Refashioning the Discourse about Development

"Myth Busting & Metric Making: Refashioning the Discourse about Development in the Integral Community" is a new post at kenwilber.com by Zachary Stein with many excellent observations. Quote:

If we look at college-educated adults, the first level is abstract mappings on our metric (roughly Orange in Wilber's colors). At this level, developmental levels are treated like simple stereotypes. Whole persons are classed as being at a level, which is typically understood in terms of a single developmental model (e.g. Spiral Dynamics). Development is understood as a kind of simple "growth to goodness", with ignorance at the bottom, science in the middle, and spirituality at the top. Particular levels gain more attention than others and function as more or less entrenched stereotypes, expressing preferences that are not necessarily developmental (e.g. "you are so green").

The next level is abstract systems (roughly Green in Wilber's colors). At this level, reasoning about levels involves giving some primacy to the construct of altitude, which frames and organizes a variety of developmental models. Persons are understood in terms of their relative development in various lines, which are identified with different developmental models and theorists. The concept of a center of gravity supplements this differentiated view and justifies whole person assessments. The relation between levels and other aspects of Integral Theory becomes explicit; the relation between states and levels complicates the simple notion that spirituality is "at the top." Generally, there are elaborate ideas about how developmental levels are implicated in all kinds of issues (politics, religion, ecology, etc.).

Then there is reasoning at single principles (roughly Teal in Wilber's colors). At this level, reasoning about levels involves explicit ideas about the limits and affordances of different developmental methods and models, which are framed in terms of arguments about the conditions enabling their valid use (i.e. scoring systems, interview procedures, etc.). The idea of "growth to goodness" is problematized both by concerns over issues of horizontal health and intra-personal variability, and by concerns about the accuracy of different assessment methods. These complexities of method and application temper and complicate speculation on how developmental levels are implicated in a broad range of global problems.

The top of what we can accurately measure is principled mappings (roughly Turquoise in Wilber's colors). At this level, reasoning about levels involves the adoption of a post-metaphysical stance toward the task of evaluating people. The provisional, bounded, and multi-perspectival nature of all models and methods is admitted, and a set of meta-theoretical principles guides a recursive process of continually refining developmental models and methods in terms of both theory and practice. A broad and explicit philosophical discourse comes to supplement evaluative discussions concerning the notion of "growth to goodness," as the human potentials that characterize the highest levels and the future of civilization are seen as collective constructions for which we are responsible.

Now, the way I see development (i.e. Fischer's Neo-Piagetian perspective) suggests that we roam up and down these levels all the time, depending on context and support, etc. No one is at a level; we inhabit levels only for certain periods of time and in certain company. Moreover, you may be more developed in your reasoning about the quadrants than you are in your reasoning about levels, or more developed in you reasoning about important interpersonal issues then you are in your reasoning about Integral Theory (again, see Stein and Hiekkinen, 2008 in JITP). Generally, where you are is not my concern (in part because you are all over the place).

And another one:

The myth of the given has been named and is already generally disparaged. The other myth remains nameless but plagues our efforts. The myth of the metals is introduced here as the second myth requiring critical attention. Importantly, if we choose to jettison both myths we must refashion the practice of developmental assessment and the discourse surrounding it. The first myth raises epistemological issues and its critique should lead us to pay more attention to how our developmental metrics are made. The second raises social, ethical, and political issues and its critique should lead us to pay more attention to how our developmental metrics are used.

Read the whole thing.

The article at kw.com also links to "Myth Busting and Metric Making" at the Integral Leadership Review, another fine article by Zachary Stein.

Transformative power of development: Feedback 1/3

This is an unusually long post... If you're a regular reader here, then you know I appreciate Julian Walker's engagement in formulating a sober 21st century spirituality, which is realistic and inspiring, inquiry-based and psychologically astute. Julian Walker and I write with a different purpose, on a different continent, coming from diverse backgrounds, immersing our minds into distinct arenas of individual and cultural transformation, and having disparate feelings on zaadz/gaia.com, yet we share an interest in genuine integral and post-metaphysical spirituality, and often we see eye to eye on important issues.

