Comments on: Red Letter Day

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 06:45:44 +0000

Dale – Actually, I’ve said that myself, about being kind vs. being nice. And we all know how “realized” I am. :)

Patry – It’s good to get the perspective of a “real” fiction writer. Many thanks.

By: patry

patry — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:26:05 +0000

I was with these guys in the beginning–especially when they were bowing gassho to everything.

But once they approached the girls, I was with their victims, laughing behind my hands, enjoying the jokes, actually believing that the guys who “snuggled and looked deeply interested” really were.

That whimpering girl broke my heart. How well you captured this, Dave: the tawdriness, the cold morning that everyone faced in the end–both exploiter and exploited alike. The mountains that had gone back to being mountains.

By: dale

dale — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 19:23:59 +0000

Yeah. Every once in a while my local lama warns us not to confuse compassion with being nice, which is a point well-taken — also that what he calls “highly realized beings” (a phrase which I confess makes me want to throw up) are playing with a different deck than we are, which is true too — but… yeah.

Rove as sorceror works for me :-)

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:08:24 +0000

Wisdom not in the service of compassion is the definition of sorcery, really. I guess you’re familiar with my skewed perspective on this – that we live in a society run by and for sorcerers. Power is enough of a drug for most of them.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:01:27 +0000

Natalie and Dale – There’s stoned, and then there’s stoned. Each substance is different. I deeply distrust anything made in a laboratory: LSD, cocaine, heroin, distilled spirits, etc. I agree with Dale’s estimation of an acid trip, though I would also go further and say that wisdom without compassion is an ever-present danger for Buddhists, too, at least judging from the public behavior of some undoubtedly very advanced teachers of it.

By: dale

dale — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 11:39:06 +0000

Yes. That’s been my experience of LSD from the outside — that it gives “wisdom without compassion,” in Buddhist terms — an understanding of why it doesn’t matter without the complementary understanding of why it does. I knew a lot of acid-heads in my youth. Been away from that milieu for a long time. This brings it unhappily back.

But I don’t know how far an understanding from the outside gets you though.

I found this really ugly. (What’s presented, I mean, not how it’s presented. It’s beautifully presented.)

By: Natalie

Natalie — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:43:34 +0000

Yes, a gripping tale and authentic in its reporting of the coldness of the stoned mind. That’s what struck me most in my brief experience of being stoned, and also closely observing friends who were frequently stoned. The emotional distance. What shocks me in this story is the guys’ cold parting “gift” to the naive girls of their remaining four tabs.They might have been giving them death (some people’s first trips have been nightmarish) or self-mutilation on grand scale.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:23:05 +0000

Thanks for all these comments & honest reactions.

Haven’t read that Theroux book, but I definitely never understood the East Asian attitude toward sex. I’m not saying it’s better or worse than our attitude, just very different.

By: Marja-Leena

Marja-Leena — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 14:19:23 +0000

I too found it grim. Like Jean I felt a bit shocked, maybe because it was so unexpected. It’s powerful writing to bring out these emotions in me and leave me thinking about why.

By: Jean

Jean — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 11:20:55 +0000

I really don’t know what to say. Am I too easily shocked? It’s a fine piece of writing, and I’ve been back several times to re-read it.