AugustLeo's Commentary deleted at his request

Hi Everyone,

Earlier this week, AugustLeo emailed me to say that he would no longer participate on the forum and asked me to delete his thread, AugustLeo's Commentary. I hesitated to delete the thread, believing that it was a valuable part of the forum and not wanting to set a precedent of deleting threads. AugustLeo then edited out all of his own comments from the thread and again asked me to delete it. Again I hesitated, for the same reasons as before and also because other people had commented on the thread and it did not seem fair to them to delete their comments without asking them. Chris Marti then made a strong case to me that without AugustLeo's participation the thread was becoming a problem as other members expressed their disapproval of AugustLeo's behavior without him there to defend himself; Chris said that the right thing to do would be to delete the thread. I told him to make the decision in his role as interim moderator while I took off a few days to write. Chris deleted the thread. I support his decision.

On Wednesday, I noticed that AugustLeo had also deleted his own posts from at least one other (recently inactive) thread. I wrote to him and told him that I could not allow him to continue to do that because it makes the forum look shabby and destroys the continuity of the threads. As I understand it, the posts belong to the forum and since the purpose of the forum is to provide information, interaction, and support in order to help people awaken, I want to preserve its integrity. So I banned AugustLeo to prevent him from doing further damage in that regard and invited him to return and participate under another name. I have a great deal of affection, admiration, and respect for AugustLeo; the banning was not meant to hurt or discredit him in any way but only to preserve the integrity of the forum, including archived posts.

Metta,

Kenneth

I fully support preserving the continuity of the discussions here, Kenneth. I think you made the right decision.

Tough call, guys. I support your decisions. Hope to see you again, soon, Michael! (Assuming you are reading this thread).

I also hope to see Michael coming back soon. Being too busy with my own self-centered quest for selflessness at the time, I didn't get the chance to get to know him well when he first appeared on the forum, but found the posts of this great yogi very interesting.

Going through profound identity shifts can be very destabilizing and we should all understand that AugustLeo's decision is a normal reaction in the wider context of the process of integration described by experienced dharma teachers like Kenneth, Adyashanti or Hakuin.

Case #2 of Mumonkan also has a pointer on mistake a person of enlightenment can make.


Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?
Hyakujõ answered, "He does not ignore causation."

www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm

Your compassionate approach is commendable, Kenneth. In its intention, and as regards the specific individual.

In terms of missing a vital point that needs to be made to the wider assembly of practitioners-- I wonder a bit. The old Zen guys seemed to be pretty uncompromising about 'near misses'; and I'd say that the results of such mercilessness were pretty damn good.

The oldest 'Zen guy' left standing is Sasaki Roshi, about whom I read this great anecdote:

A karate student doing a retreat with Joshu Sasaki Roshi... had been struggling with a koan for some time, with no results. Finally during a private interview he became so frustrated that he let out a great shout and threw a karate punch directly at the teacher, stopping inches from Sasaki's face.

The Roshi was unmoved. 'Right answer,' he said. 'Wrong koan.'

" 'Right answer,' he said. 'Wrong koan.'"

PS-- if I were to write the story of my life, in 25 words or less, this would be a major contender for best synopsis. Right up there with Ikkyu's

'wife daughters friends this is for you satori
is mistake after mistake'