Rinzai Did Nothing Wrong.

Yes: I value the opinions of others, insofar as I can vouch for their integrity. Yet that requires that they fervently believe that what they say is true, that they can stand beside it, put it into practice, and uphold it as a sacred principle, as though it were a Higher Power which compelled them. It thus follows that, so long as an opinion is valid, one must validate it not by merely practicing that view within one’s own life, but by holding others to it. One cannot impose morality on anyone, because morality is binding on us all, in equal measure, and one’s only burden is to fathom it, to the extent one can, and to uphold it. That is not an imposition; it’s an obligation, and, without it, we have nothing. You once asked me: “At what point is it an evil to impose one’s views of righteousness on someone else?” I’ll answer with the obvious: at no point, whatsoever, since it is impossible. Where Righteousness is what’s at stake, one can’t “impose on someone else”, as though one posed a

A great many people want the finer things in life for free, especially if they should learn that others have those things. That’s well and good if one assumes that “all are equal in the eyes of God,” yet in the voice of someone godless it just screams “self-worship”. For example, it’s become a fashion for the atheists to say that, if a man should serve his neighbour *merely* out of love for God, then such a service is not genuine, for no one ought to *need* belief in God in order to serve man; one only needs the love of man. That “love of man” is easy to imagine if one loves oneself, and self-love is a frequent aspect of self-worship.   Yet consider this example: that a classic hero loves his parents for their virtue, holds the Laws which govern his Society to be a sacred institution, and reveres the values of his culture and its heritage. Now, should this man be burdened with a younger brother who abuses all these things and people which the hero cherishes as sacred, it is natural tha