Ideas and Dogma

 Excerpt from Tom Robbins' book, Still Life with Woodpecker

"Ignoring the possibility that in the wrong hands almost any object… can turn up as Exhibit A in a murder trial… it is still safe to say that objects, as we understand them, are stable, whereas ideas are definitely unstable:  They not only can be misused, they invite misuse; and the better the idea the more volatile it is.

"That’s because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly.  In terms of hazardous vectors released, the transformation of ideas into dogma rivals the transformation of hydrogen into helium, uranium into lead, or innocence into corruption.  And it is nearly as relentless.

"The problem starts at the secondary level: not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted by it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the perspective, flexibility, imagination, and, most important, sense of humor to maintain it in the spirit in which it has hatched.  Ideas are made by Masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road….
--