supporters. But it had always been a struggle, and after Morningdale, after the climate changed, we had no chance. The world didn't want to be reminded how the donation programme really worked. They didn't want to think about you students, or about the conditions you were brought up in. In other words, my dears, they wanted you back in the shadows.”

“The Buddha said, "If at some point in your life you adopt an idea or a perception as the absolute truth, you close the door of your mind. This is the end of seeking the truth. And not only do you no longer seek the truth, but even if the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you refuse to open it. Attachment to views, attachment to ideas, attachment to perceptions are the biggest obstacle to the truth." It's like when you climb a ladder. When you get to the fourth rung, you may think you are on the highest step and cannot go higher, so you hold on to the fourth rung. But in fact there is a fifth rung; if you want to get to it, you have to be willing to abandon the fourth rung. Ideas and perceptions should be abandoned all the time, to make room for better ideas and truer perceptions. This is why we must always ask ourselves, "Am I sure?”

“What Pa did doesn't represent all of who he is. There's a bigger picture. Amma said something to me once, when I found a drawing someone had done of her when she was a teenager: In life we wear a hundred faces - the bawling infant, the happy child, the starry-eyed youth. Each face belongs to a different life. I didn't fully understand it then. But maybe I do now. A lifetime is made up of dozens of lives, tied together only by shared memory. Who I was when I was a baby isn't the same person I was at age ten, much less who I am now. Who Pa was in his twenties isn't the same man he is today. And I have to believe that the man he is today shouldn't have to die for the mistakes of the other man who wore his face twelve years ago.”