Adler… my post was mean-spirited and thoughtless.
It was intended as such, but I do apoligize for it…
Some things I would like to discuss with everyone:
(1) Western religions, I think, build on an established foundation and from that foundation we can arrive at the penultimate conclusion. Eastern religions, I think, encourage each person to dig their own foundation. Is this a stereotype or is this a misconception of mine?
(2) I think that philosophy & science do (and should) build on the established knowledge of the past. Much is gained from this knowledge and it is otherwise lost. Scientific discoverys of the past (like the discovery of the theory of gravity) push us into newer discoveries (like general relativity) and onward into deeper and more thorough discoveries (like quantum physics → superstring theory). Similarly, philosophy builds on the thougths of those in the past and pushes us into newer more effective thoughts. Eastern religions*, I think, do not typically accomplish something new because each time a persom essentially starts from scratch. Eastern religions* present themselves as the choice for those that “think for themselves” but those that do lose out on the discoveries of those in the past. Again, am I wrong? What am I missing?
-Thirst
*I specifically refuse to call it “Eastern Philosophy”
What Mastrinai has mentioned regarding eastern philosophys being instrisically bound to culture is key. Approaching any such philosophy would normally require not only a fundamental appreciation of the culture that accepts it but also the language. I’ve struggled and struggled with Thai Buddhism, for example. Sometimes it’s logical, sometimes it’s useless, sometimes it’s beautiful, often it’s opaque, frequently it’s obvious and suddenly it’s far more mature than I realised. I suppose it’s all about culture, ultimately.
I would like to stop us in our tracks here, this business of the western mind versus the eastern mind feels like an incorrect method of exploration to discover something that is universal where penetrative understanding is what we are seeking, not a comparison of east versus west. And in fact predetermination is wholly different from karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word that means ‘action’. (“We reap what we sowâ€) In essence it is the sum of all that an individual has done and is currently doing. It is a conglomeration of past actions (causes) and future (effects) actions which are changeable, how we choose to deal with our karma – enter free choice – and whether we balance our karma or create new karma or for the most part continue the cycle of karma. This is where ‘awareness’ in so-called eastern philosophy/religion becomes so important, as the entire effort is to become aware of all our actions in order to break the cycle of reincarnation and to enlighten ourselves. But I digress.
There is no way for me to get you to see what I see. There simply is no way; you will have to look from behind my eyes. The very best that the mystic can do is inspire you, move you to connect with what you are witnessing. This inspiring is not a conscious choice but rather is a result of his life. You cannot observe through his words, you can only do that through his actions, and your karmic relationship is key here. Of course the mystic’s words (his manifestations) will be inspiring because they will be born out of his direct experience, but this is secondary. The mystic does not call himself a mystic, the mystic does not try to inspire you, he only lives his life continuously cultivating awareness leading to penetrative understanding and this becomes his purpose.
It is not fair to use Ucc as your example but finish the thought…
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
The seeming contradiction of eastern philosophy/religion is simply a matter of penetrative understanding. If one desires only to understand intellectually one will only be able to see the words (the manifestations), that desire leads us again and again to a dead end, to expectations, to mental activity, whereas desirelessness (referring to worldly desire) an empty mind leads us straight into the mystery, the unknowable. The last line here holds the key…
The affinity takes work, whether the work is accomplished in the present moment or in the past is of no consequence. Although a cultivation of the affinity in the past gives us a foundation. “Those that are last will be first in the Kingdom of Heavenâ€.
Truth is simple. What is not simple is the complexity of the human mind, the pathway cultivated over time. Karma is complex and no amount of trying to understand it intellectually will suffice. One has to resonate with it, but this resonance is nothing more than FAITH. Faith is not just that we have faith in a thing, but rather that the thing that we have faith in has faith in us. When we reach out to touch the mystical and unknowable, the mystical and unknowable reaches out to touch us. Faith is a virtue of our true nature and the other side of the faith coin is sincerity, sincerity to practice what we understand intellectually. This is the function of the mind.
I think liquidangel has asserted the most valuable point: Which direction of longitude and latitude an ideology first eminates from is the least important. It is the search.