Here follow some of my thoughts on Julian's recent article "The Transformative Power of Development: A Three-Part Distinction", which you can read at his blog, followed by the ensuing discussion (Julian is great with initiating discussions, and you get pulled in before you know what happened). I will quote the whole text, then emphasize in italic the passages I find significant, and then critically reflect on their implications, which will not exhaust or perhaps even remain faithful to their intended meaning. This is a response based on reading the article at the level of its language. Julian may have used "reason" and "rationality" as a designation-only for a general critique of widespread nonsense in popular "spiritual" discourse, but I don't accept such abstraction as conducive to solution, so I'll simply reply to the obvious. Julian's article is divided in three sections: Growth, Interior depth, and Telling the difference. So, Growth first.

Something happens. It happens to all humans. We grow. Our minds literally become more adequate to reality. Each step forward in development is both a deepening and a clarifying of our relationship to both inner and outer reality. Cause and effect becomes clear. The inner and outer worlds get better differentiated. As such, many perceptions - in fact an entire worldview, get left behind, negated, transcended - call it what you will - the way we formulate, interpret and interact with reality completely transforms.

So far, so good. Though, everything I left unitalicized belongs, in my opinion, to the „horizontal“ enlightenment, that is spiritual awakening in strict sense. But let's move on.

This is good. Growth is good. Its what happens.

Growth in itself is, as confirmed in the third sentence, something that simply happens, so saying it's "good" is unnecessary and tenuous at best. Growth can go wrong, which doesn't make it bad either. There's potential, of course, which when unfulfilled tends to cause problems. But growth, unlike change, is not a constant. And, in humans especially, not all growth is a given. Therefore, not all growth "happens", including both growth in wordlviews and spiritual growth.

Its why we know that: There is no Santa Claus. Your mom can't see through walls. Jesus was not born of a virgin. There is not an evil spirit under your bed. Grandma didn't die because you wished she would in a moment of petulant frustration.

"We know that" refers to a specific "we", and a specific "knowing". What is mirrored in following statements is a rational perspective on relative truth, specifically applied to dismiss magical and mythical relative truths, by which such rational gets passively defined. But, beyond rational, a different "we" would insist on formulating the developmental dynamics of facts, not just of knowledge, and so the postrational perspective on relative truth will specify the altitude at which pronouncements are made, and make clear whether that altitude is enacted and voiced a priori or a posteriori, whether as an adequate stage-level-station of discourse and meaning making or a caricature of a regressive slide.

Otherwise, to someone saying "There is no Santa Claus", we could reply in the same vein, "What are you talking about? What Santa Claus?" That is, the object of negation cannot be totally nonexistent. It must exist in some way in order for the refutation of its existence to make any sense at all. Therefore, we must be careful to define the existence we are refuting, and the resulting existence we are establishing. And the way to do that is in developmental terms, allowing a sequence of qualified existences.

The shift from prerational to rational is an absolute revolution. New software comes on-line. Cause and effect becomes apparent and the place-holder of magical causation becomes less plausible. The narcissism of placing oneself at the center of the universe and reading personal magical significance into random events and special communication from god to your tribe gets relinquished.

