[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Joy Vriens]

Chan Fu wrote:

> One *is* one's environment, IMO. You really can't take
> (or universalize) yourself out of it.

How come you're not disenchanted then?

> Buddha-wise, you can
> subtract everything but 'just being' and that's very relaxing
> and all, but it's just another mind trick - it's only another
> way of fooling yourself.

Yes like the bodhisattva career and the tantras in which the divinity is 
woken up from its deep concentration and summoned to act.

> I tiptoed around the old folk's advice about letting
> go of 'emptiness' for a long time before it came on like
> the very first joke.

Isn't it all jokes and tricks?

>>I personally manage to find beauty and fullfillment in some intellectual
>>constructs too and find it hard to get by without them. But there is
>>more peace (dare I say opiate?)  if one doesn't indulge in them.

> Perhaps one's free to indulge. It's like going swimming.
> If you make the mistake of wishing to be a fish, you may
> wind up hooked.

Oh, but I am hooked up. I have discovered that I am even when I think I 
am not.

> Maybe the development that you speak of is only the opportunity
> to use our minds and appreciate the beauty of being. Maybe
> "spiritual" refers just to our beautiful (and lately evolved/discovered)
> minds. But you're in a better cultural ecology for that. Candles
> are flickering here, for lack of air.

Yes beauty and mind are definitely connected. No beauty without mind.

> But don't dismay. The pendulum has swung before. We just weren't
> riding on it at the time.

If you are referring to a sort of the times they're a-changing feeling, 
it's quite an impressive thing to witness. I was born in a time of newly 
found hope, freedom, tolerance, intrepidity and I thought perhaps 
humankind had managed to come out of troubled times and was perhaps 
indeed evolving. Progress did exist. Seeing it swinging back like it 
does in the current speed is very scary. But it is a great lesson.

> ~2500 years ago seems to have marked a point in this evolution
> of reflection where it was rediscovered that thought (the
> ability to think as we do) could cause a great deal of suffering
> (mental pain). We're still learning, but our "spirituality" -  our
> creativity and capacity of mind - is surely evolving in a beautiful way.

How do you manage, if we are our environment?

> So, as the old mind-numbing, regressive, buddhism dies off and
> is replaced by just learning how to be what we are, perhaps
> we'll get lucky and we'll create even more beautiful things rather
> than going back to square one. We may even learn how to use
> this big wad of bubblegum in our heads before we screw it all up.

Sounds great, but you are not going into the direction the pendulum is 
swinging in. :-)

Joy (perfectly pure ethics)