I’ve often said that I would like to complete one painting in my life. A painting representing a person from every faith, on a path, that leads to a single point. I truly believe that is the truest sense of the matter, that all those who seek, regardless of choice of medium, end in the same place.
At least my experience with martial arts says this true. For every art, it is the practitioner, not the art, that decides the outcome of ability. For all the arts, they end in exactly the same place, regardless.
That’s not true. The belief that you’ve found some sort of understanding, or whatever, can be found from both eastern and western thought, and this is especially true since more than a little of western thought was borrowed from the easten. However, psuedo-spiritualism in both the west and the east is employed to trick people out of their time and money. So, one needs to be aware of what’s sound and what’s not, and good luck on that.
Wonderfully expressed. I think we have to get away from the “east” and “west”, “mine” and “yours”, “buddhist” and “christian” and find the awesome truth that our lives are not just coincidental accidents, but somehow interconnected and leading to a higher purpose. The mystic follows his destiny or his karma whilst trying to fathom as good he can, discovering the hints that the Ineffable leaves behind on his “paperchase”.
This is one time we agree. Break out the champagne. I also agree with Mastriani that all the paths initiating with a conscious source contain within them the means to inwardly develop in the inner direction of their common source. However there many reasons why only a very few can ever get there.
The basic reasons are that we lack need, consciousness, and will and ignorantly captivated by both naive fears and imagination. As a result, even though many initial efforts begin with sincerity and dedication, they gradually begin to lose force and to turn in circles natural for all unconscious life on earth.
One of the values of an impartial intellect after having acquired some experience is that it can notice both self deception and the influence of open charlatens and self inflating “experts” . This discrimination that keeps check on naive emotions I’ve read described as “inner taste.” Actually the Bible describes some of the pitfalls that keep this psychological evolution offered by the “Ways” to a minimum.
I thought that this thread was about “selling” mysticism?
The above quote by Liquid has a bit of bunk to it. It is exactly the stuff that I was referring to in my post where I broke down the technique of appealing to a confused person’s needs. It’s the idea that you and I are unique and mystically unfathomable beings. That’s not true as humans are semi-unique and highly predictable beings. The false mystic draws on the existential dread people have and exploits that for his own ends. Whatever you are being told is mystic, is actually the selling of mysticism.
I base that on the Buddhist idea that you should never meet a Buddha, because they would never ever feel the need to tell you about it, and the moment they did, then they would cease to be a Buddha, thus I conclude that all self-reported mystics are liars.
I was recently in India, wow what a place. But what struck me almost immediately besides the vibrant colour, besides the obvious happy relaxed attitude, besides the fact that whatever you need seems to magically appear, besides all these things and so many other things which I sincerely have no time to mention and which I have to admit, I have observed in the ‘west’ too, except that in the west all these things are very masked, but in India there is this unity which is almost tangible. I was travelling in a taxi from a villiage where I was staying to the capital city of Goa and on the way passed a girl who had just had a motorbike accident. Without even thinking about it, I got the taxi driver to stop, there were no other cars around and since I was travelling to the city anyway, figured I could do a little detour, you know I wasn’t in any hurry, I was on holiday, but it happened without even thinking about it. We took her to the doctor in the next villiage who instructed us to take her to a hospital, it turned out she had fractured her foot. We left her at the hospital after ensuring that her husband knew where she was and continued on our journey. I promptly forgot about it. Later on when I remembered it and contemplated how the whole thing had happend, I realised that I had simply become a part of the unity that is India. If I had been the girl on the bike, someone would have stopped for me. This is in my opinion what makes a country such as India seem so ‘spiritual’ because surely another word for ‘spirituality’ is ‘practicality’. Knowledge without action is pointless.
Okay, let me stipulate, because I think it needs saying based on various posts here, that I am quite content with the idea that we are all of us seeking understanding. It was never my intention to make this into a western versus eastern thing, although I fear it has crossed into that. Perhaps that’s inevitable.
I’m imagining someone schooled in western thought and western language asking about eastern thought. I’m not at all imagining that he is saying, “Prove your eastern way of thinking is better than my western way of thinking.†Not at all. He is curious, he has a language that he is comfortable with, and he is seeking an interpretation.
