Nun of Your Business

I've been telling my friends that I'm interested in something I'm calling 'the symbolic process,' these days. So someone gave me the book American Gods , by Neil Gaiman (2001). This fictional adventure is about a show-down between the ancient gods, led by the old Norse god Odin, and the gods of modernity--the ones who run the internet, and so forth. One of my favorite parts was when they (the main character, who is human, and the god Odin) take a sharp right turn off the highway and take a shortcut through the backstage of reality. In order to evade their pursuers, they walk in this realm that has a black, slick ground. When they arrive at their destination--a cabin in the countryside--it turns out that a month has passed in this ordinary reality, even though it didn't seem that long in the black, slick backstage shortcut. That reminds me of explanations we hear from Buddhism (and other traditions) about how time passes differently in various realms. For example...

Do you know Rumpole, the British barrister (lawyer)? While I was home recently, my dad loaned me a book to read about this fictional character, well-known through the TV serial that airs on PBS. In this particular book, Rumpole was being interviewed for a possible promotion and was asked why he chose to defend people who were always getting into trouble. I don't have the exact words in front of me, but his answer was something like "People who don't get into trouble don't need defending." That made me think of the bodhisattva mission to save suffering beings. Sure I want people to be free of suffering, but I don't want to be bothered by the annoying ones, the ones who really have a lot of problems. Also, I don't really want to help the ones who hurt me. So which ones am I going to work for? to lead them from suffering into everlasting happiness? Only the good ones? They probably don't even need my help. That would be like a lawyer who only defended peo...