I'm finding it hard to put into words what the HI forum has been about, at least in my opinion. But light talk among friends - while an important component - is nothing like the most important component for me.
The magic of this place at its best, is a magic that's related to Dharma - the sense of duty and compassion that led Bill Martino to start up a company which frankly, flouts the rules of most profit-making enterprises. Because it has a different primary purpose than profit.
The HI Forum is a place where sometimes, we really plumb the depths. And where people have felt safe to do so. Where we can crack absurd jokes, and also talk about the meaning of death, or how pain may be necessary for growth.
This place is the community we make it - with the amount of our selves, our lives, our hidden places, that we're willing to collectively invest. Where one thread will be about pirate ducks, another about Mausers, and another yet about transformative suffering.
For the kamis and their families, it really is all about khukuries. Whether we're talking about how to temper a blade, or how to afford medicine for your sick child. Their lives are moulded by the chance thing, the sheer good luck, of having had someone like Bill Martino care enough about humanity to find a place for them to claim the dignity of work.
Our lives, if we want them to be, can be moulded by the same chance thing - the chance (like happened to me) of stumbling across a community like this one, where perhaps the one thing we at first thought we shared in common was an interest in khuks. But where we found, at length, that what was held in common was a whole lot more.
I'd want to try and keep it that way. But a Buddhist orientation knows that all things will change ... including the character of the HI forum. If it grows away from its roots in Dharma, though, I for one will send up smoke.
t.
