Is there an east/west schism

[NaturaNaturans]

In regards to how we view… stuff? Extremly general I know, but I have atleast felt way when Ive encountered some spiritual term/concept in the beginning, all though i feel things have gotten a little clearer.

 

Edit: on the other hand, we do see a lot similarties in early eurasian thought, in lack of a better word?

Edited February 10 by NaturaNaturans

[dwai]

The conditioning is different between western and traditional eastern societies. It’s often difficult to tell the difference in modern times, with rampant urbanization and cultural assimilation (predominantly from west to east) - colonialism has a big role to play in that process.

But there is also a resurgence of traditional eastern views as the trauma of colonialism begins to recede from generational memory. Ancient civilizations like India (dharma) and china (a more nuanced understanding is needed - how Chinese communism actually reclaimed confucian perspective) are reclaiming their roots , and will in the next 30-50 years become the predominant worldviews (given that 2/3s of the world population is in that region of Asia). 

[-ꦥꦏ꧀ ꦱꦠꦿꦶꦪꦺꦴ-]

13 hours ago, NaturaNaturans said:

In regards to how we view… stuff? Extremly general I know, but I have atleast felt way when Ive encountered some spiritual term/concept in the beginning, all though i feel things have gotten a little clearer.

 

Edit: on the other hand, we do see a lot similarties in early eurasian thought, in lack of a better word?

East is more open minded in these matters 

[NaturaNaturans]

11 hours ago, dwai said:

The conditioning is different between western and traditional eastern societies.
 

I agree, in what areas have you noticed it?

 

It’s often difficult to tell the difference in modern times, with rampant urbanization and cultural assimilation (predominantly from west to east) - colonialism has a big role to play in that process.  

True, and the harm it has done to cultural diversity is a real shame. So many native traditions completly destroyed, and many others changed for good. I also think it has harmed European culture, spirituality and ethics in fact, as the capitalist and industrialation has somewhat divorced us from our roots and tradition in favour for the machine

 

11 hours ago, dwai said:

But there is also a resurgence of traditional eastern views as the trauma of colonialism begins to recede from generational memory.
Good, looking forward to it

 

Ancient civilizations like India (dharma) and china

I am far from an expert, but indian tradition does not feel so alien to me, but chinese does to be completly honest. My favorite texts are bhagavad gita and isha upanishad. I have not read a lot of eastern works though, so maybe it will become clearer if i put in the work. 
 

Again, I have no clue what I am talking about, but I see daoism as akin to some ancient European thought, like that of Heraclitus, the logos and Aurelius.

 

Spoiler

(a more nuanced understanding is needed - how Chinese communism actually reclaimed confucian perspective) are reclaiming their roots , and will in the next 30-50 years become the predominant worldviews (given that 2/3s of the world population is in that region of Asia). 

[NaturaNaturans]

9 hours ago, -ꦥꦏ꧀ ꦱꦠꦿꦶꦪꦺꦴ- said:

East is more open minded in these matters 

Possibly. Do you think they are more open minded to European thought as well?

 

I dont want to come of as a bigot, I dont mean this in a derogotory way at all, but I think westerners might be a little more logical in their thoughts. It has it downside tho, in extreme sceptisism, materialism etc.

[NaturaNaturans]

5 minutes ago, NaturaNaturans said:

Again, I have no clue what I am talking about, but I see daoism as akin to some ancient European thought, like that of Heraclitus, the logos and Aurelius.

 

Numbered fragmentsedit

Different sources sometimes number many of these fragments of the expressions of Heraclitus differently.

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you. Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things. Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe. Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony. Character is destiny.

 

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heraclitus

This is not to different from some eastern schools, is it?

[-ꦥꦏ꧀ ꦱꦠꦿꦶꦪꦺꦴ-]

2 hours ago, NaturaNaturans said:

Possibly. Do you think they are more open minded to European thought as well?

