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Next to Bede Griffiths, perhaps the most interesting guest to be interviewed by Jim Arraj for Inner Explorations would be David Loy. This was radical in the sixties, and it still is. Zen Philosophers and social criticism have been going on for a long time. As thier Taoist counterparts frequently discovered,those who did not back the empire had the uncanny ability to have themselves tortured in ways that would make waterboarding seem tame by comparison. http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/d.htm "The same thing is true with romantic love. Again, something we take for granted today, but if you look at the history of romance, it starts right at that time. The romance of Tristan and Isolde, and the troubadours, originally a very spiritual approach, especially with the troubadours, but after a while you can see that degenerated or became a more secularized with a preoccupation with the personal and sexual fulfillment through another person. So the relationship that you establish with another person becomes a kind of religion for two people. And perhaps even more important, given the kind of social changes we are undergoing now, our present obsession with money, stock markets, and so forth, is again something that would have seemed very strange to medieval man. It is something that has historical roots in that time. People like Max Weber, the great German sociologist pointed out, he has argued, though it is still very controversial, that the preoccupation with profit and growth, and capitalism as we know it, evolved out of certain and particular religious situations. The way that the Calvinist Puritans believed in predestination and therefore that discredited all the usual ways of trying to purify yourself spiritually, but in order to try to find some kind of sign that they were favored by God, they turned to material success. This led to a certain kind of psychic development, what Weber called a this worldly asceticism where you didn?t enjoy what you produced, but you tried to reinvest it in order to get more and more and always more in the hope that this would be a sign that you were saved. Well, since then what has happened, of course, is that the preoccupation with the goal ? God and salvation after we die ? has disappeared, but that psychic way of looking at the world continues. We still look upon money as a kind of god, but a god that we can never atone completely. You never have enough money. You are never rich enough. You never consume enough in order to feel completely real. So if this is a kind of symbolical way to make ourselves real, it becomes a demonic one because we never make enough money, we never become rich enough, to feel real enough. The Buddhist perspective in all this is that all of these ways of trying to make ourselves real simply cannot work, and that?s what makes them all demonic. If trying to become famous is how to make yourself real, you are never going to become famous enough. We can understand a lot of the problems that happen in interpersonal relationships, the high rates of divorce and so forth, is that people are trying to achieve something through a personal relationship that the relationship cannot provide. And of course the same thing is true of money. We are preoccupied with money as a means to feel real, you are never going to have enough, and I think that says a lot about the kind of culture that we are caught in now. The only solution as I see it is a religious one. It doesn?t have to be Buddhist. I think all religions at their best have offered an alternative. The Buddhist is simply one good example of it. Through following the Buddha?s path it enables us to realize our emptiness, to let go of ourselves in order to stop denying the emptiness, stop trying to see it and feel it as a void that makes us uncomfortable. Instead, by dereflecting, and letting go of our egos, we can fall into this void. We can let go of ourselves, and then realize we are a manifestation of it, that it is not something to run away from, but if we accept our essential emptiness, then we realize that we are like fountains flowing forth from something whose source we never really understand or need to understand. That is what transforms this emptiness from a sense of lack because we are always trying to secure ourselves into something very creative at the very core of our being. It gives us a sense that we are in touch with something much deeper than we are. It is as if at the roots of the unconscious something is opened up, and it enables something to flow forth, which wasn?t able to flow forth before. This perspective on money and what money means to us symbolically, because money is of course a symbol, it is the socially agreed symbol, but it is basically just a symbol ? you can?t eat it or travel in it or sleep under it ? but this has led to sort of rejuvenating me or bringing me back in touch with the social concerns that were originally expressed with the draft resistance during the Vietnam war. It has enabled me to see much more of the relevance of all these kinds of religious ideas for what is happening in our society today. So out of the money article, or the money section of the book, I have been looking much more into the nature of our present economic system. This has led to a number of other articles, one of them called "The Religion of the Market" which is arguing in much the same vein that I have expressed, that we can?t really understand the kind of obsession that we have for money and stock markets and banks and so forth, and the growth of the economy until we realize that our obsession with the market is because it has become a kind of religion for us. It now serves a kind of religious function. We think we have gotten rid of religion. Well, you never get rid of religion. If you get rid of it consciously, it comes out, it comes back in all kinds of unconscious, repressed, and therefore usually demonic forms. Unfortunately, again, if it is a religion, it is not a very good religion because it can never give us what we really want from it. We can never have enough. We can never be rich enough. We can never consume enough. This has also encouraged me to look at things like corporations, the history of corporations, not only the history of corporations, but the history of our modern institutions generally. The last main piece that I have been