[Buddha-l] sam harris at the aspen institute

[curt]

Richard Hayes wrote:
> On Thursday 16 August 2007 13:10, curt wrote:
>
>   
>> And as everyone who has read the first chapter of Rick Fields book "How
>> the Swans Came to the Lake" knows, the earliest pioneers of Buddhism in
>> the West were all flaky occultists, just like Gerald Gardner.
>>     
>
> Rick Fields oversimplifies the picture considerably. There were not only swans 
> coming to the lack, but ducks and geese. While a lot of early American 
> enthusiasts of Buddhism were spiritualists seeking messages from the Other 
> Side, others were drawn to the "Nobody here but us scientists" mantra, and 
> yet others were captivated by the sheer beauty of Asian (and especially 
> Japanese) art forms. It could be argued, I guess, that all these people were 
> flaky in one way or another (since, after all, every who has hair has 
> dandruff), but there were at least as many hostile to occultism as there were 
> enamored by it.
>
>
>   

I think the "nobody here but us scientists" crowd (of which I was a 
proud member back in the day) were not, in fact, so much among the 
"pioneers" as the "settlers". Pioneers go where no one has gone before - 
well, no one but injuns. Settlers come in later - once the trees have 
been cleared - and the injuns, too. And those who were "captivated by 
the sheer beauty of Asian art forms" were probably artists - or, more 
likely, artistes - who often run in esoteric/occult circles (and rarely 
run in scientifical circles)

By pioneers I mean people going all the way back to Blavatsky, Olcott, 
Besant, Alexandra David-Neel, and Alan Bennett - a generation that also 
overlaps nicely with Vivekananda and Aurobindo. If one were willing to 
go back a little further still, there are folks like Schopenhauer, 
Edison, Thoreau and Whittman. But that last group merely read about "the 
East" and contemplated it from afar - the next wave (Blavatsky, et al) 
went there physically - and were the first to at least imagine 
themselves to "be" Buddhists.

Curt Steinmetz