jecks juvenile journals

In the seminar about indian religions today we talked about our personal religious belief and practice. Since the prof thought the matter to be very personal he set some rules before the talk begun.

Everyone may say something or not.
Silence between statements is okay.
No one judges or comments on previous statements.
The statements are not to be told anyone outside the course room.

(I hope this entry is vague enough. I may not make to much sense, because other things where involved which I wont post here due to the rules.)

After a few statements D. got very excited about a statement and tried to defend itself rather fanatically although no one had attacked him in the first place. After a while the prof told him that he could calm down, because there was no one who wanted to argue.

Then I got to speak and said that he (D.) did not follow the rules, because he interpreted a statement by another person as attack and tried to prove it wrong thus judging it.

But the prof didn’t agree with me, quite the contrary: He thanked D. for his statement and said it was a valuable addition to the discussion which showed that personal belief always is a complex and often emotional topic.

I was dumbfounded then. I had made the same mistake as D. because I had attacked him for his statement. I felt like Karate Kid who gets rebuffed by Mr. Miyagi for a stupid mistake he could have seen himself.