There’s nothing here that’s not been said before

But I put it down now to solidify my own views

And I’ll be glad if it helps anyone else out too.

Adam Yauch

The thing about advice is sometimes you just need to hear it, in order to recognize what you already know. Good advice makes sense because the truth in it is so obvious, and you know bad advice the same way you know bad tofu — every part of your being is shouting “that’s wrong!” Sometimes the truth hurts because it’s too close to the bone, and sometimes you get the same pat and hollow answers no matter the question posed. It’s up to each of us to apply our human intelligence to our lived experience and hash out our own truths. Getting advice is part of the smell test.

I’ve been handed plenty of good and bad advice over the years, but one thing I’ve had to figure out is that a poor teacher doesn’t invalidate the teachings. If the advice is too far off the mark I might be left to figure out my own answers, but really that’s what I was going to do anyway so why not get down to it? This month marks the Lunar New Year and I’ve been dropping in on a number of Buddhist communities lately, in part to join in the celebration, and partly because I like to know what other people do all day. I had a brief conversation with an interesting fellow who told me he was once a monk. Now he lives nearby. I asked him curiously “So where do you practice?” and his reply was the best advice I’ve received all year. “I just practice.”