[Buddha-l] Aung San Suu Kyi and the latest Burmese prosecutions

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Richard Hayes schreef:
> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Joanna Kirkpatrick <jkirk at spro.net> wrote:
>
>   
>>  Weren't all the ancient Asian teachers authoritarian?
>>
>>     
>
> Authoritarianism was just about the only game on the planet until a few
> centuries ago. There have been a few tiny, short-lived, largely unsuccessful
> experiments in non-authoritarian institutions. They usually fail, because
> all but a few people lack the ability to cope with uncertainty and
> open-endedness.
>
>
>   
I 'm glad my dentist agrees with this one and doesn't include me in the 
small elite group of uncertaintylovers. :-)
You seem to think that uncertainty is a good thing, well many Afghans 
and Iraqis may have a different view. The newpapers today write also 
very highly about trust. Lack of trust seems to be an important cause 
for the financial crisis. Perhaps you like the prospect of being fired 
at the end of the term, but I never met anyone who would love this kind 
of open-endedness.
To me personally open-endedness and uncertainty are seldomly an 
advantage when I'm teaching or giving a lecture. Mostly the audience 
appreciates it if I know what I'm going to say and when I'm done.
Maybe it's just about words. In some countries a president is a dictator 
if she raises taxes and just showing leadership if she lowers them.
I don't recall this love of open-endedness in Buddhist teachings. The 
Buddha was not Pyrrho of Elis. Though I must confess that I found a 
certain open-endedness is involved in doing the special preparations in 
Tibetan Buddhism (like prostrations, Vajrasattva, and so on), there's no 
way to tell if they have any result.

-- 


Erik

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