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by Charles and Tara Carreon
One of the really interesting things
about Western culture is the tradition of valuing people based on their
achievements, rather than upon their origins. Constitutional government
is founded upon the complete disenfranchisement of the nobility. The
Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, provides:
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United
States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them,
shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present
Emolument, Office, or Title, or any kind whatever, from any King,
Prince, or foreign State.
Rejecting the very notion of titles and
hereditary endowments lies at the heart of rational thinking. It is
ironic that Tibetan Buddhism, which reveres inherited authority in the
tulku role, would become so popular in a land where being a noble is
basically against the law. Buddhist students, eager to achieve something
through practice, often strive to master traditional systems of
knowledge. These practitioners believe the Buddha got enlightened, and
that practicing Buddhism is to conduct yourself like a Buddha, i.e., sit
cross-legged, eat with chopsticks, dress in cotton. The path has been
mapped out. It has a self-righteous simplicity that will pass for
fashion sense in a Volvo club. I love Buddhism so much because the
clothes are so elegant! Futons are so nice to sleep on, and the
meditation is great! And indeed it is. But don't be surprised if your
best imitation of Buddha is just a stiffer version of your usual self.
Even if we could do a picture-perfect imitation of ourselves as the
Buddha, sitting under a ficus tree in a saffron robe, much more
convincing than Keanu Reeves in that role, that would still probably not
make us any more Buddha-like than we already are.
And we can do so much better! Through the
western empirical-scientific model of experimentation and proof, human
beings can be taught to be open to whatever makes sense, and to
disregard that which merely has the stamp of authority. We have been
taught creativity and originality. Science is based upon coming up with
new discoveries and new truths. Our vision expands along with our
knowledge. We believe that anything is possible. Additionally, we
believe Buddhism is a description of our psychological reality, rather
than material reality. Therefore, since the inquiry is regarding our own
minds, no one is more of an authority than ourselves.
The usual response to the conflict
between the Eastern way and the Western Way is to suppress it. But the
right way to deal with the conflict is to discard the entire system of
hereditary "emoluments," as the Constitution so nicely puts it. If you
think someone understands your mind better than you do because they
belong to a religious order, and you reverence their ideas more highly
than your own, you are on a fool's errand.
No nation or ethnic group possesses a
monopoly on wisdom. Popular wisdom ascribes a sort of right-brain /
left-brain split between the "Asian peoples" and the "Western Peoples,"
such that Helmut Von Weber obviously is a rocket scientist, just because
of his name, while someone named Sun Lee is an Asian spiritual teacher
or martial artist. Of course that is absolutely bunk. Weber is just as
likely to be the Tai Chi teacher, and Sun Lee the advanced graphic
designer. Asians have no monopoly on wisdom, if indeed there is any
wisdom available to supply demand at all.
Surely we jest, eh?
What about the fact that Europeans
conquered the Western hemisphere while Asians stayed at home and
meditated? And the idea that only Asians entombed themselves in sacred
places and focused one-pointedly on developing the powers of the mind
and spirit? This is sheer nonsense, right? The western monks and mystics
recited the Philokalia and other mantras, wrote and performed hymns,
high masses, choral chants, and shuttered themselves in fasting and
prayer no less than their Eastern brethren. The slower industrial
development in Asia is no guarantee that spiritual values were more
preserved. There was no Mason-Dixon line separating the spiritual
seekers from the rationalists, if indeed they were separated at all in
the days of Byzantium, Tyre and the other ports of the Mediterranean.
Different truth-seekers had different
advantages. Arab physicians were allowed to cut up corpses, so they
learned more about the human body and developed better medicines than
the leech-wielding physicians on the European continent. Those
turban-wearing fellows also pioneered the use of the zero, which has of
course been used aggressively by "westerners" ever since. Gurdjieff
recounts, in his Meetings With Remarkable Men, a farflung network of
holy men from Istanbul to Kandahar to Sarmoung in Tibet. Gurdjieff
presented a hard-headed spirituality derived from the teachings of
dervish sufis who apparently were literate, musical, analytical,
commercial, and generally "scientific" in their view of life.
The thinkers and authors remembered on
this page have expressed themselves well on the fundamental issues that
confront human beings. They are artists, humanitarians, earth advocates,
and political thinkers who guide us to improve our world. We have
provided biographies, excerpts from their writings and music, pictures,
bibliographies and other fun stuff. We guarantee that if you browse
these pages, you will feel prouder to be human.
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