the prison of life

[fela fan]

The point was that a lot of people find it easy to romanticise the philosophies of distant parts of the globe, supposedly rejecting 'western' philosophy, while actually knowing little about either.

Perhaps you need reminding that the article i posted up to start this thread was written by a western woman.

I think you're getting overly sensitive and defensive towards western thinking and thinkers. That ego of yours is thus allowing you to post up purely subjective twaddle about a 'lot of people' who you say get into the east and reject the west, and know little about either.

Wow! That is some writing off of a lot of people by your highness the brainaddict. You certainly are able to talk for all those people. I just wonder how correct you are in your disparaging comments about them.

 

[fela fan]

Fela, a large chunk of that article can be boiled down to 'Money can't buy you happiness' - a platitude, but one with the ring of truth about it.

It's getting the point where i read it again. But for me there were many messages that came out of it, after all, it was a long article.

But i don't think after 12 years living in nature in tibet, no doubt talking with many elders and wise thinkers and wise people, that she is going to write a book that can be reduced to a platitude.

No, i would suggest her main theme was that we have to go beyond the mind. Only then can we reach the inner stillness with which to fight all the events and happenings in our lives. Only then can we connect with existence which allows us to break our psychological dependencies as a human being. And when that happens, life is no longer about a series of destinations that just keep on following each other. It then becomes one long journey. And the journey is where it's at mate...

 

[rover07]

One thing that has always puzzled me...

Is the persecution of Tibetan Buddhists the result of their own Bad Karma?

 

[fela fan]

One thing that has always puzzled me...

Is the persecution of Tibetan Buddhists the result of their own Bad Karma?

No. It's nothing to do with them, only to do with their aggressors who succumbed to the influences that gaining power can unleash on areligious people.

No more blaming the victims eh! Blame where blame is due, and on this occasion it's the chinese bullies.

 

[kyser_soze]

What? Death is more important than life?

The journey is the only thing. Destinations can be a bonus, but only if we start the journey again. Can't stand still in life...

Whoops, malaproprism...journey and destination should have been reversed...

Here's another one...you don't need to climb a mountain to know it's a mountain. In fact, if you climbed to the top, you wouldn't be able to see it.

No, i would suggest her main theme was that we have to go beyond the mind. Only then can we reach the inner stillness with which to fight all the events and happenings in our lives. Only then can we connect with existence which allows us to break our psychological dependencies as a human being. And when that happens, life is no longer about a series of destinations that just keep on following each other. It then becomes one long journey. And the journey is where it's at mate...

Now you see, this is the issue I have - much of this is rhetorical writing which contains little actual meaning; You could just as easily say we need to free ourselves from much of the material clutter in our lives, and that instead of looking at life as a succession of events, or stops on a journey, we should take a wider view that it's all the same journey...maybe with a few nice stopovers in a small village with a nice country pub on the way...

 

[fela fan]

Now you see, this is the issue I have - much of this is rhetorical writing which contains little actual meaning; You could just as easily say we need to free ourselves from much of the material clutter in our lives, and that instead of looking at life as a succession of events, or stops on a journey, we should take a wider view that it's all the same journey...maybe with a few nice stopovers in a small village with a nice country pub on the way...

Two things to say about there being 'little actual meaning'.

Firstly i think it's very difficult to use language to discuss matters more spiritual.

Secondly some of the best texts are not those that seem obvious at first. One needs to apply their own thinking to the text that is entering the brain. Accept it, reject it, dwell on it, chew it over, realise that initially you think it's wrong, but decide to think it over anyway in case you were wrong before, and so on.

In fact, very few texts have a fixed meaning in them. The meaning is derived from a combination of the writer, the text, and the reader. That is most obvious with this particular article and the many and varied reactions to it from posters on this thread.

I like texts that are not black and white. I'd add too that it seems to me often that posters are too quick to write off a text if they spot one thing 'wrong' in it. That is a closed mind. And also too many people make decisions about a text without really trying to access its message because for whatever reason they have pre-judged the writer.

