A battle of wits with the unarmed

I watched an interview with Eckhart Tolle on "Nightline" and found the exchange fascinating.


Here is a guy who seems to have it spiritually together encountering a reporter who was clueless, cynical and snobbish. Would he object to the same simple message if it were delivered by the Dalai Lama? No, of course not the DL is an accredited holy guy. Tolle is an academic who "woke up" and spent a couple of years sitting on a park bench. To the reporter that means homeless nutcase. Yeah well Jesus spent forty days in the desert and the Buddha sat under a tree doing the same gig. Get over it pal.

I have no patience with religions and their ideological bullshit or brainwashing people to react violently to anything different from their interpretation. So I found it surprising how the reporter seemed to defend the conservative christians criticism of his message, but comments from viewers were mostly positive.


Tolle's philosophy is very similar to Buddhism ( which I dig) so there was nothing surprising there but he did say one thing that got me to thinking. Our negative thoughts are not who we really are. Huh, so who am I? I have been wondering that in a zen koan kind of way ever since.

Meanwhile, be here now kids.