One robe, one bowl: This floating world

Interesting post, here's a slice:

"Prior to taking precepts, I really believed that I could change the world through political and social action. What I never paid attention to was how I was engaging the world. I'd say, actually, that despite my well-meant intentions, I was living 'without the world' before I took precepts. Buddhism didn't prompt me to take a step back and examine how I was living in the world. I'd realized I needed to do so before I stepped foot in my first temple. What practice did give me was support and clarity for 'shifting my paradigm of being.' And I didn't shift right away, either. It's not something that happens in a season, or even a single lifetime. It is something that we can observe, however; and I look back and see a difference.
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