--- --- > > http://tinyurl.com/7j6nc and check out his website at http://www.samharris.org
Here's an except from the above tinyurl in which Harris compares Western religion and Eastern Mysticism (particularly Buddhism).: With respect to spiritual practice, however, the disparity clearly runs the other way. While Eastern mysticism has its fair share of unjustified belief, it undoubtedly represents humankind's best attempt at fashioning a spiritual science. The methods of introspection one finds in Buddhism, for instance, have no genuine equivalents in the West. And the suggestion that they do is born of a desperate attempt on the part of Westerners to make all religious traditions seem equally wise. They simply aren't. When a Tibetan lama talks about "nondual awareness" (Tib. rigpa) and the Pope talks about God or the Holy Spirit (or anything else), they are not talking about the same thing; nor are they operating on the same intellectual footing. The lama is using some very precise terminology (albeit terminology that has no good English equivalent) to describe what countless meditators have experienced after very refined training in methods of introspection; while the Pope is merely reiterating unjustified and unjustifiable metaphysical claims that have been passed down to Christians in the context of a culture that has failed--utterly--to find compelling alternatives to mere belief. Such alternatives have existed for millennia, east of the Bosporus. This is not to ignore the Meister Eckharts of the world, but such mystics have always been the exception in the West. And it is important to remember that, being exceptions, they have been regularly persecuted for heresy. --- End forwarded message --- ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