working on has been trying to offer an institutional complement to the personal understanding of what happened in the Renaissance. There I could see pretty clearly how our present preoccupations with fame, romantic love, and money began, but you can also look at the evolution of our institutions, not only capitalism, but also the origin of the nation state, which occurred at exactly the same time, and the origins to our present approach to science and technology. The nation state is something we tend to take for granted, but it was very much an outgrowth of the chaos that happened in the 16th and early 17th centuries when the old paradigm of the Holy Roman Empire collapsed, along with the schism in the Catholic Church. This led to a number of chaotic situations, including the horrible 30-years war, and it was only out of that that the nation state evolved. It was formally established in 1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia, but the reason I mention that is that this approach that I have just outlined helps us to understand it better. Historians have noticed without understanding how it is that up until the end of the 30-years war people were totally preoccupied with issues of religion, of whether their version of Protestantism or Catholicism was right, and they were basically going around killing each other because this was the most fundamental thing for them. This was how they would fill up their sense of lack. And that disappears almost overnight beginning with the nation state as a totally new mentality because the nation state becomes a kind of substitute religion. And that?s when absolute kings arise because they are serving a secular role, and yet in a way they are the equivalents of the pope, they are providing that kind of spiritual grounding. Not very well. Eventually they are gotten rid of, but by that time what has evolved is the state as we know it today, so I think the state, as well, has spiritual roots, and we can?t understand its control over us until we understand that the kind of commitment that people have made to it was originally religiously motivated, that it offered them a kind of security that ostensible religion no longer did. But in general, I am still thinking, still struggling, like so many other people, trying to understand what is the relation between the Christian path, between the Christian mystical path, especially, and the Buddhist enlightenment path? I think this is something that all of us are struggling with, and all of us are offering different understandings, different ways to approach it. Some people tend to think of them as obviously very similar in what they are working toward. Other people, just as obviously, think that they are doing something very different. It is still something we are going to be working on for a long time, probably generations. One thing that does occur to me, though, something I have been tossing through my mind for a long time, back and forth, is thinking about whether they are, in fact, operating on different functions, or different aspects of our being. If this is the case, it is not just that we are contrasting Christianity and Buddhism, but rather, that both of them, and all of the other great religions, as well, I think, contain both. I think Buddhism contains a more devotional aspect, just as Christianity contains a more intellectual aspect with people like Meister Eckhart ? mystical aspect I am referring to. But I think that the comparison in bringing together Christianity and Buddhism in dialogue brings out this aspect much more clearly than anything else. In particular, the Buddhist path as we now understand it works on the intellectual part of our selves, the mind. The meditation is working on letting go of thoughts, letting go of feelings and emotions, as a way of deconstructing the self, dereflecting the self, letting it disappear, and that?s why the kinds of nondual experiences that one has as a result of that are talked about in terms of mind, in terms of wisdom, in terms of nondual wisdom, which is prajna. That?s the one side of it. The other side, the devotional, which is more emphasized in Christianity, I think is working more on the heart level. Again, we find that in Buddhism and other religions, as well, but I think it is very clear, very much emphasized, in Christianity, and therefore we can see what is going on there. But here is the interesting question, I think. If as I now think we have a pretty good sense of how the intellectual process of meditation works to help develop prajna, nondual wisdom, what?s comparable for working on the heart level? What I would now say, what seems to be the case, is that you don?t work in this heart level so much in meditation, although there are meditations that help it, but I think the heart level has to do with developing love, with purifying and extending our love, and the most important way that we work on this is not by sitting, facing the wall, but in community with our friends and families, with our wider circle of community that we help to develop, which provides the opportunity, which provides the place, for this love to be worked out. In the situations that arise in dealing with other people, it allows us to see how the way of love can help us to let go of the kinds of resistances and selfishnesses that normally tend to limit our way of relating to other people. It seems to me that when we really do this sincerely and over a period of time, then what we get is a sense of a community of love. Love is not simply something that is an attribute of me that I am expressing and bouncing back and forth with other people. It is not just a subjective process, but that we start to realize that out of this community of love we are participating in something deeper than us, and then we begin to see that love isn?t something that belongs to me, it is not something that I have or show, but that it is something that I participate in. I think this is what is at its best going on in following the Christian path, and I see this very clearly among a lot of the Christians that really endeavor to live in this way. Unlike Buddhism, which emphasizes the nondual wisdom, that side of it, the mind side of it, the nondual love is necessarily relational, and therefore necessarily, if we try to understand it, we are not going to understand love in itself without a sense of love of whom for whom. We can understand it in terms of our love of each other, I love you, or I love God, or God loves me. In a sense there is always a sense of relationality to it which helps us to understand why religions that are devotional, that seem to work on this more devotional level, tend to understand the Supreme in a theistic way, as a person rather than as something neutral and nondual in the mental sense." Perhaps there may be some value to having someone devote much thought to these values and ethics for a good four decades or so... And Zen again, perhaps not... Shalom, a Place, Where David Loy hangs out. | |||
