temples always get burned

In the hotel lobby, exaggerating sports announcers describe the basketball stadium as a temple. I've heard this description before. I've heard it used to describe apple stores, and bookstores, and record stores, and movie theaters. I've heard people describe their yoga studio as their temple, where they go to find holiness and zen peace. There is an adulation that comes in temples, and a passion and emotion that often has no relationship to the scale of human energy engaged in such things.

But the same emotions that bend to worship also rise as torch-bearers elsewhere. Temples always burn. Sometimes they are rebuilt, but first they must be burned. And to rebuild them is to burn them again.

Have no temples. Be your own, wherever you are, and give no idea or place outside of your self the weight of a temple building stone upon your back.