[Buddha-l] Enneagram and Buddhism

[Curt Steinmetz]

Alex Wilding wrote:
> Curt Steinmetz told us:
>   
>> First of all it should be noted that the original intention of the
>> Enneagram was, literally, to explain everything.
>>     
>
> What a bizarrely unlikely project! I *shall* be looking into some of these
> links, but this is not an encouraging start.
>                               

The theoretical basis is to be found in Plato's Timaeus, although Plato 
in turn based much of his cosmology on Pythagorean ideas.

If one accepts that the Cosmos is rational and that the "logos" of our 
individual souls (that which gives us the ability to reason) is of the 
same kind as the "logos" of the World Soul (which extends everywhere), 
then one is almost done. All that remains is (1) to demonstrate that 
reason itself is reducible to a manageable number of basic principles (9 
is the most popular number), (2) discover what those principles are, and 
(3) develop systematic means for "reasoning" reliably from the 
(unavoidably) very abstract basic principles to real life useful 
applications.

Obviously (if you think about it) once such a general system is in place 
it is still a nontrivial project to apply it to specific problems (this 
is the origin of the phrase "a simple matter of programming"). Almost as 
obviously is the fact that once a specific application has been worked 
out in it's gory details the "system" behind it all can easily be 
forgotten about. For example, the design of every digital electronic 
device is based on concepts developed by George Boole and Alan Turing - 
but one need not know that in order to send and receive email.

Umberto Eco devoted a chapter to Raymond Lull in his book "In Search of 
the Perfect Language":
http://tinyurl.com/75ydsq

Here is an excerpt:

"Lull led a carefree early life which ended when he experienced a mystic 
crisis. As a result he entered the order of Tertian friars. It was among 
the Franciscans that all of the earlier strands converged in his 'Ars 
Magna', which Lull conceived as a system of perfect language with which 
to convert the infidels. The language was to be universal; it was to be 
articulated at the level of expression in a universal mathematics of 
combinations; its level of content was to consist of a network of 
universal ideas, held by all peoples, which Lull himself would devise."

Curt Steinmetz