 

I dont want to come of as a bigot, I dont mean this in a derogotory way at all, but I think westerners might be a little more logical in their thoughts. It has it downside tho, in extreme sceptisism, materialism etc.

There are some Asians who do have a European mindset and tend to reject Asian culture/religion/superstition. 
 

No offence taken, everyone has their positives and negatives. In general my western friends are more skeptical about everything and my Asian friends more open minded about these things. 
 

The best is always a combination of the two, you can’t be too skeptical, but you can’t also be too gullible.   

[Mark Foote]

On 2/10/2024 at 4:45 AM, NaturaNaturans said:

 

Is there an east/west schism

In regards to how we view… stuff? Extremely general I know, but I have at least felt way when I've encountered some spiritual term/concept in the beginning, all though i feel things have gotten a little clearer.

 

I've been working under the assumption that Western science will one day help to explain the wisdom teachings of the world.  

Also, although it's true that there's an aspect of the Eastern teachings that has to be experienced to be believed, I would say a better job can be done in describing such experience,  and in describing the place of such experience in everyday life.
.

It’s impossible to teach the meaning of sitting. You won’t believe it. Not because I say something wrong, but until you experience it and confirm it by yourself, you cannot believe it.
 

(Kobun Chino Otogawa, “Embracing Mind”, edited by Cosgrove & Hall, pg 48)

 

 

There can… come a moment when the movement of breath necessitates the placement of attention at a certain location in the body, or at a series of locations, with the ability to remain awake as the location of attention shifts retained through the exercise of presence.

 

(Common Ground)

 

 

The difficulty is that most people will lose consciousness before they cede activity to the location of attention–they lose the presence of mind with the placement of attention, because they can’t believe that action in the body is possible without “doing something”...

(Shunryu Suzuki on Shikantaza and the Theravadin Stages)

 

 

But usually in counting breathing or following breathing, you feel as if you are doing something, you know– you are following breathing, and you are counting breathing. This is, you know, why counting breathing or following breathing practice is, you know, for us it is some preparation– preparatory practice for shikantaza because for most people it is rather difficult to sit, you know, just to sit. 

(“The Background of Shikantaza”, Shunryu Suzuki; San Francisco, February 22, 1970)

 

 

Shunryu Suzuki said:
 

To enjoy our life– complicated life, difficult life– without ignoring it, and without being caught by it. Without suffer from it. That is actually what will happen to us after you practice zazen.  

(“To Actually Practice Selflessness”, August Sesshin Lecture Wednesday, August 6, 1969, San Francisco)
 

I practice now to experience the free placement of attention as the sole source of activity in the body in the movement of breath, and in my “complicated, difficult” daily life, I look for the mindfulness that allows me to touch on that freedom.

("To Enjoy Our Life")

 

 

 

 

Edited February 18 by Mark Foote

[NaturaNaturans]

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

I've been working under the assumption that Western science will one day help to explain the wisdom teachings of the world.  

How so, do you think? For me, wisdom and science are two seperate fields, like intelligence and rationality and empathy for example.

[Mark Foote]

21 hours ago, NaturaNaturans said:

 

Quote

21 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

I've been working under the assumption that Western science will one day help to explain the wisdom teachings of the world.  
 

 

 

How so, do you think?
 

 

I'll give you some examples.  First, an explanation of the first line of the famous poem by Fuxi:
 

In the 6th century C.E. in China, the Buddhist monk Fuxi wrote:

 

The empty hand grasps the hoe handle
Walking along, I ride the ox
The ox crosses the wooden bridge
The bridge is flowing, the water is still

 

(“Zen’s Chinese Heritage”, translation by Andy Ferguson, pg 2)

 

 

Another translation:

 

The handless hold the hoe.
A pedestrian walks, riding on a water buffalo.
A man passes over the bridge;
The bridge (but) not the water flows.