Now, you may be digressing a bit with the karma/predetermination thing, but not too much, I don’t think. (Besides, I think I was the one who brought it up). This serves as a good example. By using one concept and comparing and contrasting it with another, we can arrive at a much better way of understanding the concept. You have laid it out quite nicely here and in a way that a westerner can understand.
And I think, overall, this is my point. We can have these concepts explained to us in a way that makes some kind of sense. So why doesn’t this happen more often?
I understand completely the idea that the mystic cannot get me to see what he sees any more than I can get him to see what I see. My experiences are impossible to share in any meaningful way that would allow anybody else to experience them as I do. But, again, I am wondering why we can’t better lead somebody by the hand – somebody who is willing to allow us to take his hand – and at least guide him to the doorstep of what can be experienced.
When somebody says, tell me about Tao, can’t we at least say, “Well, I can tell you something about Tao,†and explain it in such a way that he can at least have a rough idea? Sure we can. I know this because I have seen it done. I have seen rough ideas of eastern thinking conveyed understandably on this very site. I have seen it done in your last post. Here’s a good example:
“Simply a matter of…†Yes. This is clear, concise, written in Standard English, and makes perfect sense. The problem I continually see is that it takes a western-thinking person several attempts at questioning an eastern-thinking person (there must be better terms) before he gets something with this kind of clarity, and I am wondering why that is.
I have a theory. The eastern-thinking person is not in the habit of thinking in western terms and so has a difficult time switching gears for the conversation. Maybe?
I have read the tao about five times or more and can explain it to a certain degree. You may not want me to (ha,ha) but I can and I can do it in terms that make sense. That’s because I would want you to understand it, and that’s a different motivation than a “mystic” might have.
The book in this link below is a comic book about the Taoism! The guy that made it wants you to understand the concept.
If anyone’s interested there’s a series of these that are a lot of fun.
It would be wonderful to step away from the East - West comparisons because as LA pointed out, the issues involve understanding which is universal. Still, this thread is here because there is a perceived difference and like it or not, perception is reality.
Too much of this thread is being carried by those who purport to ‘get it’. It does nothing for those who honestly don’t ‘get it’ and if I haven’t missed Jerry’s question, that is still the issue. What can be done to help people begin looking for understanding instead of more knowing? How do we help people put down the operator’s manual and see both feeling and thinking? Is it, as Jerry suggests, simply waiting till they are ready? Both Tab and myself would argue this. Are we guilty of attempting to ask people to go where they are not prepared to go? The Tao speaks of the wordless teaching. Shall we ignore this? Perhaps the Way cannot be shown in such a medium as this. I find danger and irresponsibility in taking people part way. The issue of being and manifestations of being are subtle and complex, and the opportunity to trade one set of illusions for another set is with all of us. If any here were truly transcendant and full of self understanding, what is this about?
Perhaps we should ‘tend our garden’ and let those who would seek find their way.
I appreciate this since I am a Sri Lanka fan – and there is a similarity between the two cultures. Seeing all the believers on their way to Hindu or Buddhist temples (as well as a Christian church here and there) at 6 am on a Sunday morning made me also aware of a very real unity in all diversity.
You’re a ‘good Samaritan’, it’s nice to know that Angels are out and about
I agree with you wholeheartedly. But, I think this practicality has to do with the framework in which things are allowed to happen. Just imagine that you weren’t on holiday, or that your mind was occupied with making some big deal, and you were brooding over this in the back of the car. You wouldn’t have noticed the girl and a whole chain of events would not have happened.
Modern society makes us into individuals who are on their own. Modern people are not a part of anything that doesn’t bring material advantages or appeals to them for some reason. The unity that you became a part of was watchful, spontaneous, concerned, affectionate – and selfless. It is also wordless. In the story of the good Samaritan, hardly a word is spoken. The actions talk. I think that spirituality is like that, even if there are focal points of inspiration. Spiritual people thrive on less.
However, because of this, spiritual people are useless at “selling†their viewpoint. They don’t need to, do they?
This has been my take on it for a while. Eastern philosophy is great at bringing peace, or calming the nerves, or creating a good way to live. But, as a part of that, it makes certain claims which are often mistaken as attempts to truthfully say how things are. That’s where a lot of the confusion comes from.
