[Buddha-l] Eckhart Tolle

[curt]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 07:52 -0500, Vaj wrote:
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>>Eckhart Tolle is typical of the new and rising trend in neo-advaita
>>and pseudo-advaita. 
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>>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.
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>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. 
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I would also disagree with the characterization that Tolle's teaching is 
a "dangerous deviation and distortion" of Advaita. However it is obvious 
that Tolle's teaching amounts to Advaita-Lite. Personally I don't think 
that's a problem because anyone who is actually ready for Advaita 
"straight-up" would never bother with Tolle's teaching, as far as I can 
tell.

The two greatest Advaita teachers of recent times were Vivekananda and 
Ramakrishna - at least that's what people tell me. Their writings are 
readily available (I just ordered Vivekananda's complete works from 
amazon for less than $10!). What many people apparently don't know, or 
choose to ignore, is that Ramakrishna and Vivekananda were both devotees 
of the Goddess Kali. Perhaps they knew what they were doing. Perhaps 
Advaita is not supposed to be stripped of its religiosity in order to 
make it more palatable to westerners.

Or perhaps Tolle is providing a valuable service. After all there are 
lots of people in need of spiritual guidance, but who are so "turned 
off" by Religion that they petulantly insist that they be spoon-fed 
sanitized nostrums that are free from any mysticism or, horrors, actual 
devotion. Nevertheless I do think that Tolle owes it to his students to 
explain that his teaching is just a watered down adaptation of a rich 
ancient tradition (well, it would be understandable if he chose a 
different way of putting it).

>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. 
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Tolle's "enlightenment story" is pretty dreadful. A good enlightenment 
story should give some indication to others of "how its done". But 
Tolle's story is basically "Well, I was really depressed and confused 
and then one day: Wham! And then I had It." A good enlightenment story 
first needs to be a good story (with character development, conflict, 
suspense, stuff like that) - which Tolle's is not. How did someone this 
dull become the flavor of the month anyway? Are we really getting that 
disparate? Back in the day we had genuine spiritual rock-stars - 
complete with groupies. Tolle is more like the spiritual equivalent of 
Kenny G. I think its a sign of the times.

>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?
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I guess Tolle's teaching is fine as far as it goes. Apparently there are 
many people who simply can't handle anything more.

- Curt