 

(Ch’an and Zen Teaching, Series One by Lu K’uan Yü (Charles Luk); Rider & Co., London, 1960, pp. 143-145. Translated from The Imperial Selection of Ch’an Sayings (Yu Hsuan Yu Lu) [Yuxuan yulu (Imperial Selections of Recorded Sayings / Emperor’s Selection of Quotations)])

 

 

I would say “the empty hand grasps the hoe handle” is a reference to the role of ligaments at the sacrum in generating activity related to posture. Here’s a summary of a study that confirms that some of the activity of the lower body is “regulated” by the iliosacral ligaments:

 

This study (research by Indahl, A., et al.) established that the ligamento-muscular reflex existed between the sacroiliac joint and muscles that attach to the bones that make up the sacroiliac joint. (The study’s authors) suggested that the sacroiliac joint was a regulator of pelvic and paraspinal muscles and, thereby, influences posture and lumbar segmental stability.

 

(Serola Biomechanics website summary of Indahl, A., et al., Sacroiliac joint involvement in activation of the porcine spinal and gluteal musculature. Journal of Spinal Disorders, 1999. 12(4): p. 325-30; https://europepmc.org/article/med/10451049
https://www.serola.net/research-category/the-nutation-lesion-2/ligamento-muscular-reflex/)

 

 

(Appendix–“For a Friend”, Revisited)

 

 

Second example, maybe some light on Yuanwu's explanation of case 17 in the Blue Cliff Record:

 

Answering the monk who asked, “What is the meaning of the Patriarch’s coming from the West?”, Hsiang Lin said, “Sitting for a long time becomes toilsome.”  If you understand this way, you are “turning to the left, turning to the right, following up behind.”

 

(Yuanwu, ‘Blue Cliff Record’, Shambala publications pg 110)

 

 

“Turning to the left, turning to the right”—stretch in the ilio-tibial bands sets off reciprocal innervation of the left and right sartorious muscles, and consequently reciprocal activity in the tensor and gluteous muscles. The result is a subtle “turning to the left, turning to the right” in an upright posture, and a stretch in the fascia behind the sacrum and the lower spine.

 

“Following up behind”—the combination of pressure from the “fluid ball” of the abdomen and stretch and resile in the fascia behind the sacrum and lower spine allows the vertebrae of the spine to find alignment, and permits the fascia behind the spine to provide support.

(Appendix–Kinesthesiology of Fascial Support)

 

 

More details on that last paragraph are on my site.
 

 

Quote

For me, wisdom and science are two separate fields, like intelligence and rationality and empathy for example.
 

Gautama taught four initial states of concentration, culminating in the cessation of ("doing something" in) inbreathing and outbreathing, then five further states culminating in the cessation of ("doing something" in) feeling and perceiving.  The first three of the further states were excellences of the heart's release through the extension of the minds of compassion, of sympathetic joy, and of equanimity, extension through the four quarters of the world, above, below, without limit. I would say the states of concentration that he taught therefore involved both science and empathy, but things as they are (the cessations of "doing something") have to be experienced to be believed. 

That's because the action does not cease, but the actor does.  So for example, the cessation of inbreathing and outbreathing occurs when breath in the consciousness-informed body takes place without a breather.  Inbreathing and outbreathing per se does not cease, but "doing something" in the consciousness-informed body with respect to inbreathing and outbreathing does cease.  

Things as they are, or as Shunryu Suzuki said, "things as it is".  Suzuki's emphasis was on "just sitting".

