Hating on Ken Wilbur and all those Know-it-all Buddhist Yoga Rationalist types

You could possibly influence the fellow ‘all the new agers seem to love’ - thus influencing all the new agers. Who knows, maybe you can find the right wedge and hammer to place a crack in the ego of a well known thinker.

Maybe all his previous ideas were the popular precursors to his next step, a world shaker of a book - and he’s just waiting for someone to give him a gentle prodding.

Maybe. Also, why hate in private? LET HIM KNOW.

I find it too difficult to make useful generalizations about different religions.
I manage to successfully combine Christian Gnosticism, Asatru and Taoism; Fukuoka-san combined Buddhism and Shinto.

I’ve also found that it’s important to be careful about religion/philosophy in relation to history. Many, many things have been done for the “sake of religion”, some good, some bad, but often for reasons other than the “sake of religion”.

Couldn’t agree with you more, jhereg.

I guess this just doesn’t interest me terribly much, ‘influencing’ Ken Wilbur. I don’t mind him espousing what he wants to espouse…I just also want to make sure people have access to other messages, or to insights into the possible cracks of his message. I don’t expect any special relationship with Ken Wilbur the person, but Ken Wilbur the philosopher has a lot of impact, that I’d like to offer alternatives to.

Who knows, maybe you can find the right wedge and hammer to place a crack in the ego of a well known thinker.

He needs to pay me for that kind of work. :slight_smile:

Maybe all his previous ideas were the popular precursors to his next step, a world shaker of a book - and he's just waiting for someone to give him a gentle prodding.

I’d rather we write that book. :slight_smile:

Maybe. Also, why hate in private? LET HIM KNOW.

Why hate in private? I call it venting. I reserve the right to vent. :slight_smile: Also, as I’ve said, the ‘hate’ remains more of a tongue-in-cheek use of the word. Real hate towards Wilbur would display a particularly pointless use of my capacity to direct anger.

If you’d like to engage Ken in conversation, I definitely support you.

[quote=“jhereg”]I find it too difficult to make useful generalizations about different religions.
I manage to successfully combine Christian Gnosticism, Asatru and Taoism; Fukuoka-san combined Buddhism and Shinto.[/quote]

I don’t know what you mean to comment on here…do you think I made non-useful generalizations in some of my comments? Did someone else?

Fair enough.

I have this romanticized image of the eccentric thinker, inspired and ecstatic, with a bottomless cup of coffee, a quill, and a stack of parchment, making many waves of many stinks throughout a community of contemporary philosphers - creating an interlacing of ripples from a handful of carefully chosen and polished pebblethoughts thrown in the pond of a burgeoning rennassaince - somewhat like how I would picture Voltaire, who in his lifetime produced a correspondence numbering somewhere in the vicinity of 21,000 letters.

I have no desire to write Ken Wilber either. Mayhaps I lack the conviction needed to step up to that ‘lofty’ plate, although I’d chalk it up to my current level of comprehension skills more than anything - still learning how to learn and not willing to waste time on things that do not magnetize or plop down in the sphere of my small small world.

I’d rather look at one of those marvellous Buddhist wood carvings or malevolent-spirit-frightening temple adornments for a few minutes than listen to him speak for an hour. Maybe someday I’ll feel comfortable pursuing such an ambitious correspondence campaign. For now I’d like to throw it out there, as a possibility, a potential method for amplifying the voice of those supporting the rewildering process.

Something I keep in the back of my mind. Letter writing. What a gas! Vent with a MEGAPHONE! ;D (fools recquire foolish grins)

I'd rather we write that book. :)

Aw, shucks. A book!?

Ooooh. One interesting aside. I noticed someone mentioned Zen. I don’t know much about it, but I do remember reading a story about how in the days of old Zen masters always tried to leave the world with a final shock (they liked shocks. they hit their students on the head with their staffs when they didn’t think enough attention was paid)

imagine you’re sitting down, participating in the sacred tea ceremony with an elderly zany zen master, and he stands up, says “fellows, sorry… time to go.” executes a flawless backflip and dies in midair.

Just some thoughts.

