"Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life"

Amen.

 

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One of the very first lessons I learned here.

When in Rome. etc.

 

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Sam, you are a model of restraint and good will to mankind. Well, some of mankind.

 

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I disagree. I think it was very clearly a reform of the Hindu influence provided by Hindu cults he encountered. Otherwise, why invent a new philosophy? If the Hindu cults worked, why the change? I don't believe, based on the resulting philosophy, that Gautama's new philosophy was to allow him to control/dominate the masses as was the case when Muhammad invented the Koran or when early Christians sat around drinking wine and voting on what would be "canon" in their mythology. Even the early Jewish authors and editors who picked and chose through Sumerian, Canaanite, Egyptian, etc. myths and oral traditions to formulate the Pentateuch had domination of their land in mind as they transformed themselves from Canaanites to 'Israelites.'

Each of these is a reform of earlier religious mythology of earlier religious cults, but Buddhism is an outlier. It's highest goal was for adherents to achieve a state of nirvana with a complete lack of personal desire. Not exactly a virtue of a cult that seeks political domination of a populace in the manner achieved by Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism. Clearly, Buddha/Gautama was moved by the religious dominance of Hindu cults and their materialist nature.

 

When you say the West, I assume you mean modern developed countries rather than geography? Because native American shamanism probably had more in common with eastern religions than monotheism. European paganism (Wicca, Asatru etc.) ditto. What you think of as 'Western' religion now is really a combination of middle-eastern religion and modern philosophy and science.

I remember reading somewhere that traditional shamanic training (only given by the shaman to 'gifted' candidates) is in fact a way of dealing with types of mind that today might be considered disordered.

Two things you could look into:
Autogenics - Soviet relaxation method based partly on eastern practices, but understood to be entirely physiological.
Alexander technique: physical mindfulness method discovered independently by an Australian, not a scientist, but taking a fairly scientific approach. Royal School of Music in UK has recently started teaching all instrumental students Alexander technique and it's reduced the number of soft-tissue injuries to almost nothing.

 

Same reason that Asoka turned to Buddhism.

Don't you know the story of Gautama?

 

Its interesting you should say that because the shamans were the scientists of their time, using drugs and investigating techniques for curing mental and physical problems

Yes and they dabbled in a lot of hallucinogenic compounds (which they maintained as sacred and thus only avaialble or to be used by them)

Do you have a reference?

 

I've read a few books, but Wikipedia is a decent place to start (check the links at the bottom of the articles):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Technique#Basic_Premises (One of Alexander's key ideas is not to "end gain", i.e. seek the end without caring about the means. I think this idea applies to many of the problems in Western culture; e.g. learning for exams instead of learning for understanding.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenics (seems it was German, not Soviet

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)

 

Frankly, I disagree with Fraggle. While poking fun is all very well between friends, in a real discussion it is counter productive. I did try it out (though only with some people) but my own ideas are that giving healthy respect to contrary views is more beneficial in the long run, it encourages debate and gives a person the freedom to really explore his views and ideas if he/she can be certain of a reception where everyone is not going into hysterics at the perceived nonsensical nature of it. With assumptions like that to begin with, there is never going to be an understanding of what the issues are and both sides are left the poorer for it.

But it seems that unless you make derogatory remarks and demean people, you are unlikely to be taken seriously here. Which is a shame.

 

Interesting. The Alexander technique incorporates several aspects of yogic posture and focusing, especially what is said about habit and focusing on each separate part of the motion for its own sake rather than looking forward to the ultimate aim of the exercise.

I will try and find more stuff on this.

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Well sam, you need to see the difference between healthy respect and foolish naievte. You have a very strong bias against "the west". Is your constant presentation of the failings of the west to be regarded as healthy respect?

And when does healthy respect, after long thought and debate, turn into decisive action for or against a non-neutral phenomenon? Like radical islamic terrorism against "the west"?

I don't give a shit about the causes of it any more. I want it stopped by any means necessary. Are western policies to blame? 100%? I suspect not. You'll argue however that without the west, all of islam and the middle east would be an eden of peace and cooperation. This is utter foolishness given the history of any religion that fragments. I don't hate shiites or sunnis. They hate each other (in many places) and have since long before the west was ever involved.

Ultimately, if the result of all of this in, say, a few hundred years, is the complete eradication of islam as a concept, I wouldn't shed a tear. And if the opposite happens? Will all of you muslims shed a tear at the loss of the west? No. You will not. You will dance in celebration of the final victory of allah over the infidels.

Explain to me why this is not true.

 

I agree with the quote but not your inference that atheism and spirituality are mutually exclusive.

You also seem to be saying that theists appreciate mystery more than atheists. I think it's the opposite, theism - as represented in the mainstream religions, objects to mystery in favor of dogmatic clarity. Atheism is just the rejection of one kind of approach to spirituality.

