@ CK MacLeod:
The question about "Grace" is also a big point. Obviously, with Christians, nothing really happens without Grace. With yoga, Grace is also important, because the mind can't self-illuminate. Buddhists generally steer clear of the issue, but Vajrayana practices and awarenesses like "Mahamudra" also connect to an acknowledgment that enlightenment is beyond conditioning. You can't practice your way into realization. At some point there has to be a moment of what we can all recognize as "Grace," even if it is not necessarily Divinely inspired.
Totally innocent ignorant person’s question: If the Noble Eightfold Path can end suffering for the journeyer, why fundamentally/inherently couldn’t there be a Noble X-Fold Path for an entire nation, or world, advanced and adopted as such?
Even those Rinpoches who go along with Buddhist institutional social structuring are constantly trying to subvert it so that institutionalism doesn't keep practitioners tied to a system embedded in suffering. They know that institutions are not liberated and do not liberate. They are a necessary evil, so to speak. Wise practitioners do a dance with them. Buddha's own Sangha (spiritual community) was troubled with institutional problems. There was a plot to assassinate him, and he had all kinds of challenges keeping things cool on a gender level. Still, Sanghas are considered to be not only important, but essential to individuals making their way toward enlightenment. It's interesting that actual Tibetan Tibetan Buddhists living in the states tend to restructure how things were in Tibet by connecting with rich, powerful Westerners like Steven Segal and Richard Gere. They become attached to the wealthy and end up exploiting the poor all over again. The Dalai Lama said that right when the Chinese attacked, the Tibetans were just about "to change." He never says how they were going to change. I wish he would come out and say that the system of picking the Dalai Lama and all the minor Rinpoches was like a lottery system. It gave false hope to the poor because their circumstances could change overnight by a miracle, while maintaining the power base of the monks. I also think it's too self-serving for TBs to think there is only personal not "cultural" karma. Of course, there is. What you reap, so shall you sew. That goes for countries as well. Tibet I think came as close to a Noble X-Fold Path for an entire nation as it gets and it didn't work at all. Not even close. For the monks, on an individual level of practice, however, it was great. Probably more people became enlightened within the system than any other nation in history.
From a Taoist view, it would also be great if the good liberal base allowed for a little bit of conservatism in themselves and the conservatives allowed for a little bit of liberalism in themselves. Then you have the nice yin-yang fish duality with the little dots on each side. (Maybe the sweetness and simplicity of that image will send Fuster running back to the Germans).
@ Rex Caruthers:
Right. This is where I get my attitude toward the supposed liberal-conservative mix in this country. No one should want either side to win. We need a balance between a sympathetic, adventurous, sensitive, if sometimes too reactive liberal base and a thoughtful, conventional, stingy, if sometimes too cautious conservative base. Right now, we have a tug-of-war between two confused, reactionary, self-oriented groups, neither of which express liberalism or conservatism effectively.
One question that remains is to what extent Aurobindo, Wilber, or others have thought things through on the level of history and the state, or if they have instead ceded that ground to others – whether because they don’t acknowledge the significance of the state or because they tacitly or explicitly acknowledge the Western-Christian models as irresistible.
Sorry it took me so long to reply. Aurobindo was actually an Indian nationalist freedom fighter who spent some time in jail for his political actions. That's why I thought you'd be interested. He also works as a Fuster annoyance, since he studied German philosophy and came up with a yoga with a Nietzsche-like overman-underman perspective. I hope you check him out.
@ fuster:
I doubt you ever "did so much of" this really. You may have studied Hegel. You didn't do Colin's Hegel. It annoys me when people act like they've done something in their past when they haven't really done it in order to dismiss something they can't do now. I'm quite sure that what Colin is doing now is different than anything you could have done when you were a whippersnapper. So I am sighing as well.
Okay. I don't know the answer to either question, but I can tell you what the "neo-post-Hegelian" Wilber emphasizes. Perhaps that will head things in the right direction. Okay. One of Wilber's big things is referred to as "The Levels of Being." It connects with an older idea called "The Preternatural Pentad." Wilber takes the Sanskrit five strata of mind(manas)-ego(ahamkara)-intellect(buddhi)-soul(prakriti)-spirit(purusha) and presents it as the more Western friendly Physical, Emotional, Mental, Soulful, and Spiritual levels. With that hierarchical structuring in mind, Wilber points out that the mistake we usually make is to try and "illuminate" the highest reality according to the perceptions of lower levels of consciousness. That doesn't work. The mind (manas) is not self-illumining. Even the third level of consciousness (intellect-buddhi) is not equipped to explain the Truth. So to realize the Truth we must be absorbed in Spirit. I think the teacher who has realized Spirit level consciousness who you might relate to best is Sri Aurobindo. He was Western educated in the late 1800s, was very active politically and even militarily for awhile, and told the yoga people of his time that they had to realize Truth out in the world, not just internally.
