On Mar 7, 2006, at 7:42 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:
Not to mention judgmental, superior and, as I think Jim
described so well, with a high degree of jerk-ness. I
might add 'being a bigoted asshole,' but that's just me. :-)
Well hopefully you'd have the common sense to read some of his teachings before jumping to hasty generalizations.
Uh...did you *miss* the following section, Vaj?
"Why? Because most Westerners are asuras at heart. All the
celestials, including the asuras, have to go somewhere when they fall
down to earth. Many of the asuras--who are very fond of indulging
themselves with meat, alcohol and sex, remember--have been born in
the West, where they continue to indulge themselves. Occasionally one
of them wakes up, a little; but because asuras are egotistical they
conclude, as soon as they learn a little, that they know everything.
Almost as soon as they learn how to meditate they start calling
themselves gurus. But what do they really know of Indian wisdom?
Nothing! They are still just probing our spirituality now. They will
be learning spiritual things from us for the next 500 years. Even the
dog of one of our Rishis could teach them for one hundred years and
still have more to teach. Westerners are so far behind us in
spirituality that to shine out among them is nothing."
Note the careful use of the word "most" in the first sentence.
Note also that the entire *section* is about Westerners as
a whole. Only *after* this section does he turn from trashing
Westerners to trashing his fellow Swamis.
No I didn't miss it, but I tempered that with having somewhat of a broader understanding of Vimalananda than just these couple of sentences. I also noticed he said "asuras at heart"--in other words, it's an overall tendency in our society and not necessarily implying ALL westerners ARE asuras per se. It's helpful I guess to understand what type of teacher Vimalananda is and also what the range of teachers can be.
The most interesting thing to me about all this is how people react to someone who is different than their image of what a guru should be.