As for the journey and destination, i did think it a bit of a strange comment from you. But i have to say that i think many westerners, more than easterners, in a real generalising comment, spend far too much time caught up in trying to get to their destination without barely noticing the journey. And that means getting through life far too quickly.

 

[nosos]

Personally I think Nietzsche kicks the arse of any Eastern philosopher I've read

and not all that disimilar once you get past orientalist misintrepretations of buddhism

http://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Buddhism-Nihilism-Ironic-Affinities/dp/0198238657

 

[fela fan]

and not all that disimilar once you get past orientalist misintrepretations of buddhism

I wonder what a 'orientalist misinterpretation' is...

 

[kyser_soze]

I wonder what a 'orientalist misinterpretation' is...

Orientalism was the POV the European elites applied to the Far East - quite clearly there were civilisations out there, and orientalism attempted to squeeze their models into European Imperialist ones - much like Occidetalism in China.

I think...

 

[nosos]

Leading a fairly prevelent modern construction of the East as the mysterious wise non-rational Other to the west. Strange old yellow people must be on to something being as they are a) non-white b) far away c) a long time in the past.

Zizek makes the interesting observation about how the left has constructed the East (particularly Japan) as mysterious, wise and profound. Whereas the right has constructed the East as threateningly irrational (defining image being kamikaze pilots in the 2nd world war and, I guess, suicide bombers). It becomes a screen onto which we project our cultural neuroses.

 

[Brainaddict]

Perhaps you need reminding that the article i posted up to start this thread was written by a western woman.

I wasn't being defensive, I was being annoyed. I'll make an attempt to explain one reason why and then leave it...

If I read Meister Eckhart (for example) I see that he has some very interesting ideas but they were polluted (for want of a better word) by the prevailing moralities and systems of the time - particularly the church. So for example he was unable to move away from using the word 'God' even though he probably meant a very different thing by it than the established church meant.

So it follows that this happens also in the philosophies/religions of other continents. That among the good ideas there is a bunch of bullshit that came out of the prevailing attitudes and institutions of the time. So to winnow out the interesting ideas of, say, Buddhist philosophy, it would be helpful to not just study the philosophy itself but the history of the places where it developed, the institutions and attitudes around at the time and so on.

In addition it's very worth studying the way in which the religion as practiced today interacts with other social and political institutions in order to understand not just what it says about itself but the function it fulfils in society.

It's possible that your woman who lived for 12 years in a cave did this, but I know that most Western dabblers in Eastern religions don't do it. It's easier just to romanticise ideas and take chunks of the philosophy as convenient, ignoring the contexts in which those philosophies were formed and operate.

Fine if you want to do that, but to then claim that you've discovered some amazing new way of thinking unknown to the West that would solve the West's problems if only we would listen is so naive that you come across as ridiculous.

 

[kyser_soze]

Whereas the right has constructed the East as threateningly irrational (defining image being kamikaze pilots in the 2nd world war and, I guess, suicide bombers).

What's interesting about this is the dboublethink it displays from the right - such an act of self-sacrifice could also be seen as the ultimate display of love and devotion to one's country and ruler/s - indeed, if the Japanese had been flying kamikaze missions onto Nazi ships they'd have been heralded as the ultimate warriors, not the poor deluded dupes that they were.

Same goes for the left - wise, mysterious and profound until they transgress some sacred cow of the left (for example if a Buddhist said that Marxism was worthless to the societies of the 'East' because it was invented by a European at a specific point in European history)...

That book looks interesting too...

 

[nosos]

If you want to get really psychoanalytical you can consider the role sublimation plays in the construction of the other. What are conservatives who make a huge show of saluting the brave sacrifice of individual soldiers to the country working out by building such a deeply threatening portrayal of the subsumution of individuality and irrational allegiance to a higher cause?

