[OceanofDharma] Quotes of the Week: Decency Is Absence of Strategy

[Carolyn Gimian]

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week

May 21, 2009

DECENCY IS ABSENCE OF STRATEGY

If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody 
at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of 
straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or 
vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. 
If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all 
they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure 
out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them 
completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears 
the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of 
some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the 
absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the 
warrior's approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and 
straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up 
your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency.

 From "Perkiness," a talk given to the Directors of Shambhala 
Training, July 1978.

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Teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, taken from works published by 
Shambhala Publications,  the Archive of his unpublished work in the 
Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.

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