Tentative:
Philosophers in the west did not take themselves to be playing a game called "Western Philosophy" at least, not until they had Eastern philosophy to compare themselves to. Rather, they took themselves to be making discoveries about the world in the best methods available to the human mind. Setting up reason and evidence as arbiters of truth is a hugely important part of that. If there's some other standard , then Eastern philosophy should be able to provide a case for it.
If Eastern philosophy is after the same aims, then one should be able to be put in terms of the other, and their shouldn't be a great devide. What I mean to say is, there is nothing in Eastern philosophy that is against the Western Philosophy 'play book', so long as the aim is truth.
Also, can you describe the different between something being 'delibrately obscure' and needing 'put on a different head' to understand it? Seems like the same thing to me.
Again, I want to stress that I see no reason why fluent English speakers should have any trouble explaining something that they [i]profess to believe[/i] in English, regardless of the language of origin of the beliefs in question.
Jerry
It has something to do with making the Tao into 'philosophy', and some implication of that word. Someone could tell me, if they wanted to, that the Tao is about simply living life and not being caught up with thinking about it too much, and that would be fine with me. I'd say it's what philosophers 300 years ago referred to as the 'vulgar' way of living, and in fact, has usually been considered an an antistrophe to philosophy, not a form of it. If the Taoist, though, wants to justify no-mind in philosophical terms (philosophy being extremely mental in nature), well, things get all confusing at that point.
Something else: The post immediately above my last was full of references to people who don’t understand the Tao being simply ‘unready’ and that maybe they can’t be helped. Tentative, you seem to mistake the issue of helping people understand what the Tao is, and whether or not it’s valuable, with helping people actually start living Taoist lives. Here:
That's not the issue. That may be the issue for [i]you[/i], who sees your way as "The Way", and western thought as incomplete. The issue is making folks like me, who have no intellectual defect aside from being raised in the Western Hemisphere, from seeing the Tao as something other than intellectual suicide.
No offense sir, but that shows that you lack an understanding of eastern languages, and their inherent differences from western languages.
All eastern languages incorporate a level of natural interpretation, and it is an unspoken expectation, between the speaker and listener.
In all western languages it is expected that you use words that are direct to what you mean, and that is what you mean, and interpretation is most generally not intended or appreciated.
Even more so in the written form, where the “speaker” is unseen, this will play havoc. First because the language of the eastern countries is not rigid and anal, and characters have phonetics attached, where any slight change can not only change the meaning of the “word” itself, but also alter the context of surrounding words or characters.
This makes all the difference in the world to a western mind that is completely unfamiliar with the language structure.
Simplest example: the word “virtue” in western and eastern terms. Not even remotely related.
Perhaps I explained myself poorly. If what you say above is true, and an insurmountable obstacle, then the result would be that people must first learn Chinese before they can assent to the Tao. For all I know, maybe that's true, and people who only understand English and yet claim to be Buddists or Jains or so on are pretenders or believing on insuffecient grounds, but that would be a rather crude speculation on my part.
Simply put, what I'm saying is that if one person who only understands English can credibly be a Taoist, then there is no excuse for that person being unable to explain Taoism to another person who only understands English.
I completely understand what it is you are asserting, and accept your perspective.
From my perspective, being one who has studied Taoism for, well, a long time, I see it differently. Not only do I see Tao far differently now than when I first conceived of it, but I see it in a manner that I am not entirely certain I can explain.
I think perhaps, with no slight intended towards any other belief system, I had to experience the internal sensation of Tao, and reading and speaking of it did not equate. Now that at some level I have internalized Tao, it is far too expansive to limit to my own interpreted definition.
Because it is experienced more than read into/out of, my ability to hand a verbal or written definition would not lead to clarity. This is also because although I have studied and understood the structure of Chinese language, I still can’t equate that understanind in Latin-Germanic structure, the words do not fit well, and then the explanation becomes skewed and minimalized, at best.
Virtue: Western - (Latin “virtus” - manliness, excellence, worth)
righteous, or morally good or correct
Eastern - (te) - of itself so
I also agree with Mastriani that all the paths initiating with a conscious source contain within them the means to inwardly develop in the inner direction of their common source. However there many reasons why only a very few can ever get there.