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David Loy brings up the issue of conscience, which will be figuring prominently in our future, if there is to be one. Tomorrow's paradigm will have a conscience wedded to prosperity. I overheard a conversation the other day and this man was speaking about how he volunteered time at his old church and had trouble getting a drink of water from them, but was happy at his new church as they had helped him to get back on his feet with a new job, food, clothing and even an apartment. I was noting the expressions on the faces of the other eavesdroppers and something was registering loudly and clearly by the looks of their countenance and the shape of their visage. The story had a happy ending and the integral holistic solution was found in this particular situation, this individual and this church group.  http://www.religiousconsultation.org/loy.htm "Seven social sins; politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice." ~Mohandas K. Gandhi | ||||
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http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/loy12.htm Materialism produces alienation. Evangelicalism attempts to solve this by expiating guilt, but in the end keeps people trapped in a sytemic milieu which requires ever larger doses of expiation of guilt through service down at the church and more money in the offering plate and more and more mounting demandsfrom Sunday to Sunday. Is it any wonder that the pastor runs off with the church secretary and or absconds with the church treasury.  Shalom, a Place, With values, spoonboy | ||||
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http://www.bpf.org/tsangha/loy-corp.html Loy points out that we really don't know much about the institution itself. Perhaps a liberal media may arise at some point in the future to enlighten us, but for the time being we have a philosophy professor and Zen master called David Loy. [QUOTE] A Buddhist Critique of Transnational Corporations David Loy We have given corporations dominion over the sustaining of our lives. They have become sovereign citizens and we have become consumers. They concentrate power and wealth. They design and shape our society and world. They carve our goals and aspirations. They shape our thoughts and our language. They create the images and metaphors of our time, which our children use to define their world and their lives. In other words: what corporations do well, what corporations are designed to be, is the problem.[1] What is globalisation, and what does it mean for our lives? There is no simple answer to these questions because there is no such "thing" as globalisation. Globalisation is a complex set of interacting developments: economic, political, technological and cultural. This paper attempts to bring a Buddhist perspective to bear on what is probably the main agent of globalisation, on an institution which has more day to day influence on our lives than any other except governments: corporations, especially transnational ones. I propose to think about what corporations are, from a religious, particularly a Buddhist, perspective. Despite their enormous and increasing impact upon all of us, we know surprisingly little about them -- that is, about what they really are and why they function the way they do. In 1995, only 49 of the world's 100 largest economies were nations; the other 51 were corporations. Malaysia was number 53, bigger than Matsu****a (54) but somewhat smaller than IBM (52); Mitsubishi, the largest corporation on the list, was number 22. Total sales of the top 200 transnational corporations were bigger than the combined GDP of 182 countries -- of all except the top nine nations. That is about thirty percent of world GDP. Yet those corporations employed less than one-third of one percent of the world's population, and that percentage is shrinking.[2] In the United States, the largest 100 corporations buy about 75% of comercial network time and over 50% of public television time as well.[3] This means that they decide what is shown on television and what is not; it has become their "private medium". Corporate mergers and buyouts also mean that the nation's radio stations, newspapers, and publishing houses are owned by a decreasing number of conglomerates increasingly preoccupied with the bottom line of profit margins. In short, corporations control the U.S. "nervous system", and increasingly our international one as well. It is amazing, then, that we hear relatively little about what corporations do -- which seems to be the way they like it. Newspapers and television news are full of the speeches and meetings of government leaders, even as globalisation of the world economy reduces their power to direct their peoples' destiny. The main point of this paper can be summarized very simply: today, thanks to spreading ideals of democracy, states are increasingly responsible to their citizens, but whom are transnational corporations responsible to? One of our problems today is that, in our preoccupation with present consumption and future possibilities, we tend to lose the past -- that is, our sense of history. If you want to understand something, one of the first places to look is at its history, which can illuminate aspects that we otherwise overlook or misunderstand. . . . So I hope you will indulge me while I present a short history lesson. What does history teach us about corporations and their responsibilities? Incorporated business enterprises, with legally limited economic liabilities, began in Europe. The earliest record I have found of such a corporation is from Florence, Italy, in 1532. Both the date and place are very interesting. Columbus had "discovered" America in 1492; just as important, Vasco da Gama had sailed around Africa to India in 1498 and returned with