[Buddha-l] Eckhart Tolle

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Vaj schreef:

>
> In many, many ways the path that has the most potential for abuse is 
> the non-dual path because a charismatic person, with a sharp, keen 
> mind and mouth can talk the talk quite convincingly. But can they walk 
> the walk? Or have they? 
>
> If we are going to relieve peoples suffering we must possess the tools 
> to genuinely do that. I do not see that in this movement.
>
> I do feel this is a topic worthy of close investigation, discussion 
> and debate among both practitioners and scholars.
>
An old topic, which is worth to be discussed again now and then I think. I remember some years ago I was in a comittee which used to organise public lectures of local philosophers. We were invited by a neo-advaitan group to take part in a conference about enlightenment. They asked us to start an internal discussion about enlightenment as a kind of preparatory excercise, so I wrote a kind of Wittgensteinian piece on the question 'what is actually enlightenment and how do we know it exists and when?'. We never got a reply. Appearantly the advaitins felt that working together with people who asked that kind of stupid questions was a waste of time. So there's something very dogmatic in some cults of enlightenment. The question whether one can compare enlightenment in different religious and cultural settings has not been tackled enough yet. Problem: enlightenment fans don't like discussions. 
In the seventies Frits Staal propagated to investigate mysticism scientificly and experimentally. But htis somehow didn't work and identifying the activity spots in the brain doesn;t help much. 
So I think those dangerous weirdos who cook up their own version of enlightenment could be a blessing in disguise, because they force some doubt, reflection and discussionat least .

Erik


www.xs4all.nl/~jehms