[Ron]
I was thinking that metaphysics was sort of the same thing to the
intellectual level, it gives you a high like dynamic quality but it
leaves you with a hangover.It's not it and quickly becomes static and corrupt.
[Arlo]
Right on, Ron. Too many people have a problem mistaking the forest
for the trees. We crave junk-food (exotericism) when a diet of
healthy food (esotericism) is much better for us.
"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
From the "Daily Buddhism" website.
"The road is generally taken to mean the path to Enlightenment; that
might be through meditation, study, prayer, or just some aspect of
your way of life. Your life is your "road." That's fairly
straightforward as far as metaphors go.
But how do you meet the Buddha on this "road?" Imagine meeting some
symbolic Buddha. Would he be a great teacher that you might actually
meet and follow in the real world? Could that Buddha be you
yourself, having reached Enlightenment? Or maybe you have some
idealized image of perfection that equates to your concept of the
Buddha or Enlightenment.
Whatever your conception is of the Buddha, it's WRONG! Now kill that
image and keep practicing. This all has to do with the idea that
reality is an impermanent illusion. If you believe that you have a
correct image of what it means to be Enlightened, then you need to
throw out (kill) that image and keep meditating.
Most people have heard the first chapter of the Tao, "The Tao that
can be named is not the eternal Tao." (So if you think you see the
real Tao, kill it and move on)."
This is why, historically, people have always had to invent new
symbols, new fingers, new pointers, new art, because the
signs/symbols/pointers/fingers/art become stale, they become
cemented, reified and no longer serve us as pointers but as
destinations. Metaphors become taken as "literal". We forget that
"all this is just an analogy" and demand it to be "literal fact".
When we meet the Buddha on the road, we beg for her to make us her
acolytes and priests and followers.
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