 

Edited February 19 by Mark Foote

[NaturaNaturans]

@Mark Foote the fact that we (some of us) need science to prove the importance of lowering stress levels and good posture is evidence of how lost parts of the modern west has become 

[A Flyer of Gy]

"Getting scientists to consider the validity of Indigenous knowledge is like swimming upstream in cold, cold water." -Robin Wall Kimmerer

"Braiding Sweetgrass" was eye-opening for me on how science itself has been a colonizing force throughout the world. I have come to see western science as a powerful tool to elucidate understanding of our universe that is often used as a tool of violence and power, including in colonizing contexts. One way this has been done is through stories in the western tradition that scientists often act from and don't notice. The nonfiction science book "Context Changes Everything," talks about how many, including scientists, behave as if an object can have an identity (Plato), outside its contexts and relationships. Because of the academic flavor of my post, I am likely a perpetuating colonizing agent, even if I don't want to be, but it is hard to break things so ingrained. This is one reason I find it so important to cultivate my inner world, including heavily questioning myself.

[NaturaNaturans]

I think academica has become to fractualized and «intellectual» and that it is harmfull to our way of seing and understanding ourselves and the world we live in

[A Flyer of Gy]

42 minutes ago, NaturaNaturans said:

I think academica has become to fractualized and «intellectual» and that it is harmfull to our way of seing and understanding ourselves and the world we live in

I agree. I have a lot of unlearning to do,

[Nungali]

East west schism in the microcosm :

 

I live in the west .... behind the ' Bamboo Curtain '   ( thank God ! ) . I seem to be the last commune-ist left .  Most of the easterners on the other side of my 'bamboo barrier' are  fascist capitalist land grabbing , nuclear family, ego based  non- communalists   right .

 

We all used to be communists .

 

Just this morning I get a call from one of their leaders ( who are now, of course , in conflict with each other  ... even though they are within a nuclear family group )  asking me (once more )  to return and help them moderate the mess they got into .  My answer ?

 

I have done that several  times over the last  30 years  YOU guys created the problems you now live in and do not like .  I warned you , several times .

 

Now it is a different time .   Time to  live in the repercussions of  your arrogant and irresponsible past decisions and actions .

 

otherwise called  ' Stewing in your own shit ' ...... toodle - loo ! 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mark Foote]

13 hours ago, NaturaNaturans said:

@Mark Foote the fact that we (some of us) need science to prove the importance of lowering stress levels and good posture is evidence of how lost parts of the modern west has become 
 

 

I wouldn't count on science alone, with regard to lowering stress levels or finding "good" posture.  

As I wrote to friends recently, I don't expect I'll ever be an exemplar of good posture, but I can hope to accord more with my own nature, and maybe acquire a feeling for the posture I need.  That's my take on "good posture".

 

 

[Apech]

I read somewhere, possibly on here, that the difference in Latitude (i.e. North- South position relative to the equator) affects the position of the LDT - and therefor by extension the configuration of our subtle bodies.  Not perhaps a fundamental difference because we are all more or less the same in that respect, but perhaps in the more subtle tensions and flows etc. which occur.

 

I have long held the thought that the same is true of East - West location but in a different way.  There are difficulties with this because of course East and West are relative directions and not polar ones.  The further West you go - you end up in the East (like Christopher Columbus travelling West to try to find the East).  The best conclusion I can come to is that it is to do with the inner or outer focus of attention.  A more Eastern position is more inner and more 'mental'; while a Western position is more outer and more body focussed.

 

Of course one would have to debate where exactly is the most Eastern and where is the most Western - and I would suggest India and America respectively.

 

With respect to empires and colonisation etc.  there is no doubt that these things bring harm to some, but on the other hand without the movement to a global perspective we wouldn't have the ideas and insights that we do have at our disposal.  DaoBums would not exist for instance - or its hard to see how it could.  Unless you are an ethno-nationalist then you have to accept that all cultures involve some mixing and interaction.  Without that we would all exist in our own little domains knowing little of each other.  Westerners doing yoga and Tai Chi are culturally appropriating something not natural to them - but surely we would argue that this is all to the good - other wise give up now

 

 

 

 

[Nungali]

I think it was the way the scientific revolution became embedded in the west .

 

Again ; its an essential understanding needed to be able to comprehend 'what happened to' the  western mind  / zeitgeist .