I’ve noticed a strange thing about myself, that I don’t actually like to change people’s minds. I get a disappointed feeling when someone says, out of the blue (at least to me!), “alright, you’ve convinced me! I’ll [read Ishmael, eat paleo, unschool my kids, etc., etc.].” It can really shock me.

I actually like other people in the world to have strong opinions different to my own. I can’t explain why. I just do. I don’t mean this as some virtuous thing. I just like it. And I like to get annoyed at them too. And I don’t even come from Italian stock. My ancestors come from Denmark! Explain that!

I especially like to feel my own perspectives really strongly and passionately.

I guess more than anything, as a writer and a member of a rewilding renaissance, I want to provide support for people who can’t articulate how they feel, but need help feeling good about it. I want to help them articulate it so they can “defend” it. So they can stand up for their instincts. So they can feel sane!

The Ken Wilburs and such of the world fall way down at the bottom of my list, of people who I want to support. I give my care and concern away for free to the rewilder-at-heart, who just needs a little help understanding their predicament and inspiration. I’d seriously charge Ken Wilbur a hefty sum for the same service if he cared enough to pay it.

As time goes on, I see the renaissance happening on smaller and smaller, more and more local levels. At some point I may not leave my neighborhood, I may not leave my living room, anymore. Metaphorically speaking.

I took up Tonyz’s recommendation and checked “Zen and the Brain” out from the library today. If I hadn’t made it clear, I’ve always had a lot of curiousity about Zen (since my teenage years) and read up on it a lot. My stance on Zen certainly doesn’t come from a distaste for the practice…quite the opposite. Any meditative practice that puts one in the “now” I value a lot. I also value informed consent…one should have the opportunity to know the backstory…

Today I also visited a good friend of mine who carves Kwan Yin’s out of 6’ tall cedar stumps. He does an amazing job. Beautiful! We talk about mythic cartography sometimes. I really like Kwan Yin, because (from what I’ve heard and read) she represents a folk upwelling of the Earth Mother, from outside the confines of the buddhist priesthood, and essentially (like the church absorbing the solstice holiday) the buddhist religion had to absorb her and canonize her to retain control over the little Earth Goddess revolution happening in their backyard. I like it when that kind of thing happens. :slight_smile:

[quote=“Willem, post:18, topic:115”][quote author=jhereg]I find it too difficult to make useful generalizations about different religions.
I manage to successfully combine Christian Gnosticism, Asatru and Taoism; Fukuoka-san combined Buddhism and Shinto.[/quote]

I don’t know what you mean to comment on here…do you think I made non-useful generalizations in some of my comments? Did someone else?[/quote]

Eh, I guess I understand better now that it was just a vent. :slight_smile:

When I first read it, the ‘buddhism’ aspect seemed to be more of a target, but looking back over it (w/ your additional comments) I see that it’s less a generalization about a specific religion than it is a specific annoyance with a general approach to religion/philosophy.

I don’t want to focus any energy on hating. Who or what life does this belong to again anyway?

I don’t know who Ken Wilbur is but I’ll hate with you Willem. I’ve got no problem with a little genuine hatred now and then. Before anyone argues with me know this: I fell in love with a devout Buddhist once, a personal assistant (I’d say slave) to a well-known guru. He loved me too. But it was like having an affair with a married man and a self-righteous one at that. The guru and enlightenment always came first. Everything was turned all topsy-turvy. If I was hurt by his actions, there was nothing for him to be sorry about, for my pain and suffering were good and natural. Frustrating to say the least.

Penny,

I’ll third your hate. I used to have a haters club every week at a local bar. I called myself “Haters Club Captain” and invited anyone and everyone I didn’t hate to come and hate with me. It was a blast. One time my friend hated on me for not hating enough. Haha.

From an asshole abuser to a crazy Buddhist… Sounds like slim pick’ns in Pennsylvania. I hope Nick is the cream of the crop. :wink:

The others weren’t from here. One was from Long Island and the other DC area. Nick’s great. I told him to get off the the forum though because it would ruin it for me! Haha. It’s not his fault. I’m just too self-conscious.

Thank you all for your supportive hating. It gives me hope for this mixed-up world.

