As usual, you write quite well, at times lyrically.
I'm finding this blog so fascinating, an articulate, very intelligent progressive who has in recent years begun to explore the world of meditation, contemplation, and perhaps is just starting to feel her way toward how that might radically change the way the world is seen.
It came to mind, perhaps some VERY simple words (honed through years of all-too-complex talking and reading) might spark some interesting reflections for this New Year.
From Father Martin Laird ("Into the Silent Land," referred to by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Alan Wallace as "the best Buddhist book on Christian contemplation ever written), to my Sufi teacher Llewelleyn Vaughan-Lee, to every Vedantic, Tantric, neo-Confucian, Zen, Kabbalistic sage/yogi/mystic I have come across (and the best Western philosophers back to the pre-Socratics) all are united in one voice as to the beginning of the contemplative life.
One sees the play of sense objects that our mind labels (inaccurately) "the world," (as if it is some "thing" existing 'out there" in dead space), there is a seeing of the play of sensations we call the "body" and the play of emotions and thoughts and memories and fears and ambitions and hopes and desires we generally take to be "Me"......
and in this quiet seeing, a vast open Silence is discovered. Contrary to the likes of Sam Harris, this is not some purely private space "inside"of the little, the puny "me," but we may dare to take it as pointing to something Real - a vastness, an openness, an inexplicable luminous Spacious Stillness which seems to encompass and pervade all of this experience we label as "the universe."
Coming back to every day life in the world, the forms we label people, politicians, good guys, bad guys, the woke, the neo-liberals, the Trumpists - everything takes on a different quality, a different character, a different hue.
This is not the quietism of contemplatives who say nothing matters. This is not the "lila" - the view of the world as a Divine Play, the dark and the light of which we should just sit back and contemplative as part of the ecstatic outpouring of this vast, luminous Consciousness which seems to have almost swallowed up all we had taken to be real.
We feel now more than ever moved to bring some measure of this radical energy and somehow find a way to transform this appearance we call the world, this suffering, laughing, exploiting, heart-breakingly beautiful and heartbreaking mass of humanity and all living creatures.
But as this dawns on us, we realize if we simply approach this process of transformation with the same mindset we brought to previous actions - which seem unfortunately all too much in alignment with what has brought about this mass of suffering - then no ultimate, fundamental, TRULY radical change will occur.
So we wait - perhaps just a few minutes, or hours, or days, or maybe even weeks - or, do we dare - months - as this new vision comes into clarity, and as the impetus to action somehow finds a new leverage point.
And one day, something extraordinary - we trust it will - will happen.
Hi Don - Thanks for the comment! I am wondering if you are familiar with my yoga books, "Yoga PhD" and "21st Century Yoga"? They are a bit dated now (although only published in 2012, so much as changed since then), but, you might find them of interest. Not directly addressing everything you raise here, of course, but certainly in some sense related.
Hi, looked through both books on Kindle. I love the way, in Yoga PhD., you quite correctly noted Swami Vivekananda's pivotal role not just in bringing yoga, Vedanta and really, the whole Indian philosophic tradition to the West, but in doing so in a way that integrated West and East (which Sri Aurobindo, who I believe I've mentioned before, built on in a way which your contributors in 21st century yoga seem to be WAY behind on).
I also love your courage in deconstructing what people romanticize as a purely ancient tradition as a mix of European (Swedish or Swiss, I think) physical culture and few odd assortments of revised postures from the Hatha Yoga Pradapika and a few other genuine Indian sources.
I feel very sad that Julian Walker has remained so fully hypnotized by our cultures' physicalist assumptions. I wish every contributor to that book would spend at least 6 months immersing themselves in Iain McGilchrist's "The Matter With Things."
McGilchrist began his journey as an English professor at Oxford, later training as a psychologist, and in 1990 becoming fascinated with aspects of the right-left hemisphere dichotomy which were not simply new age pseudo-science.
He wrote the first great non-fiction book of the 21st century, "The Master and His Emissary," in 2010, and just recently came out with a massive tome, the above-named "Matter With Things." He states something I have believed since 1970 - that ALL problems of the world today - from the cultural issues of sexism, racism, etc to climate change to increasing polarization and authoritarianism around the world - ALL stem from our underlying nihilistic physicalist delusions.
As usual, you write quite well, at times lyrically.
