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Post by jhananda on Mar 17, 2011 9:30:18 GMT -5
The mission of a mystic is to offer a model of enlightenment. The model of a path that leads to enlightenment is always the contemplative life. So, a mystic lives the lifestyle to become a mystics, and models it to those few people who wish to live such a lifestyle. Since the lifestyle to become an enlightened mystic is so radically different than the mainstream lifestyle, then mystics are often marginalized. So, most mystics live at the fringe of society.
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Post by john cole on Mar 18, 2011 4:20:33 GMT -5
Dear Jeffrey, our model seems to be one which moves either closer to being or away from it, from the material to the non-material, from ever greater awareness of being to ever lesser awareness of being. Do you feel that sense of 'separation' between yourself material existence? I mean mystics are a part of a culture, but what is culture then? And in this view of the mystic being the only people who have 'right' orientation in life, suggests that everyone and everything else is simply in some form of delusion in a state of becoming a mystic? Is everyones destiny to become enlightened?
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Post by jhananda on Mar 18, 2011 15:42:43 GMT -5
To me mainstream society is utterly insane, thus I live at the fringe of society.
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Post by john cole on Mar 18, 2011 17:48:49 GMT -5
Yes me 2! historically the margins move to the center over time, usually with a loss of substance, but what is culture for a mystic? And is the mystics contribution the most valuable? kind regards, john
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Post by jhananda on Mar 19, 2011 9:12:10 GMT -5
With degrees in English, fine art and anthropology I have thus studied western civ and civilization in spades. To me the origins of civilization are deeply corrupt, and over time civilization just gets worse. I believe humans, as a species, would be far more functional, and less neurotic, if they returned to their origins in the hunter/gatherer lifestyle. When mystics live on the fringe of society, they are returning to the roots of what is was to be human before civilization.
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Post by John Cole on Mar 24, 2011 14:56:36 GMT -5
Jeffrey, I like the idea, but not sure I could manage it, that is probably because I am not that deep in contemplative states on a daily basis. They come and go, but I do cultivate them on a daily basis. What is pre civilization by the way, would it be worth while to make comparative studies or some such analysis of how pre vs post very directly affected the rise and fall of mysticism?
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Post by don on Mar 24, 2011 15:12:34 GMT -5
An interesting turn in the discussion, nice to see your posts John. Dont know if I can add anything there, but I wanted to ask Jeffrey, what he thought about the whole experimental movement of music in American usually associated with John Cage. Here is a quote from a 1957 lecture, about Experimental Music, he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living". I also like what Robert Ashley was doing, in particular his video operas "Music with Roots in the Aether", www.ubu.com/film/aether.html, I know all that work comes out of drug experiences, at least I think it does, but nobody ever talks about that and I sort of wondered why. But I guessed that it must be because it was illegal! So they couldn't mention about the drugs in interviews etc, but they often refer to the altered states, and someone like Pauline Oliveros specifically talks about her music growing from a state of "non-intention" (which I interpret as 3rd Jhana), and it seems she meditated. But are we to dismiss their work because they were not true contemplatives? Does it matter whether the work/philosophy grew from a level of awareness that was drug induced, (I'm assuming), or that it was reached from leading a contemplative life? I'll add to this as I explore through the material...
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Post by jhananda on Mar 25, 2011 8:34:58 GMT -5
Hello Don and John, if I recall correctly the definition of civilization includes the advent of agriculture. Agriculture requires a level of organization that requires larger communities of people, which produces other things like formal architecture and a political structure known as a chiefdom, and typically there is a standing army to protect that chiefdom; this can lead to competition with neighboring chiefdoms, which can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety for the population.
On Don's questions regarding drugs and altered states of consciousness, yes, drugs produce altered states of consciousness that have been used by musicians and artists to create music and art. However, taking drugs does not require mindful-self-awareness; whereas acquiring altered states of consciousness through leading a contemplative life, requires mindful-self-awareness.
