[Buddha-l] Enneagram and Buddhism

jkirk jkirk at spro.net
Sun Jan 4 22:25:04 MST 2009


Has anyone noticed this? it's from the website Richard posted
yesterday:

"Everyone emerges from childhood with one of the nine types
dominating their personality, with inborn temperament and other
pre-natal factors being the main determinants of our type. {This
is one area where most all of the major Enneagram authors
agree-we are born with a dominant type.} Subsequently, this
inborn orientation largely determines the ways in which we learn
to adapt to our early childhood environment. It also seems to
lead to certain unconscious orientations toward our parental
figures, but why this is so, we still do not know. In any case,
by the time children are four or five years old, their
consciousness has developed sufficiently to have a separate sense
of self. Although their identity is still very fluid, at this age
children begin to establish themselves and find ways of fitting
into the world on their own. "
 
"We are born with a dominant type."
By this reckoning, nurture is passe, nature is everything. 

How can this idea be compatible with Buddhism and its views on no
essence (anatta), on transitoriness (anicca), and on karma?

Joanna



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