A somewhat funny text exchange with a friend yesterday:
E: Can you help me reserve two seats – for me and my friend, who is attending a Dharma talk for the first time?
S: Sorry leh… I don’t encourage reserving of seats for free public talks.
E: How come? I do so to encourage friends to come. It’s a good motivation.
S: It’s messy if everyone reserves seats for someone, and unfair to those who came earlier. (So, my motivation is good too hehe.) There are already sets reserved for VIPS too.
E: Are there differentiated VIP reservations?
S: Monastics are the VIPs (who get the best seats)… plus you and your friend… if I reserve for you two! As I’m not the organisers, I can’t decide who deserves VIP reservations!
E: Anyway, okay… I’ll let ‘destiny’ take its course!
May be we should be éšæ€§…
you come early, there will be plenty of seats, well good..
you come early, no more seats..have to bear with it…
you come late, if there are seats, well good…
you come late, no more seats…too bad..
hahaha…éšæ€§…éšæ€§… 😆
What matters more is good audio when it comes to talks. So, the seating is less important!
😉