In "I Am Not Spock" Leonard Nimoy related the story of a woman who asked him to touch her sick child so the kid's illness would be healed. She wasn't asking Spock, she was asking Nimoy. Nimoy didn't believe in his darshan, but that woman sure did. I love the concept, by the way. That;s how I felt about the chance to meet the Dalai Lama (which I ended up not getting to do). I just wanted to catch his glance and find out if it felt the way I imagined it would. But that's the Dalai Lama, who is arguably holy, not a celebrity. I think if darshan is something everyone has or could have, if one were holy, darshan would be a nigh-unlimited resource, but if one were not holy, one's darshan could be depleted and one would have to rest. Or take some darshan from a holy person. I think I'm getting the plot of a novel here.

That's a fair reading. I can't really sign off on the depletion aspect, so if that's part of the definition, I guess I don't have much use for the concept. I like having a word to attach to that desire for presence and sight, though.

Maybe darshan is like blood. You give some away, and then you grow it back.

Erika, as others have said, being "woman on the street" sympathetic to someone who treated you as badly as she did is more than enough. Many quite decent people would not feel that much sympathy.

NoiseDesign, one of the refs at this bout is skating in a Utilikilt.

I bought a big case of quart-size canning jars last summer, planning to make pickles and sauerkraut and all kinds of stuff, and ended up doing absolutely nothing with them. I made some stuff in the pint and half-pint jars, but nothing in the quart ones. In packing up my kitchen, I was trying to decide whether to take the jars with me, in the hopes that I'll sometime actually make quart jars of something, or to just admit defeat. Someone just posted on Freecycle looking for canning jars. I'm giving them to her -- someone who's specifically looking for them is probably going to use them, and it's better than they be used then that they just sit around.

I keep remembering the guy who founded Nairopa: he was an alcoholic and a womanizer and generally problematic, yet he was also somehow an important spiritual teacher for a lot of people who would have that kind of awe in his presence. I never met him or anything, but i've met people who he taught, and they seem to have genuinely gained something from the association. Of he also lost something, well, I don't know but I doubt it. But I could be entirely wrong.

Good call giving away the jars, Hil. Bulky and easily replaced if you find you want them.

Ok, when I thought there were just facial pustules, I found that fairly amusing, I have to say. Much like sitting around the other night wondering if Kurzweil made a chalkboard that talks for Glenn Beck. Even I don't think blood cancer is funny, though, if it turns out that she has it.

erika, I'm sorry to hear that your stepmother is ill, but don't beat yourself up if you can't feel more sympathy for her than you would for any stranger. It doesn't sound like she has really done much to earn more than that from you.

Great...Thanks, Bitches(as opposed to the Olbermannesque "Great thanks," as I'm not quite old-school-tie enough to rock that one. I guess when you have had people give you a hard enough time about seeming "Normal", you start to wonder if anything you think is ever all right.