[NaturaNaturans]

On 21.2.2024 at 9:39 PM, Nungali said:

I think it was the way the scientific revolution became embedded in the west .

 

Again ; its an essential understanding needed to be able to comprehend 'what happened to' the  western mind  / zeitgeist .

I think it made us sick, really. I dont want to get political, so please dont take any offense If you love these things or have a different opinion, but my opinion is that industrialisation, alienation, extreme capitalism and marketing, as well as materialism, poisons everything. In these societies, you are not treated as a human being, but a commodity. If your «cost» is higher then your «benefit,» you are basically worthless.

Europe and NA in the 1800s must have been pure hell. Id rather live in the woods or on a farm then in an early factory or mine, no doubt about it.

 

Footnotes

[1] At the first Congress of Charities held at Brussels in 1817 one of the richest manufacturers of Marquette, near Lille, M. Scrive, to the plaudits of the members of the congress declared with the noble satisfaction of a duty performed: “We have introduced certain methods of diversion for the children. We teach them to sing during their work, also to count while working.” That distracts them and makes them accept bravely “those twelve hours of labor which are necessary to procure their means of existence.” Twelve hours of labor, and such labor, imposed on children less than twelve years old! The materialists will always regret that there is no hell in which to confine these Christian philanthropic murderers of childhood.

 

 

question to mods: is it possible to add a poll with:

a) are you western

b ) eastern

c) other

 

and 

 

D) is there a schism?

[silent thunder]

Civilization, to me is wholly uncivilized.

It is predatory in nature, which makes complete sense given that civilization derives from human socializing and humans are...

[NaturaNaturans]

1 hour ago, silent thunder said:

Civilization, to me is wholly uncivilized.

It is predatory in nature, which makes complete sense given that civilization derives from human socializing and humans are...

Civilisation makes humans comodities, cattle. Imagine life in uruk, pure hell If you Ask me. Id prefer life in pre-columbian amazon any day of the weak. 
 

Allthough i think things got a little better in Europe when the «slave empires» dissapeared, life under the industrial revolution must have been pure hell.

 

Humans are made for fruits, nuts, fish and meat, not grain. We are supposed to move around and hunt, not sit on a school bench 8 hours a day and the rest on phone/pc. Humans are egalitarian by nature, not enslavers, god kings and mass murderers (warriors). Chris Ryan, author of civilized to death once said: no one gets ptsd from being kind. 
 

Edit: health declind massivley in the first civilisations. Violence exploded. Class became thing. Property and raiding, overpopulation… I am convinced that if we accepted that we are animals, and tried to make enviorments to further human flourishing rather then profit, we would be way better of.

 

edit two: I have heard hunther gatheres only «worked» (hunted) for 2-4 hours daily. @Nungali?

Edited March 13 by NaturaNaturans

[NaturaNaturans]

3 hours ago, NaturaNaturans said:

Footnotes

[1] At the first Congress of Charities held at Brussels in 1817 one of the richest manufacturers of Marquette, near Lille, M. Scrive, to the plaudits of the members of the congress declared with the noble satisfaction of a duty performed: “We have introduced certain methods of diversion for the children. We teach them to sing during their work, also to count while working.” That distracts them and makes them accept bravely “those twelve hours of labor which are necessary to procure their means of existence.” Twelve hours of labor, and such labor, imposed on children less than twelve years old! The materialists will always regret that there is no hell in which to confine these Christian philanthropic murderers of childhood.

This footnote is from «the right to be lazy» (1883,) though i might as well qoute the full chapter, as i think it is relevant:

 

Spoiler

Paul Lafargue

The Right To Be Lazy

---

Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy. – Lessing

 

Chapter I
A Disastrous Dogma

A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway. This delusion drags in its train the individual and social woes which for two centuries have tortured sad humanity. This delusion is the love of work, the furious passion for work, pushed even to the exhaustion of the vital force of the individual and his progeny. Instead of opposing this mental aberration, the priests, the economists and the moralists have cast a sacred halo over work. Blind and finite men, they have wished to be wiser than their God; weak and contemptible men, they have presumed to rehabilitate what their God had cursed. I, who do not profess to be a Christian, an economist or a moralist, I appeal from their judgement to that of their God; from the preachings of their religious, economics or free thought ethics, to the frightful consequences of work in capitalist society.

