Left Hand Path?

The Spiritual Path is a journey. A constant one. Sometimes it fascinates me how people can travel the world without themselves changing the least bit. How they can not change focus in their lives? Even so, traveling within the mind must change you, I think, even if the mind travel is lending its canvas from a book. 

A lot of people I know and see around me travel extensively. They have even done so for years and years. Have they changed? I can tell you, they themselves think they have, but have they? Some yes, but most of them, no. But what do I ask from these people? Too much? 

For instance, there is a man I know who has seen a lot of the world. For him it is almost an obsession going to a poor far away country, just to be able to say: "I have witnessed the injustice with my own eyes, I want to make a change". And then he goes off studying something to make a change. Yet still, it seems his focus is always on that feeling in his gut, how horrible he felt for those beggars and kids without shoes. So the focal point in the sentence above is really "I have witnessed" and not on "injustice". 

I overheard a woman in Bombay complaining about her Taxi driver staring at her chest instead of the road. Well, if you wear a Hollywood cleavage in Bombay, you are asking for it. Never assume the world is you. You are part of the world. And this was a well travelled woman. What use to travel if not learning about the diversity of the world? And accept the differences. 

For my self, I have quite recently moved to another part of the world, far away from my home country in the north. It is still the western world, mind you, but it is hard to accept that peoples minds are different in so many ways. Yet still, I realize how hard it is for me to change. My culture have given me the advantage of being humble, aware of injustice and wrong doings at working places, the obvious fact that the employer is stronger than his employee and therefore has the moral obligation to act benevolent. Not here. Here is a dog eat dog world. Strong capitalism creates quite different ethics. Less compassion, more "What´s in it for me?".  This is not saying that people from my country are less selfish, they are not, beneath the surface (since we all are egoists, which is why capitalism has such a strong echo within us). However, we act less selfish as a society. We have the union for instance, that looks after our interests quite a bit. 

To be continued