And just in time. Time to deepen practice. It's especially good for this progressive, suburban, Zen - well, I'm not a hipster in any sense (to paraphrase one of my commenters); I'm just perfecting a practice. All the people I ever knew were "hipsters" were, um...not what anyone else would call a hipster. Although a friend from high school once met Patti Smith on a NYC subway train. Does that count?
Anyway, a bit more practice is in order.
Monday, March 07, 2011
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4 comments:
Having met a few gurus, I say.....fuck them. Scuzi the honesty, but that's the way it is. It's a swindle. Now, if he has a black belt in tae kwon do, aikido, judo etc. and uses a bit of zen or whatever along with his physical training-- he may be deserving of respect (as one gent I met years ago did). But the usual chubby bay area or LA WASP boodhist tends to be a clever perv usually--the asians not much different.
Not philosophers either--peruse the old debates between Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley. Russell, not a perfect human, nonetheless ripped up Huxley the mystic.
Can the mystic prove that his experience ....is valid? No. At best he says, I saw something, feel pleasant, enlightened etc. Sunday schoolers say the same. As does the aikido master. When guru levitates ...then maybe take him seriously.
J:
You don't seem to understand what Buddhists actually do: practice.
You don't seem to understand Lord Russell's point--i., all mystics (christian, buddhist muslim or otherwise) are the same insofar that their "experiences" , assuming they have one, are private, and not proof of a transcendent realm, or "buddhism"itself (how do we know they're not lying?)
Now, I don't doubt that some people feel pleasant after meditation--or have mystical experiences of a sort. Others feel pleasant after listening to Debussy. Or exercise, or a nice dinner. Or finishing up the 15 minutes with wifeystein.
Gurus are more or lesss preachers (or priests, perhaps, with the scholarly sorts)--they just happen to come from japan (china india, etc).
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