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Post by don on Mar 25, 2011 17:01:44 GMT -5
Yes, I agree Jeffrey, but does it not depend on the person and the nature of the experience? I would say that the whole 'experimental' work, mostly coming out of America from the 50's-70's, the most radical and confounding work of that period is deeply 'self-aware' work, otherwise who would care about it? And actually it is still historically a very marginalized period I would argue because so few people are self aware enough to be able to appreciate or grasp what on earth they were doing. Some of it is very weird, but only if one has never had the 'awareness' of what those art(ifacts) might mean beyond traditional 'emotive' formulations. Having said that, I believe there is 'greater' awareness and acceptance of that early experimental work as it passed on its influence to other artists who drew from that work which in a sense turned it into a 'tradition'. I don't think it is necessary to denigrate the work, and its significance for personal transformation (insight and self awareness) for the reason that it may have been an awareness that was drug induced. Many of those artists, John Cage being perhaps the best example, who did follow and practice Zen Buddhism, and which informed his work in a very deep way.
"Self-awareness describes the condition of being aware of one's awareness. It is the awareness that one exists as an individual being. Without self-awareness the self perceives and accepts the thoughts that are occurring to be who the self is. Self-awareness gives one the option or choice to choose thoughts being thought rather than simply thinking the thoughts that are stimulated from the accumulative events leading up to the circumstances of the moment."
Thank you Jeffrey
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Post by jhananda on Mar 26, 2011 10:09:26 GMT -5
Hello Don, I often feel that I am so far beyond the curve that it is difficult for me to scale down to bridge the cap between myself and the public. For instance, why was I marginalized by the Buddhist priesthood? Why was I not instead valued and respected and empowered since I have been a rigorous contemplative for now nearly 40 year? Why do the mainstream religions of the world not value the contemplative life and the spiritual attainments (phala) that it leads to?
My explanation for above questions is we human get what we pay for. If we support priests who offer a simple dumb-down religion, and ignore supporting mystics, then we get a religion that does not value its mystics. To me, Zen Buddhism, and the other forms of mainstream Buddhism are this kind of dumb-down religion, when they do not value and respect their rigorous contemplatives and their insights and attainments.
Now, let us look at popular music for the last 50 years. Who decided which musicians we were going to hear on our popular radio stations? Do you think it is possible that popular Rock and Roll, Blues, Jazz, Folk, etc. was funded by drug dealers, who used the traveling band as a means of selling drugs? Is it possible that those people who had the money to have the time and funding to purchase musical equipments to become musicians and form a Rock band were often themselves drug dealers? Well, that might just be a bit paranoid, but call me paranoid because I think culture is utterly and completely corrupt and has been so since prehistory, when it does not value its mystics.
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Post by John Cole on Mar 26, 2011 20:33:51 GMT -5
hmm, well this is not my discussion but while I see your point Don, where you are referring specifically to the experimental tradition of avante garde music in the 60's (not pop music), Jeffrey is bringing into the picture the social menace of, can I say capitalism? And all the cultural accoutrement associated with the darker underbelly of massive drug industria that in all likely hood could probably linked to all the social evils in the world. But in defense of Don's point, I happen to agree that that experimental 'tradition' (now) of the 50's, 60's, and 70's, was the result of deeply reflective people who found in their iconoclasm, dissident, intuition a common shared experience that may have been drug experiences, pseudo-eastern religious practice, but I think underneath all that their was a deeper level of self-awareness that was the real impetus for the revolutionary work they were doing.
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Post by Julia on Mar 27, 2011 9:12:25 GMT -5
Jeffrey. what do you think of these?:
Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, The Sun of Wisdom: Teachings on the Noble Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, trans. Ari Goldfield (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), and Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness (Auckland, N.Z.: Zhyisil Chokyi Ghatsal, 2001).
Lex Hixon’s retranslation of older translations, Mother of the Buddhas: Meditation on the Prajnaparamita Sutra (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest, 1993).
Chögyam Trungpa, Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness (Boston: Shambhala, 1993)
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (New York: Viking, 1977), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari argue, that traditional societies were structured precisely to avoid or refuse the impasse of capital.
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Post by jhananda on Mar 27, 2011 13:03:48 GMT -5
Hello Don, John and Julia, and thank-you for posting your most well thought-out responses. The problem with understanding the emergence of Modernity and Mysticism is understanding where to begin the story. So, I am going to begin the story at the beggining of civilization. Punishment for malevolent sorcery was addressed in the earliest law codes preserved; both in ancient Egypt and in Babylonia it played a conspicuous part. It appears in the Code of Hammurabi (18th century BCE). It is my premise that mystics were suppressed by these early laws against witchraft.
