Influence

I met a young man who said: “I will not read books because I don’t want to be influenced.”
How naïve to believe this to be desirable or even possible.
We should be influenced; we must be influenced. “Influence brings accomplishment,” says Lao Zi. There is hardly anything truly original in our mental set-up. What makes it our own is how we accept influence.
At birth we know very few things by instinct and it is all by influence that we develop and hone our skills. There are books that are full of the wisdom of the past; if we think deeply of their content and bring the resulting understanding to the test of action then our understanding will become sound.
Action is all important and to be aware of our actions is the cornerstone of all spiritual practice. It is equally necessary in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end. Action is everything we do and say and think, and since we act according to our wants, our needs, our ideas, our feelings, our assumptions, our expectations, our opinions, we have many things to be aware of and to see clearly, without bias, to judge fairly without you and me, me, me!