The shift from prerational to rational was a revolution 300 years ago. Now it's just a transition, part of conventional, and kids today don't get much excited about it, mostly because its unrealistic promise, typical for every revolution, has worn off. In real life circumstances, those of enmeshed philo- and ontogenetic unfoldment, worldviews and paradigms tend to establish themselves and persist in dual structures (one leg in the previous structure, one in the next, which allows some vertical flexibility, and provides for creative inner tension), so that we often have magico-mythic, mytho-rationalist, and rational-relativist positions. But yes, the shift from any level to any new level is a huge move, unexplainable only in terms of anything previously existing. However, it's not and has never been an "absolute revolution". Rational (universalist) remains blind to all things that lay ahead of it, and applies to the magico-mythic (absolutist) components the same narrow judgement, only from a relatively more elevated vantage point. While the absolutist claims, "You are wrong, and you're going to hell for it", the universalist retorts "Actually, you're wrong on both counts." The obsession with proving others wrong remains strong in the rational view, and only begins to be recognized, albeit in confused or partial manner without any effective remedy, by the relativist. So, in an important way, placing oneself at the center of the universe is really done by the rationalist for the first time - at magical and mythical structures, the self is not completely separate from the universe and the meaning of it to be placing itself anywhere; it is being placed in the continuum of meaning as a node, not at the center as a regressed narcisistic ego. Specifically, while I'm aware that this isn't a treatise on complex developmental patterns, nonetheless I'm convinced that transitional structures known as magical and mythical, as well as historical phases - at different times in different places - when these were adequate stations of life and vantage points for individual and social meaning making, should be given due respect and distinguished from sordid regressions, whether partial or wholesale, after higher structures have been established, as well as from troublesome fixations which amount to mere developmental pathology. I believe this has been done insufficiently, so that these distinctions are often collapsed, resulting in refutations of something that is a necessary precedent. This, then, is similar to what some extreme relativists have been doing with those structures that preceed the advent of contemporary relativism, and are therefore to a significant degree a necessary precondition for it. At the same time, rational as an available structure and potential should be distinguished from rationalism in any of its calcified expressions and formulations, conditioned during the initial breaking-away from the mythic order by means of desacralization. For example, Wilber does this by speaking of the dignity and disaster of modernity, offering to heal the disaster while redeeming the dignity. He applies the same dual wisdom to premodernity and postmodernity. I believe we should replicate this general approach. In short, we should demonstrate the cruelty of magical and mythical realities in their socio-economic aspect, as well as their narrowness in their interpretation of human interior. But we should never confuse or even compare magical pockets in 21st century adults with actual primitive thinking. The later is much more benign, the previous much more destructive. Just as the magical worldview and its developmental equivalent transitional structures need not impress us as anti-rational, but instead be clarified as simply pre-rational, even so the various rational and relativist claims, oblivious as they are of their non-superior status in the unfolding of paradigms and eventually meta-paradigms, become clarified as pre-integral, and yet not anti-integral.

What's more the magic of the real becomes more available. Looking through the lens of the natural sciences, reality gets more deeply revealed in it's powerful, mysterious wonder!

"Magic of the real" is discovered through initial spiritual awakening, and structural shifts are insufficient to produce one. Furthermore, "looking through the lens of the natural sciences" warrants exactly nothing, without the I that is doing the looking being inclined to discover an intuited powerful, mysterious wonder. Never before have pictures of this immense universe and sights and sounds of this beautiful wilderness been available to everyone everywhere: yet never has the sense of mystery and awe been more absent on all levels of society. Looking through the lenses is not enough! Understanding who sees what is crucial. A non-reductionist interpretation of what is seen is certainly necessary to make sense of what is "discovered", by complementing it with what remains even more obviously hidden to those lenses, namely - the mysterious wonder itself! - that remains a primarily interior affair.

Using reason we begin to interact with the internal world and the love of truth - philosophy. Using our newly developed, beautiful ability to self-reflect, we begin to interact with that other aspect of inner life - psychological awareness. The moral dimension of our being deepens too as we begin to be able to have more empathy for others and see the reality of suffering and injustice through the less self-centered and tribally identified and now more humanistic and world-centric lenses.

Reason has been used in defense of the mythic truths for centuries prior to European enlightenment, and much before in Indian thought. Indeed, most philosophers worth their salt have practiced their philosophy to reconcile reason and that which, for whatever reason, defies reason. In doing so, they have jointly established an elevated vantage point that takes reason itself for an object of inquiry to discover both its virtues and limitations, known sometimes as vision-logic or mandalic reason. But the problem of a recurrent magical thinking and rampant narcissism awaits at the level beyond mere rationality, when the reconcilitation of reason and that which defies it is carried out in absence of depth, as if to make everything equal and thus cease all claims to superiority - the relativist revolution - which has already proven impossible, or at least intolerable. Rationality is insufficiently reflective of its own role in developmental dynamics, since complex developmental dynamics go quite beyond orderly natural laws.

From rational orange-altitude vantage point, magic and mythic are less moral, and more self-centered, yet also less self-aware (therefore less responsible). It is a dialectical fact that the most self-aware structure available in "1st tier" exclusivist range of structures, namely the green-altitude, relativist, pluralist etc. is also potentially the most narcissistic when it resonates with poorly integrated magic impulses, producing a spiritual culture where "ego" - itself a product of previous rationality - gets hated and loved simultaneously in widespread bewilderment and confusion. The semantic mess created in the last 50 years, a period of simultaneous expansion and collapse of horizons, won't allow any easy solutions, or straight answers to these issues.

