The Little Purple Notebook On How To Escape From This Universe
Copyleft � 1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.
Subscription Information: Maria Loren
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Website:
http://transmillennium.net/pnohteftu/
East Meets West, Between And Beyond
A prevailing prejudice in Western circles about 'Buddhism' finds its
expression in the generality that Buddhism would be an 'Eastern Religion'.
The proponents of such a viewpoint usually imply that a 'Westerner' would
not be able to successfully 'practice' such a 'religion'.
Now, for the purposes of awakening from the dream(s) of life, it does not
matter whatsoever which way exactly this awakening is coming about - all
what matters is _that_ it actually happens.
It seems superfluos to add that it is even _less_ important _how_ this
happening or way is _called_.
Nevertheless, a few thoughts about 'Eastern' and 'Western' paradigms can be
helpful in sorting out the territory of the mind and can provide some
important structural clues.
Ironically, Gotamo Siddharto, the 'Buddha', was a member of a 'noble'
family, and, within the emerging system of casts in his time, he normally
would have become a 'Brahman' priest if he would not have gone a truly
'revolutionary' path.
Accordingly, he called himself an 'Ariyan' (Pali: ariyaa), he called his
teachings 'dhammaa ariyaa' (lit. the 'Ariyan Thing' ), and his basic
propositions are the 'Four Ariyan Truths', commonly translated as the 'Four
Noble Truths'.
Before Hitler and the Ku-Klux-Klan, the word 'Ar-yan' usually described the
tribes that are theorized to have descended from the Caucasus in ancient
times and spread out over Northern Indian, pushing the native Dravidians
towards the South. Whether this theory is true or not, Gotamo Siddharto was
indoubtely a Caucasian since the Dravidians were Caucasians, too.
Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary offers the following:
"Ar-yan, Arian (Sans. ar-ya, lord, master, aarya, a tribal name, akin to
OPer. ariya, a tribal name)..." and then adds the fine print: "Ar-yan has
no validity as a racial term, although it has been so used, notoriously by
the Nazis to mean 'a Caucasian of non-Jewish descent," etc. The use of the
word in connection with race is due to the idea, regarded by most
ethnologists as false, that peoples who spoke the same or related languages
must have had a common racial origin. Misuse of Ar-yan has led to its
replacement in scientific discussions by "Indo-European'..."
In Gotamo's times, the use of the language Sanskrit was restricted
exclusively to Brahman families and his use of the local dialect 'Pali' was
an expression of his view that 'awakening' is utterly independent of any
racial or cultural aspects.
Again, no matter how words and names are twisted to fit them into the
political correctness of whatever direction, Gotamo Siddharto was beyond
any doubt a Caucasian who claimed that race, gender, age, and language are
of no relevance whatsoever in the successful pursuit of individual
liberation.
Now, if one looks towards the East, the Chinese history of philosophy
offers the extremes of the teachings of Confuzius and Lao Tze - the
extremes of total rationalism and total intuition.
In short, the entire 'Eastern/Western' pseudo paradigm falls apart wherever
one cares and dares to look more closely.
Gotamo himself posited that _both_ ways, pure rationalism and pure
intuition, can lead to awakening with the restriction that only pure
rationalism can be gone by
_everyone_ and that 'pure intuition' depended on individual properties
that, when not present, may not yield success.
In the end, at or near total liberation of the Being, both ways merge,
however, and in praxis, a combination of both ways, another aspect of
Gotamo's 'Middle Path', seems to be the most promising approach.
'Religion' comes from Latin re-ligere, lit. 'leaning back'. In this sense
it means 'finding one's own origin' or 'coming back to one's wholeness'.
The word 'religion' is sparingly used in this book because it has been
equated with God-centered
approaches that are solidly based on tight and usually suppressive social
constructs called 'Churches'.
Likewise, the word 'meditation' is rarely used in this 'Little Purple
Notebook' (except here of course). The reasoning for this is that the word
'meditation' is being used to denote about _everything_ that is different
from daily routine and has thus become a meaningless tautology, a word that
can mean anything or nothing at all.
Using the phrase 'I was meditating' doesn't express _what_ one was _doing_.
It is like answering to the question of 'what did you today?' by saying 'I
was living the entire day!'.
Mingled into the East/West pseudo paradigm is yet another very important
and easily undervalued or unrecognized aspect: the dichotomy of
goal-orientated and process-orientated approaches.
The goal-oriented approach expects immediate and unmistakable results. It
is an either-or, yes/no approach that does not accept gradual results over
time.
So-called 'Eastern Wisdom' appears to prefer the process-oriented way of
making small changes to steer a process into the wanted direction.
A good example has been given by Buckminster Fuller: a ship may weigh
hundreds or thousands of tons. When it is moving in water, the inertia of
such a ship would require equal or larger amounts of force to change its
direction using the goal-oriented approach. A human would be crushed in the
slightest attempt of trying to change its course with raw force.
However, as Bucky explains in his 'trimtab paradigm', a minor change of
the trimming of the rudder of such a (moving!) ship will ultimately change
the course of the entire ship, as large and heavy as it may be.
In this approach, characterics of the process itself are used to change
something _over time_. Such an approach requires obviously patience,
foresight, and knowledge of the process itself.
While the goal-oriented approach easily leads to 'just fixing symptoms',
the process-orientation looks at the underlying conditions for the
existence of a phenomenon and, by changing those conditions, changes the
outcome of the entire process in the future.
While Gotamo's overall approach was clearly process-oriented (cp. the
chapter 'Arising Dependent on Conditions' vs 'Cause & Effect'), this
doesn't mean that goal-oriented approaches could not be employed in any of
the series of processes leading to liberation.
Here again, a 'wise' combination of both, a 'Middle Path', can be the most
effective means.
What counts in the end, however, is not the exact route that was taken, but
that it was taken at all. It means that one 'has gone the way' (Pali:
'Tathagato').
Which was the reason that the man who is now called the 'Buddha' refused
to be called any names whatsoever except 'Tathagato- having gone that
way'.
In short, let's not get fixated on names, descriptions, or verbal
explanations!
Let's not crash into the road signs, but just simply drive home!
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Copyleft � 1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.
