and then there’s the time I talked to His Holiness Sakya Trinzin…
Rites of passage used to be a whole lot goryier. Depending on your position within your community, and your ethnicity, to become, or transform into, an Adult, you could end up being pierced, consuming highly hallucinogenic potions, or being pushed into the arctic currents with no paddle. Depending on your karma, you could get all three at once…
These days, it’s simple. Mostly, you just get a drivers license, a job, and pick a team to support. The sport is irrelevent, as is the game. Belonging to your tribe is the real reason. BELONG OR….or what? Don’t belong? Why is belonging so important? Is it ok to not belong? Surely this is a way free of attachment, of “being your self”.
Being your self is ok.
Self? What is this thing, self? No science has ever proven it to exist in a physical nature, in fact, if you look very very hard, deep inside, all you will find, is a version of your self, that changes it’s self the very second you see it. I swear, I once heard it giggle at me when it did it….
In the last 50 years, our rites of passage have changed hugely. These days an OE is the normal procedure for “finding ones self”. An intentional, although often sub concious process of seperating your self from what ever group belonging it had attached its self to, making your self not belong to where you were from, and coming of age by finding out who you are, or rather, as I was to learn, who you allow yourself to be… And you thought you were going on holiday?
Saul Williams - Talk to Strangers
To remember the I.
