ego.istic.org

We were sitting around a table in the foyer of Cambridge Buddhist Centre. He was drinking tea and parroting what he'd been told by some neo-Buddhist lifestyle guru.

“The big fact is, you have absolutely no influence over the world—the relative world, that is. None at all. So there's no point trying to change it.” After making this pronouncement he swigged his tea and set it on the table with a defiant grin, looking around for signs that someone was going to disagree.

I ignored his unspoken challenge and slid his mug a few inches along the table until it was in front of me. “Do you understand?” I asked.

He answered by picking the mug up and placing it back at his position. “You see? You can't control it at all.”

“But the mug is exactly where we both wanted it to be.”