The classical period of witchhunts in Europe and North America falls into the Early Modern period or about 1480 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 executions.
The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In the Kingdom of Great Britain, witchcraft ceased to be an act punishable by law with the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
It is no coincidence that twelve years after Britain stops convicting people of witchcraft various charismatic religious group begin to emerge in eighteenth-century Britain. One of the most important of these new movements was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, or the Shakers, begun in 1747. The first members of the group were known as “Shaking Quakers” because of the ecstatic nature of their worship services.
Less than 100 years later Transcendentalism appears. It was a movement of people who embraced ideas in literature and philosophy that developed in the 1830s and '40s as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among transcendentalists' core beliefs was the belief in an ideal spirituality that "transcends" the physical and empirical and is realized only through the individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions.
Asian literature began being translated into European languages by 1850. By 1875 the Theosophical Society is formed. The Theosophical Society was officially formed in New York City, United States, in November 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge and others. Its initial objective was the "study and elucidation of Occultism, the Cabala etc."[2] After a few years Olcott and Blavatsky moved to India and established the International Headquarters at Adyar, in Madras (Chennai). They were also interested in studying Eastern religions, and these were included in the Society's agenda.
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian Lawyer who studied Anthropology, specifically Finno-Ugric shamanism, then he became a painter, and art theorist. He started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30. He is credited with painting the first modern abstract works.
In 1896, he settled in Munich and studied first in the private school of Anton Ažbe and then at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1914, after World War I started. He was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life. He was a Theosophist.
Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role. Many of the school's students and faculty were influential in the arts or other fields, or went on to become influential.
Founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and other former faculty members of Rollins College, Black Mountain was experimental by nature and committed to an interdisciplinary approach, attracting a faculty that included many of America's leading visual artists, composers, poets, and designers, like Buckminster Fuller, who popularized and named the geodesic dome.
Operating in a relatively isolated rural location with little budget, Black Mountain College inculcated an informal and collaborative spirit and over its lifetime attracted a venerable roster of instructors. Some of the innovations, relationships, and unexpected connections formed at Black Mountain would prove to have a lasting influence on the postwar American art scene, high culture, and eventually pop culture. Buckminster Fuller met student Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain, and the result was the first geodesic dome (improvised out of slats in the school's back yard); Merce Cunningham formed his dance company; and John Cage staged his first happening (the term itself is traceable to Cage's student Allan Kaprow, who applied it later to such events).
Not a haphazardly conceived venture, Black Mountain College was a consciously directed liberal arts school that grew out of the progressive education movement. In its day it was a unique educational experiment for the artists and writers who conducted it, and as such an important incubator for the American avant garde.
Among those who taught there in the 1940s and 1950s were: Josef and Anni Albers, Eric Bentley, Josef Breitenbach, Alfred Kazin, John Cage, Harry Callahan, Robert Creeley, Merce Cunningham, Max Dehn, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Duncan, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius, Lou Harrison, Franz Kline, Jacob Lawrence, Richard Lippold, Charles Olson, M. C. Richards, Albert William Levi, Xanti Schawinsky, Ben Shahn, Aaron Siskind, Theodoros Stamos, Jack Tworkov, Robert Motherwell, and William R. Wunsch. Guest lecturers included Albert Einstein, Clement Greenberg, Bernard Rudofsky, Richard Lippold and William Carlos Williams. Ceramic artists Peter Voulkos and Robert C. Turner taught there as well. A number of the artists, musicians and dancers who studied or taught at Black Mountain College were Theosophists.
Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Many artists have aligned themselves with the avant-garde movement and still continue to do so, tracing a history from Dada through the Situationists to postmodern artists such as the Language poets around 1981. A number of the Avant-garde artists, musicians and dancers were Theosophists, and/or deeply influenced by Buddhism, and also experimented with mind-altering drugs.