Notice that in this whole thing no mention is made of how these structures of magical, mythical, rational, relativist and further tend to light up - or collapse sometimes - with stages of spiritual awakening. Also, Julian uses a simple scale of prerational, rational, and transrational, which these days is only useful for explaining the pre-trans fallacy. No use of relativist and existential comparative signifiers too add depth and granularity. No mention of rationality's inability to handle anything truly paradoxical or downright immediate. The second and third part of the text develop the initial argument to point toward a "transrational" integration, and yet arguing for strengthened rationality not just as a capacity, but as an enduring framework. So I'm not sure what to make of it.

I intend to continue this critical reflection with the remaining two parts of the article: Interior depth, and Telling the difference.

UPDATE:
Interior Depth: Feedback 2/3
Telling the difference: Feedback 3/3

Sex Crimes and the Vatican

Documentary from BBC's Panorama. Time 39 minutes.

A secret document which sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church is examined by Panorama. Crimen Sollicitationis was enforced for 20 years by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became the Pope. It instructs bishops on how to deal with allegations of child abuse against priests and has been seen by few outsiders. Critics say the document has been used to evade prosecution for sex crimes. It instructs them how to deal with priests who solicit sex from the confessional. It also deals with "any obscene external act ... with youths of either sex." It imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witnesses. Breaking that oath means excommunication from the Catholic Church. Reporting for Panorama, Colm O'Gorman finds seven priests with child abuse allegations made against them living in and around the Vatican City. One of the priests, Father Joseph Henn, has been indicted on 13 molestation charges brought by a grand jury in the United States. During filming for Sex Crimes and the Vatican, Colm finds Father Henn is fighting extradition orders from inside the headquarters of this religious order in the Vatican. The Vatican has not compelled him to return to America to face the charges against him. After filming, Father Henn lost his fight against extradition but fled the headquarters and is believed to be hiding in Italy while there is an international warrant for his arrest. Colm O'Gorman was raped by a Catholic priest in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford in Ireland when he was 14 years old. Father Fortune was charged with 66 counts of sexual, indecent assault and another serious sexual offence relating to eight boys but he committed suicide on the eve of his trial. Colm started an investigation with the BBC in March 2002 which led to the resignation of Dr Brendan Comiskey, the bishop leading the Ferns Diocese. Colm then pushed for a government inquiry which led to the Ferns Report. It was published in October 2005 and found: "A culture of secrecy and fear of scandal that led bishops to place the interests of the Catholic Church ahead of the safety of children."

(documents, transcript and more from BBC news)

Zen and the West

My friend Stuart Lachs has produced a series of articles, the most recent of which is entitled "Zen Master in America: Dressing the donkey with bells and scarves". This one follows in the line of inquiry from previous papers and articles by Lachs, all of which can be found below in .pdf format for download. The focus is not on practice, or the doctrinal basis, but on institution and its pervasive influence on both practice and view. I recommend these articles as fine examples of spiritual authenticity, forged in longterm practice, combined with intellectual honesty through critical inquiry. But first, an intro to the articles by the author himself -

"I have been a Zen practitioner for roughly forty years. Many years ago I became interested in viewing Zen from a scholarly point of view as a way to explain the great disparity I witnessed between how the Zen institution claimed its leaders behaved and what I saw first hand. I was driven to understand what was happening and why, not out of a dry, academic interest, but rather, by the confusion, trouble and suffering that I and others were experiencing.

By luck, in the early 1990's, I met an academically-minded monk connected with Chinese Buddhism. From him, I was introduced to an academic view of the history of Zen that strongly contrasted with the more familiar history promulgated by the Zen institution. Needless to say, it was an eye opener that led to many exciting hours of study up to this day. Later, through a friend, I became interested in the sociology of religion and of institutions.

Looking at Zen through both the lens of academic history and the lens of the sociology of religion and institutions, I hope to show how Zen developed over time, and how it responded to historical settings and necessities. I will show how the institution that has grown up around Zen functions - as do most institutions - to promote and protect itself, and how it empowers its leaders and enables that power to function.

I am attempting to make clear for myself and other Zen practitioners what is happening at Zen centers in America. I have found some conceptual tools that helped me analyze how these Zen centers operate. These tools were especially helpful in understanding how the conceptions of Dharma transmission and unbroken lineage and their supporting structures impact Zen students' lives at their Centers.

