[Buddha-l] Eckhart Tolle

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 07:52 -0500, Vaj wrote:

> Eckhart Tolle is typical of the new and rising trend in neo-advaita
> and pseudo-advaita. 

> I have attended several of his students satsangs held by students who
> claimed to be awakened and found it very disturbing. This not Dzogchen
> nor is it Advaita Vedanta, it's a dangerous deviation and distortion
> of traditional teachings on Non-duality.

What, in your opinion, makes Eckhart Tolle's teachings dangerous? He
does not at all claim to be teaching Advaita Vedanta or rdzogs-chen, so
he can hardly be said to distorting them. He claims only to have had a
severe depression from which he recovered instantaneously by asking a
series of questions that enabled him to see that the self was a
construct. Plenty of other traditions have taught similar things, but it
does not follow from that that he is distorting them. He simply offers a
refreshing and accessible practice that is wonderfully free of dogma and
institutional trappings. What is dangerous in that?

Surely you know better than to judge the quality of a teacher by the
inadequacies of his or her disciples. That some of Tolle's students
can't explain non-dualism to your or my satisfaction hardly suggests
that Tolle's teachings themselves are poorly delivered, let alone that
they are dangerous.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico