Meditating, “improved moral reasoning”, and moral behavior. Three different things evidently and possibly intertwined. Obviously we are born in to this wold with nature and then there is nurture. Evidently moral behavior is something developed and cultured in good upbringing. My feeling in watching is that a lot of the bad behavior that MJ in writing here for instance is so upset about in the TM community movement comes from bad upbringing and does not have so much of anything to do with whether some one meditates. It's mostly bad manners without virtue. Evidently. That's what I see, they are just being bad people for their poor upbringings and sometimes they are even immoral. Okay, that can be really bad at times on the part of some but not the normative of most folks. Just really bad upbringing. . For instance, here is two minutes on improving behavior as learned. ..
Some sensitive caring in thoughtful upbringing, in 2 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTqDfb-QhNg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTqDfb-QhNg -Buck in the Dome Maharishi's was revolutionary and comprehensive thinking about global peace, like "Elise M. Boulding (July 6, 1920 – June 24, 2010). Boulding offers Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent as a holistic first step towards solving international conflicts. She envisions a “global civic culture” as not simply made of nation states but as a global community of human beings. The book enforces the idea of thinking globally on a microcosmic level to facilitate solving problems in a peaceful international order. Boulding believed that a civic world order could become a reality, while acknowledging the strife that exists now. "Building a Global Civic Culture" is geared toward addressing the world’s problems and offering ideas for solutions. To create peace, Boulding believes that we must all become teachers and develop new learning communities. Everyone, old and young, will teach. Age groups will teach each other from their respective generations. How we perceive events unique to our generation shapes the lens through which we each see later events. We need to know what the world looks like to young and old alike. Boulding believes all will be teachers. In order to do this, we must learn to think outside of the box. Humans are intuitive, creative animals with cognitive-analytic reasoning abilities. We as human animals can grasp complex wholes from partial sets of facts. Boulding states that for most of us, education has been tied to the maxim “stick to the facts, no need for imaginative thinking.” We are taught in school that imagination and intuition are virtues of the daydreamer, not the true student. To the contrary, Boulding states we need to harness both intuition and imagination to solve world crises. Ultimately this book encourages us to become both teachers and problem solvers and includes exercises to lead the way. Elise M. Boulding was a Quaker sociologist [many credentials], and author credited as a major contributor to creating the academic discipline of Peace and Conflict Studies. Her holistic, multidimensional approach to peace research sets her apart as an important scholar and activist in multiple fields. Her written works span several decades and range from discussion of family as a foundation for peace, to Quaker spirituality to reinventing the international “global culture”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elise_M._Boulding#Building_a_Global_Civic_Culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elise_M._Boulding#Building_a_Global_Civic_Culture Evidently as practicing and experience meditators we are not alone in our experience around this. There are other mystics who see this too. -Buck in the Dome S3raphita , I feel you are being quite saintly in taking notice of the circumstance. Yep, it is just another sign of bad upbringing and the failure of our schools and society. Including fault of all those collectively standing around smirking who without initiative themselves or had the opportunity in their own lives to pursue the proper upbringing of virtue of spiritual life themselves and all those who who may know better will themselves not going out even on a limb to help anyone other than themselves in their own material world of widget worth. I sense saintly virtue in you that you would even notice the collective failure in this incident in this poor unlucky youth. The shoplifter is just another index showing the lack in our meissner-like collective transmission of collective consciousness of virtue in life. You are a teacher of the absolute wisdom in life are you not? A transmitter of spiritual virtue? It makes sense that you are sensitive to what was in that public scene. It is now the age of science and it is neigh time they put quiet-time meditation in to the training of all our children in their schools, if their families can not provide it for their own children if not just to save us all. To save us all from this vileness otherwise there is a place for public education in these sound values of life. All it takes is some quiet-time. It pisses me off too to watch the smirking jerks as you point to, like some even here who would actually stand in the way and fight what is such evident science and get in the way of the larger transmission of virtue in life. Yep, all those smirking jerks all watching the theatre of this youth being taken off should all be sending checks of donation as a matter of character to the David Lynch Foundation to help in the trenches in the fight against all that is vile in life. The teaching of and learning of the transcendental meditative state is the inalienable right to be guaranteed of every human being born in to this life. That is the first right that needs to be first guaranteed to every child growing up. Teaching of effective transcending meditation in all our schools is now the scientific standard of a proper education and should be all our public's policy regardless. I commend you for bringing this sad story to our attention here at FFL. You are a saint in reaching for the transformation that awareness can bring. It would be cruelty to know the great virtue of life and not say anything or do anything about this situation. Thanks for bringing this to our attention here. It will likelymake us all better for it in pursuing our spiritual practices as we go about our daily lives. Thanks, you are a saint. -Buck s3raphita writes: Today I was walking past a department store when a sudden commotion caught my attention. A young man was being frogmarched to a waiting police car by two constables - obviously he was a shoplifter who hadn't been as careful as he should have been. But what appalled me was that everyone around me - fellow pedestrians, people in coffee shops, those waiting at the bus stop - were almost universally smiling and exchanging knowing glances. I've noticed that reaction countless times in similar situations. But me: I just felt depressed. Here was a youth, perhaps on his way to prison. His mum and dad and sisters, his other relatives and his friends would be shocked and saddened by the news of his arrest. What is there to smile about for God's sake? It's a reaction I've noticed about other misfortunes. People see drug addicts in the final stages of degradation and judge these unfortunates as being "losers". I see the same people and wonder what sexual or physical abuse they suffered as children - or maybe as adults they encountered some other misfortune, perhaps having to see a loved one die slowly and painfully of cancer - and think to myself how lucky I am that I have never had to cope with such trauma. So is Seraphita a saint? Not bloody likely. I am as selfish, as self-centred, as narrowly concerned with my own well-being as anyone. The difference seems to be an ability to enter imaginatively into the suffering of others and appreciate what a raw deal they had. Of course, some shop-lifters and drug addicts are complete saddos and probably need a kick up the arse and told to get a grip. But many will have just been unlucky - and luck plays a dominant role in all our lives. Imagination is often dismissed as idle fancy but really it is a faculty in which we grasp real aspects of the world - just like perception and reason. But perhaps another cause for people to enjoy the misfortunes of others - complete strangers at that - is that they are unhappy ("The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Thoreau) and seeing someone worse off than themselves gives them a boost. They suddenly see that their own lives could be even more miserable so for a brief moment they can feel complacently self-satisfied. Alas - according to Nietzsche - pity is just cruelty disguised. There's a lot to be said for that view - just observe carefully how your friends and colleagues savour reports of disasters on the latest news bulletins while convincing themselves how compassionate they are. So what can we conclude? That Seraphita is a hypocrite! Heads you win; tails I lose.