Critical thinking is Buddhist and Buddhism is critical thinking. By demanding tough answers and not being satisfied with easy ones, I hope to improve the situation of Zen in America which, since the mid- 1960's , has suffered from repeated scandals - scandals that hurt its practitioners, caused others to leave and marred its reputation for years to come.

Buddhism has a history of adaptability to many cultures. No doubt, it will adapt to the West. We have an opportunity, by understanding the institutions and history of Zen, to claim its true spirit and inherent freedom for our lives."

Links to articles in .pdf format:
Coming Down from the Zen Clouds (1994)
Means of Authorization (1999)
The Myth of the Zen Roshi (2002)
Zen Master in America (2006)

Under the radar?

... So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves "atheists." We should not call ourselves "secularists." We should not call ourselves "humanists," or "secular humanists," or "naturalists," or "skeptics," or "anti-theists," or "rationalists," or "freethinkers," or "brights." We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

Sam Harris, from a talk given at the Atheist Alliance conference in Washington D.C. on September 28th, 2007. Read the whole text here.

The Gospel of the Second Coming

What made you write a new gospel?

FREKE & GANDY: We felt that a lot of people were getting bored of the old ones. On top of which, the Gnostics taught that the way to show you had understood the gnosis was by writing your own gospel, so we thought we’d have a go. Luckily we managed to talk Jesus into reprising his starring role. That was a bit of an unexpected coup, because we had no idea he was such a big fan of our previous books. Once we’d got Jesus on board we knew we had a potential bestseller on our hands.

Read more about the book here.

Myth of Porn

"The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it. Other cultures know this. I am not advocating a return to the days of hiding female sexuality, but I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.” These cultures urge men not to look at porn because they know that a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family.

And feminists have misunderstood many of these prohibitions."

A bit of a generalization, as "traditional cultures" refers not only to behaviours, but also to value systems, and those can be all over the board from extremely narrow-minded to genuinely generous to all involved, often also depending on class or caste. But the basic implication is true enough. Certainly, they way back is not the way ahead. Pre-porn is not post-porn. Anyway, nice article by Naomi Wolf at the NY mag, link here.

History and Dharma (3)

I explained simply in the previous post how Buddhist rationality was of limited use, as was all rationality in that period everywhere (that also goes for Buddhist vision-logic, universal interpenetration concepts, tantric energetics, shingon semantics etc.). It is not a pseudo-rationality, but a limited one nevertheless: not in level, but in scope. (Level here refers to the developmental line of cogniton, while scope refers to life-spheres or simply quadrants - pics here and here - i.e. you never see premodern rationality applied to religious institutions or society or gender, or even cosmology.) Just as a reminder, rationality has seriously emerged at least in the time of the Buddha, when we see the first known grammar writen in India by Panini, and shortly after we have a mature linguistic theory. But something happened in Europe during 1700s, that changed this world forever, namely, the differentiation of the great spheres of subjecitvity, objectivity and mutuality. That differentiation marks the emergence of mature Reason on a wide scale, something that forever changed the way we understand ourselves, our world and each other.

Common to all premodern (not necessarily prerational) modes of discourse is the predifferentiation of self, culture and social environment. In short, 1st person experience was not differentiated from natural science and politics-morality. This differentiation, so typical for a collective shift from conop to formop, must take place in lower quadrants. Without it, a spiritual tradition can develop rationality forever and never become modern.