cargo worth sixty times the cost of his voyage. A profit of 6000%! You can imagine what effect that had on the dreams of Italian merchants. But there were some problems. First, it was extremely expensive to outfit such an expedition, so very few people could afford to do so by themselves. Second, such voyages were extremely risky; the chance of a ship sinking in a storm or being taken by pirates was considerable. And third, there were debtor's prisons -- not only for you but for your family and your descendants -- if you lost your ship and could not pay your debts. The solution to these problems was ingenious: legally limited liability. Unlike partnerships, where each partner is legally responsible for all business debts, limited liability meant you could lose only the amount you invested. Such an arrangement required a special charter from the state -- in Renaissance Italy, from the local prince. This was convenient not only for the investors but for the prince, because a successful expedition increased the wealth of his territory -- and because he got a big cut of the profits for granting the charter. What is the relevance of all that now? It shows us, first, that from the very beginning corporations have been involved in colonialism and colonial exploitation -- a process which continues today under a "neo-colonial" economic system that continues to transfer wealth from the South to the North. Although they have plenty of help from the World Bank and the IMF, corporations continue to be the main institutions that supervise that process. Second, it shows us that from the very beginning corporations have also had an incestous relationship with the state. In the sixteenth century nation-states as we know them did not exist. Rulers generally were too limited in resources to exercise the kind of sovereignty that we take for granted today. The state as we know it today -- politically self-enclosed and self-aggrandizing -- developed along with the royally-chartered corporation; you might even say they were Siamese twins inescapably joined together. The enormous wealth extracted from the New World, in particular, enabled states to become more powerful and ambitious, and rulers assisted the process by dispatching armies and navies to "pacify" foreign lands. As this suggests, there was a third partner, which grew up with the other two: the modern military. Together they formed an "unholy trinity", thanks to the new technologies of gunpowder, the compass (for navigation), and this clever new type of business organization which minimized the financial risk. In short, the modern nation-state and its military grew by feeding on colonial exploitation, in the same way that chartered corporations did.[4] This incest needs to be emphasized because we tend to forget it. We distinguish between government and the economy, but at their upper levels there is usually little effective distinction between them. Today governments still get their royal share of the booty -- now it's called taxes. On the one side, states today need to promote corporate business because they have become pimps dependent upon that source of revenue; on the other side, transnational corporations thrive on the special laws and arrangements with which states promote their activities. This brings us back to the question of corporate responsibility. A royal charter listed a corporation's privileges and responsibilities. It has been said that the history of corporations since then is a history of their attempts to increase their privileges and reduce their responsibilities. One important step in reducing that responsibility was the introduction of the joint stock company; the first English one was chartered in 1553. Compare the situation of a smaller, locally-owned business. Suppose you are a master carpenter living in 16th-century Italy. If business is good you might employ several other carpenters and apprentices. You may treat them badly -- long hours, low wages -- but it will be difficult to escape all the consequences of that. You and your family live above the workshop, or around the corner; your wife sees the wives of your senior workers, may socialize with them; your children probably play with their children, perhaps take lessons from the same teachers. You worship in the same church, participate in the same festivals. My point is that in such a situation economic responsibility is local and not so easily evaded. Everyone in the town knows how you treat your workers, and that affects your reputation -- what other people think about you and how they respond to you. It is already evident that there is an parallel here with human beings. Our physical bodies are also dissipative systems that absorb energy (from food) and use it for physical and mental activities. And from a Buddhist perspective this parallel is even deeper, for in one important respect we humans too are fictions according to the Buddhist teaching of anatman, "non-self". Buddhism teaches that our sense of self is a delusion -- what might now be called a "construction" -- because the feeling that there is a "me" apart from the world is mistaken; our sense of "I" is an effect of interacting physical and mental processes that are part of the world. Although counter-intuitive and difficult to understand, this teaching of anatman is essential to all schools of Buddhism, and enlightenment includes the realization that "my" self is "empty", for "I" am a manifestation of the world. This similarity between corporations and people -- both being "empty" dissipative systems that nonetheless have a life of their own -- raises the question whether corporations are subject to the same type of problems. According to Buddhism, the primary cause of our human problems is greed; sometimes ignorance is mentioned as well. Is this also the problem of corporations? It is the nature (or natural tendency) of our minds never to be satisfied with what we have, but always to want more. The tendency of corporations to grow and seek ever greater profits simplies a similar problem. When we consider the Buddhist solution to this problem, however, we realize the vast difference between corporations and us. The difference is that corporations are legal fictions. Their "body" is a judicial concept -- and that is why they are so dangerous, because without a body they are essentially ungrounded to the earth and its creatures, to the pleasures and