D.T. (Daisetsu Teitaro) Suzuki (October 18, 1870 – July 12, 1966) was a Japanese author of books and essays on Buddhism, Zen and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest in both Zen and Shin (and Far Eastern philosophy in general) to the West. Suzuki was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Japanese, and Sanskrit literature. Suzuki spent several lengthy stretches teaching or lecturing at Western universities, and devoted many years to a professorship at Otani University, a Japanese Buddhist school. He was a follower of Pure Land Buddhism, which is a Buddhist equivalent to Born Again Christianity, which rejects the practice of meditation and teaches a simplified devotion to Amitaba Buddha.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (February 28, 1939 – April 4, 1987) was a Tibetan Buddhist priest. He was a major, albeit controversial, figure in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, founding Vajradhatu and Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method.
Among his contributions are the translation of a large number of Tibetan texts,[4] the introduction of the Vajrayana teachings to the West, and a presentation of the Buddhadharma largely devoid of ethnic trappings. He is seen as having embodied the crazy wisdom (Tib. yeshe chölwa) tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.[5][6] His teaching methods and his personal habits were the topic of controversy during his lifetime and afterwards.
Controversies: There are a number of controversies that surround Trungpa's behavior, including his open sexual relationships with students and drinking of alcohol, which led to his death of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 47 ([1]). Before moving to America, he drove a sports car into a joke shop while under the influence of alcohol. This left Trungpa partially paralyzed and usually needing assistance to walk. On some occasions he had to be carried off-stage for being too drunk (Zweig 1991, p.141). Some observed that even while drunk, he could lecture brilliantly and be precise and compassionate with his students (Chadwick 1999, p. 374).
In addition to his own open sexual relations with students, the sexual relations of Trungpa's first appointed Vajra Regent, Ösel Tendzin, have been a cause for some dissent due to the Vajra Regent's HIV status. See Ösel Tendzin for details.
Others have been disturbed by behavior that appeared to be abusive. Most famously, at the Halloween party at the Fall,1975 Snowmass Colorado Seminary, after many had been disrobed, including Trungpa himself, on Trungpa's orders his Vajra Guard forced entry into the locked and barricaded room of poet W. S. Merwin and Merwin's girlfriend Dana Naone; brought them, against their will, to the party; and forcibly stripped them of all their clothes, onlookers ignoring Naone's pleas for help and for someone to call the police (Sanders, 1977, throughout; Miles 1989, pp. 466-470; and Clark 1980, pp. 23-25). However, Merwin and Naone remained at the Seminary for several more weeks to hear the Vajrayana teachings, with Trungpa's promise that "there would be no more incidents," and Merwin and Naone's assertion that "it would be with no guarantees of obedience, trust, or personal devotion to him." (Sanders, 1977, pg. 88) Following the Seminary, Trungpa made no public statements about the incident. However, in a 1977 letter to members of a Naropa class investigating the incident, Merwin concluded, "My feelings about Trungpa have been mixed from the start. Admiration, throughout, for his remarkable gifts; and reservations, which developed into profound misgivings, concerning some of his uses of them. I imagine, at least, that I've learned some things from him (though maybe not all of them were the things I was 'supposed' to learn) and some through him, and I'm grateful to him for those. I wouldn't encourage anyone to become a student of his. I wish him well." (Sanders, 1977, pg. 89) It later became a cause célèbre among some poets and artists, with Turtle Island Press publisher Bob Callahan circulating a petition calling for a boycott of Naropa (Miles 1989, pp. 476-482). Poet Kenneth Rexroth's comment was that "Trungpa has unquestionably done more harm to Buddhism in the United States than any man living." (Clark 1980, back cover)
He was also a notorious philandering alcoholic who infected a lot of people with AIDS. While the official report of Chogyam Trungpa’s death is that he died of diabetes, it has been suggested that he died of a combination of cirrhosis of the liver and AIDS.
While some people think Chogyam Trungpa was enlightened I do not believe that an enlightened one could possibly be a philandering alcoholic who infected a lot of people with AIDS. As Jesus, the Maitraya Buddha, said, "You will know a tree by its fruit." Chogyam Trungpa bore some pretty rotten fruit.
