[Buddha-l] Enneagram and Buddhism

[Leigh Goldstein]

I dont see any contradiction between saying a personality type is present at birth and karma or another buddhist doctrine.

For example, the color of our eyes is present at birth, and doesn't violate karma, no-self or impermanence.

A genetic tendency to anger, if it existed, wouldn't violate such doctrines.

Even a doctrine of karma from past lives doesn't violate no-self or impermanence.

You might say it is karma to get a particular type doled out whenever it is.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: jkirk 
  To: 'Buddhist discussion forum' 
  Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 9:25 PM
  Subject: [Buddha-l] Enneagram and Buddhism


  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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