How Attached to Your Ideas Are You?

[Marblehead]

Well, Mr. Nanashi. Thank you for posting something that I am able to agree with.

 

Was the Buddha ever considered to be a skeptic?

[thelerner]

Thanks for rescuing me on that.

 

"A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real"...Buddha

You're using that quote to become an existentialist? It allows you to claim perfect ignorance? There are no facts, there are no things. ?

 

The Buddha taught different things to different people at different times. I think its a true quote, but when reading a religious script its essential to know where its from(a sutra?), who said it to whom and what the situation is(when is nice too). Otherwise people use and abuse religious scripture to there own ends.

 

There's a Theravedan Buddhist practice of describing the world without including the concept of me, thee, and verbs. Its very interesting and I can see where it could help develop a less 'I' oriented consciousness. And that's a worthy goal. But there is still a real world filled with real stuff that shouldn't be ignored because you're trying to lessen 'I' based consciousness.

 

Seems to me that ye olde Time Zen Masters carried sticks and gave hard whacks to those who'd ponder what really exists.

[Aaron]

V,

 

Have you made a serious study of Taoism? From what you have written above it seems to me you have imputed all sorts of things onto Taoism which I don't recognise ... like 'desiring to be in harmony with the prison of life'. Where does Taoism say life is a prison and that one should want to be at harmony with it?

 

Maybe you have been reading Shakespeare and have confused life with Denmark ... but even then "I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams" ... if life is for you a prison ... then maybe thinking makes it so???

 

A.

 

+1 for the Shakespeare quote and Hamlet no less.

 

Aaron

Edited February 12, 2012 by Twinner

[Aaron]

No,...VMarco is not speaking negatively about Taoism. Nor could it be said that VMarco knows nothing of Taoism. On the otherhand, it could be said that VMarco knows more about Taoism than Marblehead's westernized interpretation of Taoism, filtered through his mediocity. P.S....thanks for the permission to label you.

 

You are obviously very upset (not very good Tao) regarding Gurdjieff's levels of man. It is unfortunate that people like yourself cling to an ego based view spirituality. Ken Wilber called it the Conspiracy of mediocity. He explained it like this:

 

"To dare to even speak about radical transformation, let alone call other people to a higher level, is against the unstated rules. And of course, one's definitely going to be put in one's place for doing something like that. But unless the possibility of genuine transformation is actually declared, unless one is willing to demonstrate it publicallyand to call other people to the same, no one is even going to know that it's possible. And than unknowingly, everybody's going to be participating in the conspiracy of mediocrity.

 

The conspiracy of mediocrity is basically the conspiracy to express your own ego instead of transcending it or letting go of it. The idea has become "if I can really emote and express my self-contriction with sincerity, I'm somehow spiritual". Actually, people who are involved in this boomeritis even deny the importance of Enlightenment or Awakening, because that's saying some states are higher than others - and we shouldn't be so judgemental. But guess what? Some states are higher. And so the entire raison d'etre gets tossed out because it offends the pluralistist ego.

 

The spiritual experience, which ideally should be a stepping stone to less ego and greater transparency, has become a victim of our therapeutic culture, where we don't make judgements because that would hurt egoic self-esteem, and so all we do is embrace, console, and celebrate the personal self. Spiritual practice has become nothing more than a form of therapy where self-acceptance rather than ego-transcendence is the goal. And the problem is that therapists are basically pimps for samsara. They want to hold onto the egoic self-contraction and make it feel good about itself.

 

This conspiracy of mediocrity is very unfortunate. The great promise of the human potential movement was very straightforward - there are higher human potentials. Now, from the therapeutic culture, people say, "wait a minute. you're saying there are higher potentials, so does that mean I'm lower? because that can't be right". All of a sudden it implied a judgement, and nobody's allowed to be higher because that means someone else is going to be lower. And you're not allowed to call anybody lower; therefore nobody's allowed to be higher.

 

So the Human Potential movement got derailed and was replaced by this therapeutic self-expression, self-acceptence movement, which catastrophically prevents higher transformation and mystical breakthroughs. What is missing in the New Age Community is real intellectual vigor. Under the therapeutic culture, if you feel good, you're enlightened. That is mediocrity, and a conspiracy toward mediocrity."

 

Thus, in our current therapeutic society people don't want to see that what they thought was meaningful may actually be meaningless.

 

This has nothing to do with Taoism. You obviously haven't read the Tao Teh Ching if you want to attribute what you've posted here to the idea of Taoism or the Sage. I might recommend reading the actual text, rather than books about it. To be honest I'm not sure how you can even attribute this to Taoism.

 

Some observations- you love to try to push buttons when people disagree with your ideas. I think it's the only way you feel you can compete on equal terms. In this case you are denigrating Taoism knowing it will evoke a response, then you can attribute whatever abysmal failure occurs as a result to other people's hostile response to your comments, rather than your own intellectual inferiority. I think the number of times you resort to name calling, finger pointing and labeling seems to indicate that you have an inability to accept that you've lost an argument and that you are emotionally invested in your arguments. I don't think anyone here doesn't see the sheer malevolence you exhibit when your feelings are hurt.

 

The fact that you chose a thread that has much to do with diminishing the ego, to stroke your own to culmination, is not only puzzling, but a bit absurd. Before you continue to present your knowledge as wisdom, perhaps you will like this quote, since I think it speaks to you...

 

"Have done with learning,

And you will have no more vexation.

 

How great is the difference between "eh" and "o"?

What is the distinction between "good" and "evil"?

Must I fear what others fear?

What abysmal nonsense this is!"

 

-from Chapter 20 of the Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu

 

 

In closing I would love to see an end to this pseudo intellectualism being masqueraded as spirituality and religious idealism.

 

Aaron

Edited February 12, 2012 by Twinner

[Apech]

+1 for the Shakespeare quote and Hamlet no less.

 

Aaron

 

Always happy to quote the bard.

[Marblehead]

Always happy to quote the bard.

 

I'm always happy to see you happy.

[steve]

At different times in my life I've been more or less attached to various ideas.

I think becoming aware of what ideas drive us through life is very liberating.

If we become aware of those ideas, then there is the opportunity to let go.

Otherwise we live our lives asleep.

 

I'm reading a book right now that I am enjoying called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.

It speaks quite a bit to this process from a yogic perspective.

 

I also enjoy the non-dual approach which focuses on the questions rather than the answers.

Answers are dead - once the brain settles on an answer, it puts the question away - in the "solved" pile.

It is a satisfying feeling to "know the answer" - then what?

More laundry...

That does nothing to keep us open to the new, it just creates more fixation, it becomes part of the "known" as Krishnamurti says.

And to really investigate our selves and our potential, we need to leave the known behind and stay open to possibility.

 

Great thread, Encephalon.

It would be nice to see people actually using this thread to work on letting go of ideas rather than defending them...

... but that's a lot to ask and we only come to that in our own good time, I think.

[Encephalon]

It would be nice to see people actually using this thread to work on letting go of ideas rather than defending them...

... but that's a lot to ask and we only come to that in our own good time, I think.

 

Indeed, and I'm as convinced as ever that online discussion, limited as it is to expressions of beliefs and ideas, cannot fully enable people's better natures to prevail in the heat of argument. There are very few people in here mature enough to rise above the contention and dissolve it, and I don't count myself among them. I try every day to be less and less like the stickman below.