Hey all,

I’m going to post this article about The Secret here because it is related to what Willem was writing about in his first blog post titled: The Village Philosopher, the New Ager, and the Rationalist.

http://carolynbaker.org/archives/the-secret-creating-a-culture-of-cheerfulness-as-rome-burns-by-carolyn-baker

Take care,

Curt

A great Comedian once said “You need haters. I need Haters. Everyone needs haters. The more haters you got means the more shit you are doing right. You got five haters? that’s not enough. You need fifty haters, minimum, before you can say you are the shit”.

Now back to your regularly scheduled hating…

oh yeah, The Secret blows too. I’ll gladly hate on Oprah.

Does that mean a hater needs haters too?

Yes, let’s all hate hate, hate haters, and hate hater-hating haters…

“Gooooood, heh heh heh, gooooood…I FEEL the HATE swelling within you…that’s right…take your [rabbit stick]…STRIKE me DOWN with it…and your journey to the [rewilding] side will be COMPLETE…”

love,
Palpatine

(photo taken at Saturday’s SHIFT)

To Willem.

I have always had a problem with the forms of spirituality or religions that uphold the principle that existance is a illusion that must be conquered through the mind.

Such a ideal automatically in my mind seems to be conceived by a highly authoritarian civilized being who has found a way to prey upon people’s beliefs or values by utilizing such a belief.

If all of existance is an illusion only to be conquered in the mind the slave finds a delusion to keep himself asleep peacefully at night ready to work for his masters in the morning. To me such beliefs are a extension of civilization itself.

I’m not sure if you’re referring to Buddhism when you say you have “a problem with the forms of spirituality or religions that uphold the principle that existance is a illusion”. But, having run across the misconception that Buddhism actually holds this view quite a bit recently, I’d like to address it.

I completely agree that this idea would be problematic, but I don’t think that it is an accurate representation of what Buddhist thought actually is proposing. It is a cursory reacton to a surface-level and simplistic reading (or, perhaps, rumor) of what Shakyamuni Buddha was actually noticing about the nature of the fabric of reality.

Buddhism does NOT hold that all is illusion at all:

“With all this talk of . . . the illusory nature of phenomenon we might conclude that ourselves, others, the world, and enlightenment are totally nonexistent. Such a conclusion is nihilistic and too extreme. Phenomenon do exist. It is their apparently concrete and indipendent manner of existence that is mistaken and must be rejected” (Intro to Tantra, Lama Yeshe).

The Buddha did not point out that all phenomenon were empty of existence, rather, he pointed out that they are empty of any inherent SELF-existence.

I believe this misconception that Buddhism holds all to be illusion stems quite naturally from the Buddhist notion that everything is inherently empty. However, emptiness and illusion are very different things.

Illusions, projections, delusions, cravings, aversions, concepts, and self-grasping all stem from the ego’s frantic need to find some kind of stability amidst the deeper intuitive knowledge it has that EVERYTHING is inherently connected to everything else in a huge web, the basis of which is emptiness, and therefore nothing has any inherent self-existence. The basis of ego is the frantic denial of this underlying interconnectedness. Buddhism is the path of understanding how ego coopts mind to distort the fundamental interconnectedness of all reality.

“Even though it is sometimes said that something is non-sexistent because it is like an illusion, a dream, or a reflection in a mirror, this is not philosophically correct. It is speaking loosely to say, ‘This phenomenon does not exist because it is an illusion. It is just one of my projections.’ In fact, the reverse is true. The phenomenon exists precicely because it exists as an illusion, which is inter-dependent. A reflection in a mirror is also interdependent; it exists because of the mirror.”

In other words, all phenomenon that arise, arise dependently from the field from which they arise, they don’t exist in and of themselves. So, the only illusion is that things actually exist as their own entities in the sense of being their own, self-originated energy.

We usually equate existence with indipendence - something exists only insofar as it is distinguishable from other things. This is true on a relative, gross-level plane.

To say that something exists simply means that it functions on a relative level. But when we look at the deepest components of the fabric of reality, down to the quantum level, there is no actual demarcation between any thing and anything else. All IS one. But nonduality does not mean nonexistence.

The tension between the relative and the absolute is the mysterious, creative field from which all phenomenon arise.

Seems that buddha and christ teach essentially from an anti-civ view - but ‘buddhism’ and ‘christianity’ serve to reinforce and strengthen civilization.
so they suck.