Summary: We really should be asking why Asian Buddhism treats such a person as Chogyam Trungpa, D.T. Suzuki, Bhikkhu Bodhi as a religious heroes while they consistently marginalize and wholesale dismiss the rigorous contemplatives? I would say Chogyam Trungpa provides ample evidence of the hypocrisies of Tibetan Buddhism. Just as D.T. Suzuki, and Bhikkhu Bodhi not leading a contemplative life, while being treated as great Buddhist teachers only provides ample evidence of the hypocrisies of Zen and Theravadan Buddhism. And, just because
If we wish to become enlightened in this very lifetime we really must throw off naïve belief systems and rigorously seek the truth. For instance it is not possible for profound insight into phenomena to occur without leading a contemplative life, and a contemplative life is based upon the rigorous practice of meditation. The practice of meditation is after all the seventh fold of the Nobel Eightfold Path, as well as the avoidance of irresponsible sexuality and intoxicants are basic to the precepts that the Buddha taught. Thus friends, on the way to enlightenment a lot of sacred cows are likely to be slaughtered.
And, just because modernist and Avant-garde artists, musicians, dancers and Theosophists were deeply influenced by Buddhism; and pushed the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm; does not mean that they ever unpacked those influences sufficiently to realize that Buddhism, as it has been institutionalized for the last 21 centuries, is just a self-protective priesthood who do not understand nor value their own mystics.
So, Julia, I do not accept the writing and teaching of Chogyam Trungpa as insightful, but deluded. I have not met, nor read the work of Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche; however, he comes from an institution that has been marginalizing its mystics for thousands of years, so I have little interest in what he has to say. The writing attributed to Nagarjuna and most Mahayanist literature, such as the Prajnaparamita Sutra, are deeply flawed and based upon profound translation errors that have never been acknowledged by Mahayana Buddhism. However, the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari sounds interesting, so I will attempt to look more deeply into their work.
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Post by john cole on Mar 27, 2011 17:50:03 GMT -5
Jeffrey, I almost want to say that it was 'drugs' that facilitated the whole flow of Eastern thought and Guru's into the west, and if we do a bit of deconstruction, as I think your work does, it is to deflate the media/consumer picture projected onto us of the 'great' artist, or 'great' spiritual teacher, which often glosses over the 'reality' of the situation (or I guess also exposes it, then its a question of whether we want to 'see' it or not). I don't think this is a black and white situation, as their certainly are those who were somewhere in between, or who did lead a genuine contemplative life, but I guess it is always necessary to examine those examples case by case.
I think what is interesting about your work is that it is like a very simple acid test, cutting clearly to the crux of the matter. Look at the person in question, and ask, were they a contemplative, and is there any evidence of attainment that resembles the case histories, Buddhist scripture, or the work of other mystics, as it has been documented in its original sources throughout history. This also explains the reason why it is necessary to emphasize the quality of 'translations'.
I still remember going to a meeting a few years ago around the indian guru 'Sai Baba', where the whole point of the meeting was to discuss the then recent scandal regarding his 'magical powers' being revealed to be fake caught on camera (spitting beads or something like that). The whole talk was about how we must separate the individual, and their personal eccentricities, from the 'divine' universal nature of their teachings. WTF???
I couldn't believe I was in the midst of a whole room of people who believed this was ok! Talking with some of the people, you could see how they were in the grip of 'belief', the desire to perpetuate a false image of divinity, not because they didn't understand the implications of the belief, but because it would invalidate them, or the world they wanted to believe is real (in their own mind).
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Post by jhananda on Mar 29, 2011 8:31:00 GMT -5
Hello John, yes I agree, recreational drugs most certainly had some influence upon the West in interest and transmission of contemplative literature. That would be true for myself, and most of the people who I have met in my contemplative life. However, just because recreational drugs had some influence upon the West's interest in contemplative literature and practice, does not mean that it is necessary or required to lead a contemplative life, nor to find its fruitful attainments.
Yes, my work is all about applying an "acid test" to: doctrine, translation, teaching or teacher. A quote from the Bible works for me here. Jesus, the Maitreya Buddha, said, "For each tree is known by its fruit.“ (Luke 6:44). So, we can use that as a metaphor for our acid test. A spiritual teacher who does not lead an ethical life, fails the acid test. Also, the teaching of an authentic spiritual teacher must fall into the range of the teaching of the mystics. If it does not, then it is not authentic spiritual guidance.
The teachers who fail this "acid test" are: Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche; Rajnish (AKA Osho); Sai Baba; the so-called Maharishi of TM, Franklin Jones (AKA etc. Baba Free John, Da Free John, Adida); etc. And, any spiritual teacher who subscribes to the teachings of the above spiritual failures.
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