 

This isn't true. The Buddha had Supernormal powers like flying, walking on water, etc... but they were not considered mysterious if you understood them. He stated that reincarnation was an undeniable truth, that there is an unphysical mind (cittam), and the result of good and bad deeds.

The Buddha never rejected gods, instead in some of his sermons he mentioned gods or devas. However they did not provide the end of all suffering. He also believed in things like hell and heaven, just check Buddhist cosmology.

How does this show that The Buddha rejects the supernatural? Things like these were not uncommon in other earlier Hindu texts.

He doesn't reject the supernatural at all. Some of what you call the "supernatural" he considers the truth, so it is not at all magical to him. Also, it depends how you define religion. Also, Nirvana is being "unconditioned" to material nature, it really has nothing to do with personal desire. According to The Buddha the only reason there is eternal bliss is because there is an unmade, uncreate, unborn. Many gods are mentioned in pali canons, though there is no worship, there is still a belief.

 

Well I do exaggerate some on the forum but I think most people in the West (and there are quite a few of the opposite persuasion) have ideas about the East based on view points from heavily biased sources. I've lived in the ME for 5 years, travelled and spoken to the people there, had friends in the workers, drivers, admin, women who were Saudis who were teachers, nurses, doctors, etc.

I don't recognise any of the caricatures I see here. Not because they are false, but because they are seen through a Western compass. A person from Peshawar or Riyadh is not the same as a person from Darfur or New York, even if they are all Muslims. If I came here from India, should I despise the West for their higher rates of divorce, the teenagers I see puking and groping each other on weekends, the apparent racism I encounter, or should I recognise that it is a cultural difference that reflects the natural offside of a liberal society with a multicultural mix of people?

When I see/hear comments about other cultures, there is always an undertone of arrogance regarding the state of people, culture, education, status of women, etc that I encounter. There is a fascination for the exotic, of course (like the Hindu guy who wears a dot of vermilion on his forehead, until he realises that the looks he gets from other people are of disbelief or disdain and he is considered as underdeveloped due to his beliefs) but there is also overwhelming prejudice associated with people who desire to maintain their own identity as well as integrate. There's a Mohammed here who has become Mo so as to be less associated with is religion and more with his abilities.

I was just indicating here what it feels like. Everyone has a feeling for their culture and identity and no culture has a perfect history. To demean anyone ( women in hijab? Fucking morons?) simply because their choices are incomprehensible to you, to make them ashamed of their choices, which they may not be ready to change, is no excuse.

Probably what the people of Palestine feel every minute of every day. Feel like a suicide bomber yet? Nope? Then you haven't been pushed hard enough or far enough. Give it a few years, a few bombings close to home, a few dead relatives and you'll get there. Feel religious about it yet? Thinking of 72 succulent virgins waiting in the afterlife? Or the pieces of your family you put together in a sack last night? What is more probable? See how ridiculous all the BS sounds to those who are affected? What effect the derision and dark humor may have? Its unbelievable to me that people can be so completely blind to reality. Oh yeah, they want a fast ticket to heaven.

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Are you so certain of your idea of what they MUST believe that you don't even want to really take a look at their situation and try to see beneath the media hype ?

I answered this elsewhere for (Q):

As a simple example, what do you think the ban on the burqa will result in?

Right now 30 out of 300,000 women in Holland wear a burqa. Do you predict the numbers will go up or down?

 

I disagree, atheists usually tend to say that science knows it all, the reason they reject religion is because of science. They do not wonder about if there is a soul, afterlife, God, etc....instead they just believe whatever science has concluded. Science hasn't found that there is a god, soul, or afterlife, so it must be true, thats the logic of an atheist.

Where as spiritual personalities wonder about the things beyond what we know.

 

Complete and utter poppycock.

I said as much in one of my previous posts.

These are the basics for achieving Nirvana. None indicate anything supernatural.

 

Vitalone.

NO they don't; that's what theists think they would say, it is the exact opposite. Science is very much about trying to discover the many things we don't know.

Now, theist religions OTOH DO state they know it all - GOD did it of course.

 

I do not think that spirituality is an east versus west thing but as I have never been a great fan of Gautama's philosophy I will introduce a little of Kierkegaard's observations.
"You have freedom of choice, you say, and still you have not chosen God. Then you will grow ill, freedom of choice will become your 'idee fixe', till at last you will be like the rich man who imagines that he is poor, and will die of want"
I think that it is a similar train of thought to the Gautama quote in it's relevance to the needs of the soul. It is interesting to note that different cultures produce the same theme.

 

Spirituality isn't limited to those concepts of Judeo/Christian theology. I do tend to believe the results of scientific inquiry, but they doesn't limit my curiosity.

 

Well don't be too quick to believe all the results of scientific enquiry.

Religious or not, people are all the same, some good and some not so good.

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/hwang/index.html