Could we be on the brink of a titanic shift, a Promethean change in humanity of vast implications?
Various luminaries, visionaries and oddballs, cult-leaders and gurus, have talked of this kind of thing, but is it now actually appearing beyond doubt?
What has been called the “human condition” for centuries is actually beginning to change. The inevitability of suffering, of old age and even of mortality, not to mention of selfishness, cruelty, ignorance – even ten or twenty years ago no one could have been taken seriously for thinking any of these could be significantly changed. They were all part of the human lot.
But a tipping point has been reached: they can and very likely will change. What has been welcomed as wisdom for thousands of years may actually turn out to have been the first glimmerings, and the seeds, of a great new turning – truly, a titanic shift in human experience.
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Do we have to be either despairing or hopeful? It’s one or the other, hope or despair?
No! Dharma regards both as misguided. In the core of every moment is something better than hope, that needs no hope. And because of it, despair is far beside the point.
Yet if hope or despair arise, practice receives them both with an equally warm welcome, and proceeds to dismantle them through its loving embrace.