That is why KW has suggested three steps in Appendix 1 of Integral Spirituality: (1) recognize that matter has a spectrum of exterior complexity that runs parallel with the spectrum of interior complexity, i.e. matter is not just the first skandha (remember how awkward it is to put together your felt body and the whole physical universe, while not doing the same in other four skandhas? mahayana simply found all skandhas empty of inherent existence, while vajrayana never developer its own abhidharma and, consequently, never applied its view of the body or environment to reformulate this basic Buddhist doctrine, namely that matter is just the lowest level in the spectrum, thus leaving exteriority and interiority much in the same predifferentiated con-fusion; hence we have Pure Lands and Deva-chen still being taught as nice, flat places in "objective" space, somewhere out there, and well-intended educated postmoderns doing their best to wrap their green altitude thinking around it, or else we simply stop teaching and studying these conceptions); that move, naturally, liberates the natural sciences to pursue their own methodologies, and revolutionizes the cosmology and ontology of various states and experiences; incidentally, this is the modern dignity found in Western Enlightenment; (2) recognize that interiority is to a large extent culturally molded, so that many "given truths" are socio-cultural creations and not eternal, nor cosmic facts; incidentally, this is the postmodern dignity found in structuralism and poststructuralism; (3) integrate the three spheres (I, We, It - or subjectivity, culture and objectivity) in a meaningful manner that allows each to pursue its own methodologies, without mutually imposing their quadrant-absolutism, by recognizing that evolution in each quadrant may facilitate evolution in every other quadrant: there is increasing complexity in awareness, increasing complexity in form/matter, and increasing complexity in energy. Naturally, there is increasing complexity in their differentiation and integration. These three steps are necessary for a post-metaphysical spirituality, a truly contemporary spirituality not caught in the predifferentiated, premodern subjectivity, but equally aware of self, culture and social environment, with their respective developments, terms and methodologies. Thus, timeless Freedom and temporal Fullness become the two faces of meaningful nonduality in a truly integrative embrace (map here).

Being originally a premodern tradition, and having developed in the East, where modernity had no time to exhibit its dignity and disaster (and often is reduced to disaster, not to mention the disaster of postmodernity being inflicted on Japan and India), Buddhist doctrines and practices are just beginning to be modernized, slowly and timidly, while in Western Buddhism we find many futile attempts to postmodernize traditional Buddhist psychology and phenomenology by skipping the naughty modern-phase altogether and by handpicking the teachings and interpretations and wordings which best support such a strategy.

Now, let us return to states and structures.

Just for amuzement, read this bizarre story. It has something to do with the three steps mentioned above.

(to be continued)

History and Dharma

As I have mentioned in my recent articles (here, here and especially here) it is our crucial task to determine the structural contours within Buddhist thought and practice. The valuable distinction between ever-present states (e.g. gross, subtle, causal, nondual) and developmental structures (for example archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, integral and further) is necessary and barely sufficient at this point in time to update the great wisdom traditions and bring them effectively into 21st century. The other moves are recognition and inclusion of the general developmental logic into their understanding of human psychology and identity (including the repressed unconscious), and also of valuable postmodern findings that have to do with contexts, semantics and intersubjectivity. For those interested in initial elaborations of these issues, see here.

Back to states vs. structures. What I'm interested in is how states & structures co-arise, in other words, in which ways and to what extent they affect each other? Has anything changed in that influence from premodern to modern to postmodern? Is our role in that relationship somewhat different due to the growing awareness of such distinctions?

Once the distinction is made, that is, once the importance of not con-fusing the natural states and developmental structures becomes established and accepted, once we learn how to recognize and differentiate the state-perspective (zone#1, diagram here and here) and the structure perspective (zone#2, for 8 zones and IMP see here), further once we learn to avoid various forms of "level-absolutism" and "line-absolutism" and, I would add, state-absolutism... we can move into this reality-territory and begin spotting some important corelations between states and structures, which is also the corelation, if I may put it that way, between atemporal awakening (a la Orient) and historical enlightenment (a la Occident). Let me give some examples and ask some simple questions to begin with.

(1) At the time of Siddhartha Gautama, 6th century BC, what was the average worldview? There were various strands within the mainstream culture of Northern India: magical culture was very strong with common folks, early mythic-literal thinking with the rulling warrior-caste, with corresponding value systems. While the brahmanic priesthood practiced a mixture of magic and myth institutionalized in hereditary lineages (often to this day), small groups of forest renunciates practiced extreme forms of asceticism and meditation systems leading to savikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhi (i.e. eight dhyanas in later Buddhist classification). Logic and dialectics were just beginning to be developed and organized into systems. Vedic knowledge was the Norm, and has been for centuries. Around this time, several teachers have offered ways to reform or even revolutionize the existing framework, including Gautama the Buddha.

(2) Judging by the earliest texts, such as the Sutta-Nipata (here in .pdf format), these teachings were transmitted in verse for ease of memorization, and did not provide sophisticated elaborations of philosophical principles, but were instead chiefly concerned with practical spirituality based in ethics, awareness, and wisdom. Later development, however, gave birth to records of exquisite sophistication in waves known as "turnings of the Dharma-cakra". Such sophistication, perhaps unparalleled, produced myths of fascinating beauty and complexity along with logical inquiries of stark precision. (What would Dharmakirti enjoy more, a meeting with St Augustin, or a discussion with Wittgenstein?)