responsibilities that derive from being manifestations of the earth. You may prefer to say that corporations are unable to be spiritual, for they lack a soul; but I think it amounts to the same thing. As the example of Bhopal shows, a corporation is unable to feel sorry for what it has done (it may occasionally apologize, but that is public relations, not sorrow). A corporation cannot laugh or cry; it can't enjoy the world or suffer with it. Most of all, a corporation cannot love. Love is realizing our interconnectedness with others and living our concern for their well-being. Such love is not an emotion but an engagement with others that includes responsibility for them, a responsibility that if genuine transcends our own selfish interests. If that sense of responsibility is not there, the love is not genuine. Corporations cannot experience such love or live according to it, not only because they are immaterial but because of their primary responsibility to the shareholders who own them. A CEO who tries to subordinate his company's profitability to his love for the world will lose his position, for he is not fulfilling that financial responsibility to its shareholders. To make the same point in a more Buddhist way: despite the talk we occasionally hear about "enlightened" corporations, a corporation cannot become enlightened in the spiritual sense. Buddhist enlightenment includes realizing that my sense of being a self apart from the world is a delusion that causes suffering for me and the world. To realize that I am the world -- that I am one of the many ways the world manifests -- is the cognitive side of the love that such a person feels for the world and all its creatures; that realization and that love are two sides of the same coin. Legal fictions such as corporations cannot experience this any more than computers can. That sums up us the tragedy of economic globalisation today: increasingly, the destiny of the earth is in the hands of impersonal institutions which, because of the way they are structured, are motivated not by concern for the well-being of the earth's inhabitants but by desire for their own growth and profit. "We are calling upon [those who wield corporate] power and property, as mankind called upon kings of their day, to be good and kind, wise and sweet, and we are calling in vain. We are asking them not to be what we have made them to be."[8] It is intrinsic to the nature of corporations that they cannot be responsible in the ways that we need them to be; the impersonal way they are owned and organized guarantees that such responsibility is so diluted and diffused that, ultimately, it tends to disappear. One might argue, in reply, that there are good corporations which take good care of their employees, are concerned about their products and their effect on the environment, etc. The same argument can be made for slavery: there were some good slaveowners who took good care of their slaves, etc. This does not refute the fact that the institution of slavery is intolerable. The analogy is not too strong. "It is intolerable that the most important issues about human livelihood will be decided solely on the basis of profit for transnational corporations."[9] And it is just as intolerable that the earth's limited resources are being allocated primarily on the basis of profit for transnational corporations. My Buddhist conclusion is that transnational corporations are by their very nature problematical. We cannot solve the problems they create by addressing the conduct of this or that particular corporation; it's the institution that's the problem. I do not see how, given their present structure, we can repair them to make them more compassionate. So we need to consider whether it is possible to reform them in some fundamental way or whether we need to replace them with better economic and political institutions -- better because they are responsible not to anonymous investers but to the communities they function in, better because are motivated not by profit but by service to the earth and the beings who dwell on it. As long as corporations remain the primary instruments of economic globalisation, they endanger the future of our children and the world they will live in. NOTES 1.Richard Grossman, "Revoking the Corporation", Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation (1996) vol. 11, p. 143. 2. "Corporate Empires", Multinational Monitor 17 no. 12 (December 1996). The information is from Forbes Magazine and the World Bank's World Development Report for 1996. 3. Jerry Mander, "Corporations as Machines", in Jonathan Greenberg and William Kistler, ed., Buying America Back (Council Oak Books, 1992), p. 295. 4. The United States was born of a revolt against corporations, which had been used as instruments of abusive power by British kings. The new republic was deeply suspicious of both government and corporate power. Corporations were chartered by the states, not the federal government (the U.S. Constitution does not mention them), so they could be kept under close local scrutiny. The length of corporate charters was limited, and they were automatically dissolved if not renewed, or if corporations engaged in activities outside their charter. By 1800 there were only about 200 corporate charters in the U.S. The next century was a period of great struggle between corporations and civil society. The turning point was the Civil War (1861-65). With huge profits from procurement contracts, corporations were able to take advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges, and even presidents. Lincoln complained shortly before his death: "Corporations have been enthroned. . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people...until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the republic is destroyed". -Rutherford Hayes A Place, For philosophy spoonboy | ||||
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http://www.bpf.org/tsangha/loy-globo.html In another thoughtful piece for Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Loy outlines the inherent contradictions between belief and aspiration and the reality of globalization. It's about greed and after backing every imperialist dream which has come down the pike for the last fifteen hundred years, if we give Augustine a pass, perhaps the Christian "sangha" might wish take another look at it, and benefit themselves as well as future generations.
