| It's not a religious question - the same thing would come up if you wanted to setup a large electric train set, or hold a dance class, or anything, and then refused to return the space to its original state. There are no (few) formal rules, just the weight on inconvenience. By physical necessity only one person can work with a tool at once so as long as you share nobody minds being temporarily without, but if you do something like take all the tools at once you're inconveniencing everyone and people will complain. If you box up all the tools and move them out of the room you're inconveniencing all others who'd work in that area. If there are less of you than them, or if you're doing things you could do in any other space, you'll rightly be asked to move because it inconveniences you less than the people trying to do hacky things with the tools. And leaving the space setup in your way is rude unless you're coming right back. Nobody minds if you run to the washroom but if you go to 7-11 for snacks you'll come back to find your tools in use at another station. If you go home for the night, you'll get complained to when you come back in the morning. > In other words: these meditation practices hack the mind. Sure sure, but to they need the whole room to be left unusable by other hobbies to do so? Can't they hack the mind in the corner and clean up after themselves? > The Bodhisattva ideal has this streak of radical inclusiveness too. There's something here that might benefit both groups. In the monks refusing to cleanup? "Oh, I don't do my dishes because it radically includes others in my cycle of life, peace brother." > How effective are they? Can you measure happiness? To what extent can technology help or hinder this? Wouldn't you want to know? Oh god no, just do the bloody dishes and quit trying to dodge the issue. This is all just being thrown out as some weird excuse for space-dominating actions and making the space less comfortable for everyone. When the dishes are clean, we can talk. |
That's addressing a very different issue. May I assume you were there back then when this happened, and this was one of the issues that came up within the community?