Reading an article about Ash Wednesday over breakfast and coffee (yeah kind of ironic huh) this morning, I read something which was kind of interesting. The article goes on and on about 'Self Denial' and how people will be giving up various things for 40 days. The article** sort of blah'ed on for a bit (the fact that Liz Hurley limits herself to one meal a day, and that some random woman decides to consume aspartame based sweetners and diet coke instead of sugar is hardly interesting), but then it has this interesting quote:
Geshe Tashi, Tibetan Buddhist monk: "Self-denial, as a concept, does not really exist within Buddhism. We use the term 'selflessness'.
And therein lies a serious irony. So many people in western society do crap like this for the wrong reason. They'll spend the whole 40 days making such a huge song and dance to anyone who cares to listen or is unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place during a bout of piousness about how good they're being and how hard it is - basically, making it all about them. Hardly selfless, in fact, the complete opposite.
** I don't know what qualifies as an article. Does an article need to be informative? Is there some more fitting word for random space filling crap which constitutes 90% of the New Zealand Herald these days?