I Found This Interesting...

[Evilwave Heddy]

I was reading "Flow" there and the author (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) makes a good point about how meditation and the techniques used to reach full consciousness would have been more effective back then because of the cultural context and stuff...which kind of explains why the Zen temples off in Japan and other places exist.

By the way, Mihaly is explaining why people ain't more conscious today as say in the Aristotle days etc.

 

Quote

Second, the knowledge of how to control consciousness must be reformulated every time the cultural context changes.  The wisdom of the mystics, of the Sufi, of the great yogis, or of the Zen masters might have been excellent in their own time - and might still be the best, if we lived in those times and in those cultures.  But when transplanted to contemporary California those systems lose quite a bit of their original contexts, and when these accidental components are not distinguished from what is essential, the path to freedom gets overgrown by brambles of meaningless mumbo jumbo.  Ritual form wins over substance, and the seeker is back where he started.

 

Edited January 30, 2017 by Evilwave Heddy

[Leo Gura]

Of course nondual teachings need to be tailored to the culture and the time in order to be most effective. Which is what created all the religious diversity in the first place.

But the key reason people can't pick up Zen, even in California, is because American culture is so materialistic, juvenile, toxic, and corrupt, that it's basically turned into idiocracy. And now our job is to teach Zen to materialistic frat-boys. Good luck to us.

[mostly harmless]

On 30. Januar 2017 at 10:01 PM, Leo Gura said:

Of course nondual teachings need to be tailored to the culture and the time in order to be most effective. Which is what created all the religious diversity in the first place.

But the key reason people can't pick up Zen, even in California, is because American culture is so materialistic, juvenile, toxic, and corrupt, that it's basically turned into idiocracy. And now our job is to teach Zen to materialistic frat-boys. Good luck to us.

There are a few fun moments related to this point of yours in Eckhart Tolle & Oprah's New Earth video series (it's on youtube).

[PureExp]

@Leo Gura you are absolutely right, but let me report from the east - well.... its exactly the same situation here.

Materialism is rampant, simply because people know nothing better, it appeals to the ego, and since a majority operate from the ego level, that's what you see everywhere. The so called "spirituality" was turned into materialism in east long ago. People go to a guru to ask for advice on which job to take, which business to do and women go there to learn some magical tricks to find a good husband

Religions are just money making schemes, its not surprising that the biggest festival here, Diwali, is primarily about worship of goddess Laxmi, the goddess of wealth !! And it is celebrated via, you guessed it - shopping like mad, consuming more, eating more and just showing off...

A guru offers them an ocean, and they approach him with a spoon, not even a bowl, not a bucket certainly. I was myself like this (well what else did you expect?), I approached spirituality to gain stuff, gain "powers", but fortunately I was set straight and very quickly jumped out of the pit of "spiritual materialism". The pain of it is too much.

[Guivs]

I was just listening to this the other day and thought it would be a great add to Leo's post (about Zen and the way many materialists like us see it)

"If we are to save ourselves from spiritual materialism and from buddha-dharma with credentials, if we are to become the dharma without credentials, the introduction of boredom and repetitiousness is extremely important. Without it, we have no hope. It is true — no hope.
There are definite styles of boredom. The Zen tradition in Japan creates a definite style of boredom in its monasteries. Sit, cook, eat. Sit zazen and do your walking meditation and so on. But to an American novice who goes to Japan or take part in tradtional Japanese practice in this country, the message of boredom is not communicated properly. Instead, if I may say so, it turns into a militant appreciation of rigidity, or an aesthetic appreciation of simplicity, rather than actually being bored, which is strange. Actually it was not designed to be that way. To the Japanese, Zen practice is an ordinary Japanese life-situation in which you just do your daily work and sit a lot of zazen. But Americans appreciate the little details — how you use your bowl and how you eat consciously in zazen posture. This is only supposed to create a feeling of boredom, but to American students it is a work of art. Cleaning your bowl, washing it out, folding your white napkin and so forth, becomes living theater. The black cushion is supposed to suggest no color, complete boredom. But for Americans it inspires a mentality of militant blackness, straightforwardness .

The tradition is trying to bring out boredom, which is a necessary aspect of the narrow path of discipline, but instead the practice turns out to be an archeological, sociological survey of interesting things to do, something you could tell your friends about: “Last year I spent the whole fal sitting in a Zen monastery for six months. I watched autumn turn into winter and I did my zazen practice and everything was so precise and beautiful. I learned how to sit and I even learned how to walk and eat. It was a wonderful experience and I did not get bored at all.” You tell your friends, “Go, it’s great fun,” and you collect another credential. The attempt to destroy credentials creates another credential. 
The first point in destroying ego’s game is the strict discipline of sitting meditation practice. No intellectual speculation, no philosophizing. Just sit and do it. That is the first strategy in developing buddha-dharma without credentials." (The Myth of Freedom, CTR)

 

[Nahm]

On 1/30/2017 at 10:44 AM, Evilwave Heddy said:

I was reading "Flow" there and the author (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) makes a good point about how meditation and the techniques used to reach full consciousness would have been more effective back then because of the cultural context and stuff...which kind of explains why the Zen temples off in Japan and other places exist.

By the way, Mihaly is explaining why people ain't more conscious today as say in the Aristotle days etc.

 

 

Mastering anything couples well with deeper meditation as both become "flow" or what athletes call 'in the zone'. I suggest learning guitar or piano and singing. When you play and sing, you flow. You experience doing it without 'doing' anything.