I'm finding this blog so fascinating, an articulate, very intelligent progressive who has in recent years begun to explore the world of meditation, contemplation, and perhaps is just starting to feel her way toward how that might radically change the way the world is seen.
It came to mind, perhaps some VERY simple words (honed through years of all-too-complex talking and reading) might spark some interesting reflections for this New Year.
From Father Martin Laird ("Into the Silent Land," referred to by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Alan Wallace as "the best Buddhist book on Christian contemplation ever written), to my Sufi teacher Llewelleyn Vaughan-Lee, to every Vedantic, Tantric, neo-Confucian, Zen, Kabbalistic sage/yogi/mystic I have come across (and the best Western philosophers back to the pre-Socratics) all are united in one voice as to the beginning of the contemplative life.
One sees the play of sense objects that our mind labels (inaccurately) "the world," (as if it is some "thing" existing 'out there" in dead space), there is a seeing of the play of sensations we call the "body" and the play of emotions and thoughts and memories and fears and ambitions and hopes and desires we generally take to be "Me"......
and in this quiet seeing, a vast open Silence is discovered. Contrary to the likes of Sam Harris, this is not some purely private space "inside"of the little, the puny "me," but we may dare to take it as pointing to something Real - a vastness, an openness, an inexplicable luminous Spacious Stillness which seems to encompass and pervade all of this experience we label as "the universe."
Coming back to every day life in the world, the forms we label people, politicians, good guys, bad guys, the woke, the neo-liberals, the Trumpists - everything takes on a different quality, a different character, a different hue.
This is not the quietism of contemplatives who say nothing matters. This is not the "lila" - the view of the world as a Divine Play, the dark and the light of which we should just sit back and contemplative as part of the ecstatic outpouring of this vast, luminous Consciousness which seems to have almost swallowed up all we had taken to be real.
We feel now more than ever moved to bring some measure of this radical energy and somehow find a way to transform this appearance we call the world, this suffering, laughing, exploiting, heart-breakingly beautiful and heartbreaking mass of humanity and all living creatures.
But as this dawns on us, we realize if we simply approach this process of transformation with the same mindset we brought to previous actions - which seem unfortunately all too much in alignment with what has brought about this mass of suffering - then no ultimate, fundamental, TRULY radical change will occur.
So we wait - perhaps just a few minutes, or hours, or days, or maybe even weeks - or, do we dare - months - as this new vision comes into clarity, and as the impetus to action somehow finds a new leverage point.
And one day, something extraordinary - we trust it will - will happen.
Hi Don - Thanks for the comment! I am wondering if you are familiar with my yoga books, "Yoga PhD" and "21st Century Yoga"? They are a bit dated now (although only published in 2012, so much as changed since then), but, you might find them of interest. Not directly addressing everything you raise here, of course, but certainly in some sense related.
Didn't know. I'll definitely take a look.
Hi, looked through both books on Kindle. I love the way, in Yoga PhD., you quite correctly noted Swami Vivekananda's pivotal role not just in bringing yoga, Vedanta and really, the whole Indian philosophic tradition to the West, but in doing so in a way that integrated West and East (which Sri Aurobindo, who I believe I've mentioned before, built on in a way which your contributors in 21st century yoga seem to be WAY behind on).
I also love your courage in deconstructing what people romanticize as a purely ancient tradition as a mix of European (Swedish or Swiss, I think) physical culture and few odd assortments of revised postures from the Hatha Yoga Pradapika and a few other genuine Indian sources.
I feel very sad that Julian Walker has remained so fully hypnotized by our cultures' physicalist assumptions. I wish every contributor to that book would spend at least 6 months immersing themselves in Iain McGilchrist's "The Matter With Things."
McGilchrist began his journey as an English professor at Oxford, later training as a psychologist, and in 1990 becoming fascinated with aspects of the right-left hemisphere dichotomy which were not simply new age pseudo-science.
He wrote the first great non-fiction book of the 21st century, "The Master and His Emissary," in 2010, and just recently came out with a massive tome, the above-named "Matter With Things." He states something I have believed since 1970 - that ALL problems of the world today - from the cultural issues of sexism, racism, etc to climate change to increasing polarization and authoritarianism around the world - ALL stem from our underlying nihilistic physicalist delusions.
Thanks for checking them out! I will do the same with "The Matter With Things."