My wish-it-were-so course

It would probably be much easier to teach Buddhism if it were taught under the rubric of ‘mysticism’ along with Vedanta and Neoplatonism.  Christian mysticism would be included along with Jewish and Islamic mysticism.  Let’s say we put the whole package together for a three semester course (my philosophy professor attempted this).  There is certainly enough good material to teach such a course.  Walk into any good academic or theology library.  There it is.  A feast for the mind.

I would shamelessly use Thomas McEvilley’s marvelous work, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies.  This fantasy course of mine would be fascinating.  It would not be for those who are disposed to materialism or those who believe the empirical sciences are the whole enchilada.

With such a course, the goal would be to help the student realize that the so-called mystical path has been in all great cultures.  It constitutes the most interesting part of religion but is sometimes persecuted or just ignored or you might even say, forgotten as with the example of Neoplatonism.

If I could I would tack on another semester which would be about the use of hallucinogens in shaman and religious culture.  There is plenty there worth exploring.  I would dust off my old copy of John M. Allegro’s book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross extending the lectures to Vedic Soma (we now know its main ingredient which was cannabis), LSD-25, DMT and Ayahuasca to name some of the more important hallucinogens.  

My sense of this, it would help to put Buddhism where it belongs which is a way to reach direct and immediate experience of the transcendent which is beyond the iron cage of materialism (let’s remember that materialism is a philosophical position, not a science).  It would help to keep Buddhism out of the hands of those who can’t see beyond their empirical noses who may not know it yet, but are evil—almost to the marrow!  I have researched enough history to know that the 20th century was, perhaps, the most evil civilization that man has created thus far.  It came very close to all out nuclear war during the Kennedy Administration (new information was released in the 1990s which confirm this).  How we justify such evil I find the most astonishing thing of all.  And this same justifying mindset wishes to secularize Buddhism.  

 

Comments

[aleece]

Ayahuasca is a good topic to explore. It has many proven facts about it's healing powers physically and mentally. This medicine should be studied more and make it available to many.

[n. yeti]

Something which is often overlooked is how warm mysticism is...within Buddhism of course it is easy to see how becoming acquainted with the buddha principle in the Mahayana contrasts with the cold morality of theravada. The Sufi too, at times "heretical" against the established order, had warmth and a type of intimacy with reality that provides comfort and assurance only known through faith. These dervish brotherhoods called "terikats" had immense spiritual influence and were beloved of the people even at a time when orthodoxy (in modernity this is akin to rational materialism and Cartesian logic) made sense, in a way, because it discouraged questioning into reality beyond the known. The materialists of american zen, sometimes even after a long spiritual career and much discourse as a teacher, have convinced themselves noble wisdom and delusion all amount to the same thing...that the buddha principle is probably some material conjugation of mind and one must merely stare at it until it goes away, in the same way that pain from a hammered thumb subsides, not a joke perhaps, but not entirely real in the way that transmigration to higher or lower realms is seen as something not entirely real. So, not understanding, the rational materialist concludes there is really not anything to understand. The mystic (and zen was mystical long before Descartes), in contrast, goes beyond the material, to a level of intimacy with reality so profound there is no fear of loss, because he sees not just in cold stark relief, as the materialist sees, but becomes aware that all reality and unreality (dharmata) hums with the buddha principle that is not known by forms or absence of forms, nor wall gazing until it all just slips into sunyata. Mystics will always be viewed with suspicion, because they learn to see with a dharma eye and point to that which the materialist has long given up hope of realizing.

[MStrinado]

Thanks for the plug on McEvilley’s work--Excellent resource!