[Buddha-l] The way the wind blows

[Joy Vriens]

Mike Austin wrote:

> Then I find myself thinking that only eastern adepts - Tibetan monks and 
> 'high lamas' for example - are the only authentic realised beings. Could 
> this also be pride because I associate with them? For example, I think I 
> tend to believe more of a Tibetan monk than a Japanese monk. Why?
> 
> It is in my arrogant nature to consider myself better than others. Where 
> others come up with the same sort of views as myself, I can either think 
> of them as 'good' because they think like me, or as 'ordinary' because I 
> got to that view before they had. Either way, I sit in state of conceit.

We grow up amidst references. Sometimes we have the impression we can 
pick and choose them freely, but do we really? The reality we grow up in 
is obviously closer to us, rings more authentic and true to us than 
other realities. And it probably is for us. Even when we try to look at 
our reality from an imagined "absolute" reference point, that reference 
is still constructed on our very own references. So pride? We can't 
escape our own references and can only refer back to them. If one knows 
and accepts that, one may still call it pride, but is there another 
choice? The only error I can see is to assume that one's "absolute" 
reference point is so absolute that it is free from our imagination of 
it and that we can attain an absolute *state* which is free from our own 
references. That refusal of what we are could be called pride. It is 
also seems an error to me because it somehow reflects back to our own 
everyday references and makes them more real and absolute and less 
"reference". Arjuna has to accept he is (only) Arjuna and has to assume 
Arjuna's life. Perhaps accepting the relativity of our situation is the 
closest one can get to the absolute and to "becoming" an authentic 
realised being.

> Then, rather than thinking western people have reached realisations that 
> are as profound as, say, Tibetan lamas, I can tend to think that Tibetan 
> lamas are nothing special.  Why should they be able to achieve something 
> more than western practitioners?

If somehow one consciously or not links the state of an authentic 
realised being to a specific method trying to achieve it, then one 
plants that link in your mind. If one then thinks of an authentic 
realised being, one will have images linked to e.g. the Tibetan method. 
Basic advertising and marketing.

> With all this dross going on inside my head,  those judgements I tend to 
> make of others and their realisations are nothing more than pissing into 
> the wind.

I cannot think of anything more likely to wake one up than to piss into 
the wind. :-)

Joy