@ CK MacLeod:
I see your point and you've convinced me.
Grace's daughter should be named Confidence since confidence leads to faith, etc..
And in response to my own comment: Then why practice? Because practice creates favorable conditions for Grace.
@ CK MacLeod:
The question about "Grace" is also a big point. Obviously, with Christians, nothing really happens without Grace. With yoga, Grace is also important, because the mind can't self-illuminate. Buddhists generally steer clear of the issue, but Vajrayana practices and awarenesses like "Mahamudra" also connect to an acknowledgment that enlightenment is beyond conditioning. You can't practice your way into realization. At some point there has to be a moment of what we can all recognize as "Grace," even if it is not necessarily Divinely inspired.
CK MacLeod wrote:
Even those Rinpoches who go along with Buddhist institutional social structuring are constantly trying to subvert it so that institutionalism doesn't keep practitioners tied to a system embedded in suffering. They know that institutions are not liberated and do not liberate. They are a necessary evil, so to speak. Wise practitioners do a dance with them. Buddha's own Sangha (spiritual community) was troubled with institutional problems. There was a plot to assassinate him, and he had all kinds of challenges keeping things cool on a gender level. Still, Sanghas are considered to be not only important, but essential to individuals making their way toward enlightenment. It's interesting that actual Tibetan Tibetan Buddhists living in the states tend to restructure how things were in Tibet by connecting with rich, powerful Westerners like Steven Segal and Richard Gere. They become attached to the wealthy and end up exploiting the poor all over again. The Dalai Lama said that right when the Chinese attacked, the Tibetans were just about "to change." He never says how they were going to change. I wish he would come out and say that the system of picking the Dalai Lama and all the minor Rinpoches was like a lottery system. It gave false hope to the poor because their circumstances could change overnight by a miracle, while maintaining the power base of the monks. I also think it's too self-serving for TBs to think there is only personal not "cultural" karma. Of course, there is. What you reap, so shall you sew. That goes for countries as well. Tibet I think came as close to a Noble X-Fold Path for an entire nation as it gets and it didn't work at all. Not even close. For the monks, on an individual level of practice, however, it was great. Probably more people became enlightened within the system than any other nation in history.
From a Taoist view, it would also be great if the good liberal base allowed for a little bit of conservatism in themselves and the conservatives allowed for a little bit of liberalism in themselves. Then you have the nice yin-yang fish duality with the little dots on each side. (Maybe the sweetness and simplicity of that image will send Fuster running back to the Germans).
@ Rex Caruthers:
Right. This is where I get my attitude toward the supposed liberal-conservative mix in this country. No one should want either side to win. We need a balance between a sympathetic, adventurous, sensitive, if sometimes too reactive liberal base and a thoughtful, conventional, stingy, if sometimes too cautious conservative base. Right now, we have a tug-of-war between two confused, reactionary, self-oriented groups, neither of which express liberalism or conservatism effectively.
CK MacLeod wrote:
Sorry it took me so long to reply. Aurobindo was actually an Indian nationalist freedom fighter who spent some time in jail for his political actions. That's why I thought you'd be interested. He also works as a Fuster annoyance, since he studied German philosophy and came up with a yoga with a Nietzsche-like overman-underman perspective. I hope you check him out.
@ fuster:
I doubt you ever "did so much of" this really. You may have studied Hegel. You didn't do Colin's Hegel. It annoys me when people act like they've done something in their past when they haven't really done it in order to dismiss something they can't do now. I'm quite sure that what Colin is doing now is different than anything you could have done when you were a whippersnapper. So I am sighing as well.
Okay. I don't know the answer to either question, but I can tell you what the "neo-post-Hegelian" Wilber emphasizes. Perhaps that will head things in the right direction. Okay. One of Wilber's big things is referred to as "The Levels of Being." It connects with an older idea called "The Preternatural Pentad." Wilber takes the Sanskrit five strata of mind(manas)-ego(ahamkara)-intellect(buddhi)-soul(prakriti)-spirit(purusha) and presents it as the more Western friendly Physical, Emotional, Mental, Soulful, and Spiritual levels. With that hierarchical structuring in mind, Wilber points out that the mistake we usually make is to try and "illuminate" the highest reality according to the perceptions of lower levels of consciousness. That doesn't work. The mind (manas) is not self-illumining. Even the third level of consciousness (intellect-buddhi) is not equipped to explain the Truth. So to realize the Truth we must be absorbed in Spirit. I think the teacher who has realized Spirit level consciousness who you might relate to best is Sri Aurobindo. He was Western educated in the late 1800s, was very active politically and even militarily for awhile, and told the yoga people of his time that they had to realize Truth out in the world, not just internally.