Bad Buddhist vs. The Eighth Precept

Great little blogpost from the Diary of a Bad Buddhist about the challenge of being too busy to practice ... yet not busy enough.

There is a version of this precept floating around in our culture, and does not have the same legitimizing foundation in wisdom or the goal of human happiness. I'm talking about the Busy Rule. This rule says that you have to be busy all the time; you have to be so busy doing stuff you have to do that you don't have time to do the stuff you want to do; you have to be so busy that you're acutely aware of how your busy-ness exhausts and frustrates you; you have to be so busy that there is no possibility of unscheduled, unresearched, unmultitasked leisure or social activity. And the only acceptable reason for turning down any invitation or request for your time is that you're just way too crazy busy.

Well, screw that. I can't live as a crazy-busy person for more than a week without completely falling apart. I know my limit of busy, and I protect myself from being pushed too far past it — even when it means turning down invitations or requests for my time not because I'm actually too busy, but because I don't want to be.

Read the rest here: http://www.badbuddhistblog.com/2007/09/bad-buddhist-vs-eighth-precept.html