The mainstream culture in societies where Buddhism took hold, however, has remained firmly entrenched in feudal conditions for all two thousand years. Modernity, for various reasons in all quadrants, has not been a global phenomenon, until recent history made the world a very small place.

(to be continued)

If you're interested, some discussion at the zaadz cross-post.

A Tragedy

A documentary on the tragic story of Tibetan culture. Duration 55:43. Thanks to Integral Options for the tip.

Happy Ishtar

... to everyone. Critical thought must be applied to everything in order to distinguish between prerational beliefs and transrational insights. What is fact and what metaphor? What is magical wish and what an allegory? What is a spiritual principle and what a political code? Even less complex analysis may prove sufficient at times, when applied to mythic narratives. See here: link

Buddha and Myth

One of special features of Buddhism is the function of myth. When Shakyamuni Buddha aka Siddhartha Gautama set in motion the wheel of doctrine in 6th century BC, his approach to myth was revolutionary for that time anywhere. And it still is for many minds today.

(1) The Buddha did not dispense with myth, but instead pointed out we need not be limited by mythical narratives, nor should we continue disempowering ourselves by unconsciously objectifying as external to ourselves that which we cannot grasp, that is, the Reality-as-such. So, in history of Buddhism, the first strategic move was to undo the immense power locked in myth. The Buddha, hence, did not reject the mythical narrative as such, but decided to engage it's transformative power as long as we endeavour to look beyond the myth itself. (See his treatment of Aryan traditions in Sigalovada sutta: summary at Wikipedia here, the whole text here. This is a fine example of the way Buddha skilfully unpacked the potential of a symbolic instruction that his audience was already familiar with.)

As preserved in the Nikaya/Agama tradition (the textual collection known as Tipitaka in Pali, or Tripitaka in Sanskrt), such is the general treatment of myth. Interpretations of this textual collection vary from lineage to lineage. A general non-literalism, however, is a hallmark of genuine Buddhist hermeneutic, irrespective of vehicle or tradition, although it's easy to find examples of simplistic approaches, of course. Non-literalism was the basis for Gautama Buddha refusing to have his words formulated exclusively in Brahmanic Sanskrt - he chose instead to have it transmitted in vernacular along with linguae francae.

(2) In due course, the Dharma was once again revolutionized in the emergence of Mahayana, specifically in the teaching of "emptiness" (shunyavada), non-duality of samsara and nirvana, and the ideals of bodhisattva and mahasattva. There are many ways to conceptualize emptiness, depending on depth and specific application. "Emptiness of myth" signifies the radical transparency of the mythical narrative, which could be used now as a potent metaphor for Reality-as-such, namely suchness. Therefore, with the advent of Mahayana, we find the myth coming back in a big way - the grand figures of Buddhas historical and eternal, of Bodhisattvas like Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri, Samantabhadra and Vajrapani, and of protectors and numerous deities, populating and animating the spiritual world as allegories of transcendental virtues that adorn the peerless Bodhi. Such virtues were no longer static and abstract even to the less fortunate followers, who were told all such virtues of Bodhi are reflected in their own buddha-nature (Skt. sugata-garbha).

(3) When Mahayana gave rise to Mantrayana - or rather guhya mantranaya - it's most secret path, the myth was once again recharged with new limpidity and even luminosity. While exoteric Mahayana used myth to allegorize Reality by employing transparent symbols (along with using rationality and logic to analyze what could be analyzed), the esoteric approach went one step further: it used the mythical narrative to engender not symbols but veritable sacraments, embodiments of ecstatic intensity manifesting in the fusion of transcendent and immanent. Not gods or even mahasattvas, but esoteric Deities; embodiments not of a distant Goal, but of an immediate Path; not dualistic meanings, but non-dual mantras; not words and objects and actions, but microcosmic enactments of Reality-as-such. The esoteric Deity is always emptiness Itself, quite devoid of meaninglessness, here and now.

These three moves are as significant for us today, or perhaps even more so, since the majority of humanity is immersed in magic-and-myth, in miracle and literality.