In capitalist society work is the cause of all intellectual degeneracy, of all organic deformity. Compare the thorough-bred in Rothschild’s stables, served by a retinue of bipeds, with the heavy brute of the Norman farms which plows the earth, carts the manure, hauls the crops. Look at the noble savage whom the missionaries of trade and the traders of religion have not yet corrupted with Christianity, syphilis and the dogma of work, and then look at our miserable slaves of machines. [1]

When, in our civilized Europe, we would find a trace of the native beauty of man, we must go seek it in the nations where economic prejudices have not vet uprooted the hatred of work. Spain, which, alas, is degenerating, may still boast of possessing fewer factories than we have of prisons and barracks; but the artist rejoices in his admiration of the hardy Andalusian, brown as his native chestnuts, straight and flexible as a steel rod; and the heart leaps at hearing the beggar, superbly draped in his ragged capa, parleying on terms of equality with the duke of Ossuna. For the Spaniard, in whom the primitive animal has not been atrophied, work is the worst sort of slavery. [2] The Greeks in their era of greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labor: the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind. And so it was in this era that men like Aristotle, Phidias, Aristophanes moved and breathed among the people; it was the time when a handful of heroes at Marathon crushed the hordes of Asia, soon to be subdued by Alexander. The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods:

O Melibae Deus nobis haec otia fecit.

Jesus, in his sermon on the Mount, preached idleness: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Jehovah the bearded and angry god, gave his worshipers the supreme example of ideal laziness; after six days of work, he rests for all eternity.

On the other hand, what are the races for which work is an organic necessity? The Auvergnians; the Scotch, those Auvergnians of the British Isles; the Galicians, those Auvergnians of Spain; the Pomeranians, those Auvergnians of Germany; the Chinese, those Auvergnians of Asia. In our society which are the classes that love work for work’s sake. The peasant proprietors, the little shopkeepers; the former bent double over their fields, the latter crouched in their shops, burrow like the mole in his subterranean passage and never stand up to look at nature leisurely.

And meanwhile the proletariat, the great class embracing all the producers of civilized nations, the class which in freeing itself will free humanity from servile toil and will make of the human animal a free being, – the proletariat, betraying its instincts, despising its historic mission, has let itself be perverted by the dogma of work. Rude and terrible has been its punishment. All its individual and social woes are born of its passion for work.

 

 

[zerostao]

Disturbance and disruption go hand in hand. At 2:52, shows a job I once had; when I was as naive as the song.

Obviously, since 2020 the move towards absolute authoritarian rule is underway. 
Things cycle, hellish conditions included.

 

 

Spoiler

 Cept play Baguazhang and return to Nature. However the creeping won’t go away on its own. Monkey wrench heroes exist deep within the resilience.There is one Schism, the others are to distract the masses. It is neither east/west nor north/south.

[steve]

On 3/12/2024 at 8:46 PM, NaturaNaturans said:

I have heard hunther gatheres only «worked» (hunted) for 2-4 hours daily.

 

I read a very powerful autobiography called The Falcon by John Tanner.

It gives a first hand account of what it was like living as a hunter gatherer in the Great Lakes region in the late 18th century.

Highly recommended. 

 

[NaturaNaturans]

37 minutes ago, steve said:

 

I read a very powerful autobiography called The Falcon by John Tanner.

It gives a first hand account of what it was like living as a hunter gatherer in the Great Lakes region in the late 18th century.

Highly recommended. 

 

Sounds perfect, thank you