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Loy wrote: The Buddhist doctrine of no-self implies that our fundamental repression is not sex (as Freud thought), nor even death (as existential psychologists think), but the intuition that the ego-self does not exist, that our self consciousness is a mental construction. So, then, who/what wrote that? ------ Michael, unless you have permission to quote entire articles, it's best that you just link to them and quote excerpts. Please edit some of your posts above. Thanks. Phil | ||||
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David Loy writes about a wide variety of social and spiritual issues involving everyday life. I hope to get around to all fifty or so of these very refreshing essays: http://www.holosforum.org/davidloy.html | ||||
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Michael, please note my post above about quoting articles. Thanks. | ||||
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Phil, I trimmed them down some, and am aware of your concerns. Apologies and thanks to you! I asked a hot dog vendor the other day if he had heard the one about the Buddhist who asked the hot dog vendor to "make him one with everything." I don't know why, but that one always makes me giggle. I had this adventure with holistic consciousness yesterday, and it might make Roshi Loy proud. About seventeen blocks North of my location is a wondeful place, the Denver Zen Center. On September 9th, 2007, Roshi Danan Henry gave a Darma talk: http://www.zencenterofdenver.o...brary/downloads.html Listening to this 45 minute talk, I was especially struck by the mention of his master and teacher, Robert Baker Aitken, who he said was always very careful to observe the precept of not speaking of the faults of others, actually referred to the neocenservative leaders as "a cadre of murderers." Also reading some essays by Aitken, an influence on Loy and many others, written in 1993 and referencing the mystical anarchism of Mauthner and Landauer, which reminds me of Merton's fondness for Russian mystical anarchists like Berdayev. Merton had this realization of being a "Guilty Bystander." It's the ones who believe they act for God who cause a great deal of trouble historically. Holistically speaking, I must admit to being a part of said "cadre of murderers" since I voted for them twice, and participate and enable such goings on, sadly and truly enough. Sackcloth and ashes all the way from here to eternity, until I learn... Shalom, A Place, of repentance, spoonboy | ||||
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One thing I have spinning around in my muddled little spoonboy head are the ideas of a couple of philosophy professors, who, like David Loy, look toward both Western Philosophy and the Buddhist, Sufi and Native American spiritual paths for guidance and undertanding of the effects of the dominant paradigm on the people who must live out their lives with the consequences of that paradigm. http://www.amazon.com/Paradigm...ential/dp/1568382081 How do the past president of the Institute for Noetic Sciences and a top motivational guru view this work?
http://www.trufax.org/paradigm...digm/pcexcerpts.html From the book: Are we addicted to a destructive paradigm? Another quote: Why do people resist? Why do they call me spoonhead or whatever? Why the kneejerk responses in defense of the paradigm? I can post the warning signs over and over again for several years here at shalom place and they cannot yet be seen. Why? http://www.trufax.org/paradigm/paradigm.html What is a paradigm? What is a paradigm shift? What is paradigm addiction? What are "biomind superpowers"? Who are Denise Bretton and Christopher Largent? http://www.biomindsuperpowers....adigmConspiracy.html Why do I go on and on about it? John McCain says it's mostly mentally ill people who bring up Lawrence Britt's 14 warning signs of fascism and Naomi Wolf's Letter to a Young Patriot decribing the ten steps to closing an open society and alot of people feel that George Soros' The Open Society and it's Enemies is just pure paranoid bunk. Ok, so perhaps spoonboy is unbalanced. Native Americans viewed such persons as holy, and I'm ok with that. shalom, a place, where paradigm shifts are possible, spoonboy | ||||
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The Twelve Cycles of Truth as practiced by Deginawidah are 1) learning the truth 2) honoring the truth 3) accepting the truth 4) observing the truth 5) hearing the truth 6) presenting the truth 7) loving the truth 8) serving the truth 9) living the truth 10) working the truth 11) walking the truth 12) being grateful fo the truth Gandhi was also an Indian, and it seems that he managed to pull it off a fair per-centage of the time. | ||||
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David Loy, from the Jim Arraj interview: Koans aren't everyone's way of arriving at the source. Hoan Jiyu-Kennett is from the gradual enlightenment school, and scarcely mentions koans at all. Personally, my experience was that I caught transrationality from reading scripture and from prayer. I think that Koans are especially for the intellectual type, with too much learning and a "hardening of the categories." For myself, that's living in a Dewey Decimal System world where everything has a name and a label and a section in the library, but the library itself and it's original purpose have been lost and forgotten. How did we get here? I have a new freind with a masters degree in philosophy. She told me that she considers the how more important than the why. That's funny, as I believe that the why is more important than the how. God made us all different, and for that I trust there is a good reason. shalom, a place, to sort out whys and hows... spoonboy | ||||