 

[nosos]

The book is brilliant btw

 

[rover07]

What's wrong with materialism? Why is the spiritual way, sitting in a cave meditating, any better than watching TV, going to the pub, working, worrying or as one great sage once described modern life... "Fucking and Fighting"

It isn't better just different. imho

 

[kyser_soze]

What's wrong with materialism? Why is the spiritual way, sitting in a cave meditating, any better than watching TV, going to the pub, working, worrying or as one great sage once described modern life... "Fucking and Fighting"

It isn't better just different. imho

Because in the West we lost that group spirituality that comes from socially extensive religions, and have been desparately insecure about not being spiritually deep ever since. Go back to when ALL of Europe was fervently Christian - Catholic or Prot - and confident in it's religious faith, everyone believed they were part of some greater whole, they belonged to a larger family then their immediate blood relations...to an extent the notions of solidarity expressed by socialists etc is an attempt to create a secular form of this religious belief, because it's recognised as performing a role of social glue - you helped your neighbour because you were all under the same God, all part of the 'whole'. If I'm right, the Islamic notion of the umma works this way too.

However, we strayed from that path and haven't been able to re-aquire that kind of society wide mutual consensus, careering off down the path of individualism...which has bought it's own wonders and horrors IMO...

But when some Westeners look at Buddhism and other faiths (never their native Christianity of course, because that's equally lacking in spiritual depth...bollocks of course), especially those from the East, they see mysticism and clearly defined boundaries of uncertainty , something that western materialism seeks to chase away...

Obviously the ideal is a combination of the two - individuals who are 'enlightened' enough to recognise and feel solidarity with their fellows simply on the basis of their humanity, but are also not bound or fettered by the contraints of a religious faith that says not only that there will always be shadows, but that investigating some of those shadows is a bad thing...

 

[rover07]

Good points kyser_soze... but do we need group spirituality or mutual consensus. That can have it's own bad side... ie get the unbeliever/outsider type mentality.

 

[rover07]

i like the sound of Taoism, cos

a) There's no God
b) Everything is part of the whole
c) Everything in the world is constantly changing
d) There is no right or wrong
e) Its from China

 

[kyser_soze]

Well that's why a balanced combination of the two seems to be the best way forward to me...individuals who's sense of self identity is strong enough that they aren't subsumed by a 'greater' ideology, but who also feel and are part of the greater family of being human...

 

[fela fan]

It's possible that your woman who lived for 12 years in a cave did this, but I know that most Western dabblers in Eastern religions don't do it. It's easier just to romanticise ideas and take chunks of the philosophy as convenient, ignoring the contexts in which those philosophies were formed and operate.

Fine if you want to do that, but to then claim that you've discovered some amazing new way of thinking unknown to the West that would solve the West's problems if only we would listen is so naive that you come across as ridiculous.

MY woman?! Nothing to do with me mate. I just liked the article and found it had good things in it worth sharing.

All your comments i've not quoted here i took as taken. One of the reasons i like timeless wisdom when i read it is that one does not need to place the comments into context so much.

I didn't want to do anything other than share the article, and i have made no such claim about discovering anything. But something has made you think that, along with me looking ridiculous. I can only posit these reactions are more to do with you than me, for you have consistenly misrepresented me on this thread, no doubt based on your own world experiences, not mine.

You afforded a glimpse of this when you came out with your nietzche comment. Try to avoid pigeon-holing me, coz you're gonna get it wrong every time and it tends to invalidate your otherwise fair comments.

 

[fela fan]

What's wrong with materialism? Why is the spiritual way, sitting in a cave meditating, any better than watching TV, going to the pub, working, worrying or as one great sage once described modern life... "Fucking and Fighting"

It isn't better just different. imho

Take both into your life. Each will then act as guide to the other leaving you in perfect balance and harmony while you travail the path of life towards your destination of death and stillness...