Faults

Not to suffer fools gladly;
    Not to be tolerant with injustice:
    -to bridle, to rile, when fools exploit us.
    Not to be careful of the conflict betwixt
        ethics & karma:
    though being helpful to others in trouble
    expect nothing but trouble for your pains.
        
    Not to avoid all human intercourse
         beyond purely practical necessity;
    To ever indulge at all the pleasure principle
         however modestly;
    Not to avoid speech of all sorts as much as one can,
         of course, and not to restrict writing
         to purely poetic-inspired utterance only;
    Not to recognize, constantly, that the source of wisdom
         lies only in Silence and Solitude;
    Not to recognize, constantly, that all else we do
         is foolishness, a blind tangle of cause & effect
             that strangles wisdom,
         however appealing or apparently necessary,
             -it strangles the Truth.

    Not to realize instantly when irritated by another's faults
         an indication of our own, not necessarily identical,
             but related & festering.
    Not to appreciate that the eremitic vocation is a pinnacle
        all too easy to fall from and
        all but impossible to ascend:
    Better, in ascetic excess, a hermit-Jerome to be,
         or any who wear their faults upon the sleeve
             struggling with adversity & defeat,
         than in smug comfort smile in hypocrisy
             pontifying upon how a hermit should be.    
    
    Not to use one's faults
    (hubris, pride, anger, sloth, fear, impatience, despair, contempt...)
         to keep one apart, aloof, from others;
    Not to resist the allure of other people's
          apparent interest in you;
    Not to value cynicism: it is an excellent
          litmus test of value-content;
    Not refraining from falling in the feelings-fault
          between feeling exultant one moment
          and in despair the next, of liking this & repellent that,
              All of it is like the weather:
          Rain or shine, cold or hot or dry, storms or snows
          they are all the same thing: changes in the ever-changing firmament;
          none are better or worse, any that seem more convenient or preferable,
        -it is nothing but our foolish feelings fooling us.

    Not to assume there are more faults than we are aware of
          and virtues may also be faulty in application,
              is to neglect to disconnect them.
    
    Not to keep in mind that stupidity is the fault of intelligence:
          Non-intelligence is exempt from stupidity
          as ignorance is exempt from knowledge,
          it has its faults too but stupidity is not one of them.
          Stupidity is a slight of mind, like a slight of hand,
          that slips the truth aside to oblige an hidden agenda,
          often a self-hidden agenda; -a sophistry, a winking at errors & motives,
          a malware to gain a momentary benefit
          at the expense of the truth of the question at hand.
    It is a double fault not to remain alert to our own stupidity.

    Faults are not wrong or immoral or evil
        -they are consequences of karma:
    They balance imbalances, complete incompleteness, rotate the wheel of                   existence;
    Earthquakes are essential to planetary balance as are any natural phenomena.
    It is our indulgence in faults that gives them their moral hue:
    Milarepa conjured a hailstorm to destroy his mother's enemy's crops was evil,
        -not the hailstorm, not the destruction;
    Just gloat over such thoughts or deeds to sink in an immoral wallow.
    The pacifying response to calamity, human or natural,  is compassion &                       succour.    

    To justify anything under the rubric of "Love",
          -that most ambiguous of terms
           in any language and any definition.
    (True love radiates from within,
           without any other outer manifestation required).

    The quintessential fault of all faults is
           Attachment to the dichotomy of self & others.
    Not to pursue, at every point in this existence,
           To conjure up and abide in,
    an hermitude of solitary serene silence,
            in place space and time,
            -a sanctuary of consciousness
            beyond the bedlam of  this worldly whirlpool.

    Not to heed the lessons in our faults
            but to concede to them ceaselessly,
    Is letting out rope to tie up & tangle one in,
        the nemesis of fools.