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Anyone and everyone, court jesters and children of all ages... People like David Loy who do alot of work on themselves can become aware of systemic dysfunction. Hans Christian Anderson told a story about The Emperor's New Clothes, a story which hopefully penetrated the consciousness of more than a few children, as well as their parents and grandparents and other caregivers who read it to them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes Sometimes the truth can only be told by a child, a spoonboy or a court jester, and many an emperer has been saved by such an one as these. Sometimes the emperor, and don't we all have one, inside and out, must finish the procession anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_in_the_Room Phillip Zimbardo ran a simulated prison experiment which was supposed to last two weeks, but was cut short after six days because even as an observer he was getting too caught up in it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...rd_prison_experiment Zimbardo was interviewed earlier this year: http://www.democracynow.org/ar...sid=07/03/30/1335257 Zimbardo calls this the "Lucifer effect." http://www.awakeninthedream.com/georgews.html Paul Levy calls it "malignant egophrenia." Alice Miller has devoted much of her life to the study of what happened in Germany, and what happens to this day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy These observations have been the result of tens of thousands hours of listening intently to people pouring out their deepest darkest secrets, having worked through a twelve step process repeatedly myself, as well as investigating my own all-to-typical upbringing and socialization, schooled well and weel-heeled in the upper-middle-way, as Buddha was, and needing to get over it if I ever expect to be enlightened. I participated in alot of the collective dysfunction, both in this group and in other personal relationships, in spite of being in a recovery process. For this I am truly sorry, and beg of you to attempt to forgive me. I have also reacted to and against what I have percieved in others, which has been at times, and probably was most of the time, spoonboy boxing with his own shadow and his own demons. For projecting them on some others around here, who are Dearly Beloved in Christ, I am truly sorry about my process. I have no right to harm others in the name of my own recovery. No one does. In the name of our collective recovery, I say we move boldly forward into the light wherever possible. shalom, a place, to get on with it... respectfully and sincerely, and eternally yours, spoonboy | ||||
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Anyways freinds, Now that I have pulled off the scab, perhaps some Bactine Ointment from Yogananda's Second Coming of Christ, pp 93-94, discourse 5 on Luke 2:52: "The great message of Jesus Christ is living and thriving in both East and West. The West has concentrated on perfecting the physical conditions of man, and the East on developing the spiritual potentials of man. Both East and West are one-sided. Granted, the East is not practical enough; but the West is too practical to be spiritually practical! That is why I advocate a harmonius union of the two; they need each other. Without spiritual idealism, material practicality is the harbinger of selfishness, sin, competition and wars. This is a lesson for the West to learn. And unless the idealism is tempered with practicality, there is confusion and suffering and lack of natural progress. This is the lesson to be learned by the East. The East can learn from the West, and the West can learn from the East. Is it not strange that, perhaps due to God's secret plan, since the East needs material development, it was invaded by Western material civilization? And since the West needs spiritual balance, it has been silently but but surely 'invaded' by Hindu Philosophy, not to conquer lands but to conquer souls with the liberation of God-realization. We are all children of God, from our inception to our eternity. Differences come from prejudices, and prejudice is the child of ignorance. We should not proudly identify ourselves as Americans or Indians or Italians or any other nationality, for that is an accident of birth. Above all else, we should be proud that we are children of God, made in His image. Is not that the message of Christ? Jesus the Christ is an excellent model for both East and West to follow. God's stamp "Son of God," is hidden in every soul. Jesus affirms the scriptures: "Ye are Gods." (John 10:34) Do away with masks! Come out openly as sons of God-- not hollow by proclamations and learned-by-heart prayers, fireworks of intellectually worded sermons contrived to praise God and gather converts, but by realization ! Become identified not with narrow bigotry, masked by wisdom, but with Christ Consciousness. Become identified with Universal Love, expressed in service to all, materially and spiritually; then you will know who Jesus Christ was, and can say in your soul that we are all one band, all sons of One God." shalom, a place, for Yogananda wannabes, like spoonboy | ||||
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Spoons, I have been wanting to read that book, Yogananda's "Second Coming of Christ". Katy | ||||
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Katy, Yogananda is a great saint, but not a Christian saint. His Christology is that of a Hindu. If I did not have about 25 years of Christian theology from an orthodox POV, I would not attempt to read this. It could be a slippery slope leading away from Mere Christianity, as C.S. Lewis called it. It's a synthesis of Christianity and Hindu beliefs, something akin to what C.S. Lewis' student Bede Griffiths was attempting from the other direction, moving "Toward a Christian Vedanta." It's a bold synthesis and without a doubt Yogananda loves our Jesus, but I do not feel that the synthesis is by any means the final word or infallible or anything like that. He claims to have met Christ and had conversations with Him. I don't know... This is all highly experimental for me, although I have read a half dozen of his books and am very impressed with Dya Mata, who is still with us at 93 years young. I reserve the right to be wrong, but I would say that his political views are right up there with the Dalai Lama and with David Loy. Transformative Experience? Definitely! shalom, spoons | ||||
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"First they laugh at you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win." -Gandhi I suppose we might wish to laugh at the crazy Zen sensei David Loy and his research on the five hundred year history of the corporation, then join in riduculing his silly goose notions. Then we can join David Horowitz in the call to purge the universities of these influences. "Why, there ought to be a law!" we might cry out in indignation. Perhaps we could round up these troublemakers and anyone they associate with, like Jim Arraj, and put them away somewhere dark and scary. The other option is to see an unpleasant reality, that we have been betrayed by the corporation, as Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln warned us about, and that Woodrow Wilson informed us had been institutionalized and codified into law. No one like to be made a fool of, but as the cuckholded husband, the public are frequently the last to know. "Take your country back!" -Desmond Tutu, Denver 2006 Shalom, A Place, Where sensei David Loy saw through the Matrix... | ||||
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A look at the problem, as identified by David Loy and many others, can be found here: http://www.americanempireproject.com This science fiction story, which emerged at the beginning of the globalization movement in 1975, takes place in the year 2018, only eleven years away: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball Who made science fiction into reality, beginning with revolution in Argentina? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C..._School_of_Economics Compare with Yogananda: "The great message of Jesus Christ is living and thriving in both East and West. The West has concentrated on perfecting the physical conditions of man, and the East on developing the spiritual potentials of man. Both East and West are one-sided. Granted, the East is not practical enough; but the West is too practical to be spiritually practical! That is why I advocate a harmonius union of the two; they need each other. Without spiritual idealism, material practicality is the harbinger of selfishness, sin, competition and wars. This is a lesson for the West to learn. And unless the idealism is tempered with practicality, there is confusion and suffering and lack of natural progress. This is the lesson to be learned by the East. The East can learn from the West, and the West can learn from the East. Is it not strange that, perhaps due to God's secret plan, since the East needs material development, it was invaded by Western material civilization? And since the West needs spiritual balance, it has been silently but but surely 'invaded' by Hindu Philosophy, not to conquer lands but to conquer souls with the liberation of God-realization. We are all children of God, from our inception to our eternity. Differences come from prejudices, and prejudice is the child of ignorance. We should not proudly identify ourselves as Americans or Indians or Italians or any other nationality, for that is an accident of birth. Above all else, we should be proud that we are children of God, made in His image. Is not that the message of Christ? Jesus the Christ is an excellent model for both East and West to follow. God's stamp "Son of God," is hidden in every soul. Jesus affirms the scriptures: "Ye are Gods." (John 10:34) Do away with masks! Come out openly as sons of God-- not hollow by proclamations and learned-by-heart prayers, fireworks of intellectually worded sermons contrived to praise God and gather converts, but by realization ! Become identified not with narrow bigotry, masked by wisdom, but with Christ Consciousness. Become identified with Universal Love, expressed in service to all, materially and spiritually; then you will know who Jesus Christ was, and can say in your soul that we are all one band, all sons of One God." Tragically, Christains have at many times supported rather than opposed imperial projects throughout history. Perhaps Zen Christians can emerge and challenge the paradigm from within and without. FWIW, spoonboy supports change and growth. | ||||
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I figured you'd get around to this sort of thing sooner or later. That's enough of that. Thread closed. Loy's a good guy, but I doubt he'd be into your new world order stuff. | ||||
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