The importance of courtesy, hospitality, and other small details

Posted on June 19, 2012 by BoT Student   1 comment
Downton Abbey

In “Downton Abbey”, set in Yorkshire, England in 1914, people from different backgrounds are able to work together with dignity, pride, and cooperation – even in the midst of stress & tight quarters – in PART, because of a culture of respect that they create & maintain.

Although this may be obvious to many, I realized today that – especially in troubled times – basic human qualities like courtesy & hospitality are important if we want to get along with our neighbors, solve our collective problems, and live inspired lives. Continue reading →

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Sacred ritual, empty ritual, and satanic ritual – a comparative study

Posted on May 30, 2012 by BoT Student   2 comments
puja ritual

An arati puja in India – where they have had more cultural appreciation for “ritual” compared to most Westerners. Photo is (cc) Gerardo Diego Ontiveros.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. - Hamlet

When we were young, some of us attended religious rituals with our parents. The purpose of these rituals was often a social one – you wanted to be seen doing the religious “thing” by other people, and see yourself doing it, in order to feel good about yourself. The ritual itself was often rather mechanical.

Years later, we might get involved in what we feel is genuine spirituality and find ourselves doing rituals again, but end up doing them in much the same spirit we did as children. On some level this doesn’t feel right, but unless we’re given the proper training, we don’t know what else to do.

black ritual

In the popular TV show South Park, a young child becomes alarmed when he hears about satanic rituals, but it turns out to be just fun and make-believe. (2008)

Also it must be mentioned: these days it’s hard to turn on the television without hearing about blood-drinking vampires and “black magic” rituals portrayed in a fun, make-believe manner, and we might assume that all such things are 100% fictional because we basically believe that all rituals are empty, without power, and therefore there couldn’t be any purpose in doing them other than a social one, like putting on a costume. Perhaps we’ve only experienced “empty rituals” in our own lives, been conditioned in school to believe that all rituals are pointless, and in general led to look down on rituals by the modern non-participatory anti-culture of TV-mindedness.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Even “empty ritual” – for that matter, even doing nothing – has all sorts of effects, according to what we’ll explore below. Continue reading →

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C.S. Lewis on friendship, purpose, and male culture

Posted on May 28, 2012 by BoT Student   2 comments

C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a novelist1, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland.

Friendship comes to us in odd moments, often unsought, but greatly appreciated.

The following passage by C.S. Lewis touches on how friendship arises and hints at the difference in male and female culture – a subject rarely appreciated in the modern “anti-culture” of popular media, if I may say so.

In early communities the cooperation of the males as hunters or fighters was no less necessary than the begetting and rearing of children. A tribe where there was no taste for the one would die no less surely than a tribe where there was no taste for the other. Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had to. Continue reading →

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J. Krishnamurti, Theosophy, and the fabrication of the new age movement

Posted on May 21, 2012 by BoT Student   5 comments

J. Krishnamurti

“All this life and especially during the last few months I have struggled to be free – free of my friends, my books, my associations,” said J. Krishnamurti1 in the late 1920′s, shortly before breaking with the Theosophical Society.  The Society wanted to make him into a religious symbol for millions, under their control. (image source)

I recently attended a Mummery Book2 enactment, wherein the protagonist, Raymond Darling, is walking through the woods one day, and without warning, comes across a religion that is devoted to him as its symbol. Which of course he finds shocking & bizarre.

However, this is not altogether different from the horrifying real-life experience of best-selling author J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986). As a child he was discovered by a powerful and well-funded “new age” organization, chosen as their future “messiah”, carefully groomed for this role, and began to innocently play this role with good intentions until age 34, when he abandoned this bizarre situation and – perhaps in an overreaction – became a vocal critic of organized religion and religious authority for the rest of his life.

This story is interesting to me because a) it explains J. Krishnamurti’s famous anti-guru stance and b) it demonstrates the kinds of powerful forces that can create fake religions and which laid the foundation for the modern “new age” movement.

In 1929, at the age of thirty-four, Krishnamurti severed himself from the Theosophical Society, after a spiritual experience that completely changed his life, and renounced his role of coming messiah….  Continue reading →

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Alcohol & drugs as poison or medicine: comments by Chögyam Trungpa

Posted on May 17, 2012 by BoT Student   2 comments
alcohol

“It seems that alcohol is a weak poison which is capable of being transmuted into medicine.” – Chögyam Trungpa.  Photo by Andreas Levers; some rights reserved.

I just found out that an old friend of mine went insane.  I hope it’s temporary.  I knew he was leaning in that direction (is it okay to say that?) but I’m told one day he finally went nuts, the police came, and he was placed in a mental hospital for a few days.  Our mutual friend hasn’t seen him since.

He was someone who liked to use mind-altering drugs – especially after a traumatic experience he had 10 years ago – and presumably he felt these drugs were beneficial, necessary, and relatively harmless.

Elsewhere, another friend just sent me an article about the mind-altering benefits of Psilocybin and LSD, and suggested it could inspire a post on this blog.

Well.  All this got me thinking about whether something is beneficial or harmful, and how I could tell the difference.  And it reminded me of a very non-moralistic consideration Chögyam Trungpa once had about alcohol:

There seems to be something wrong with an approach to alcohol that is based entirely on morality or social propriety. The scruples implied have solely to do with the external effects of one’s drinking. The real effect of alcohol is not considered, Continue reading →

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How mind (control) works: perception is shaped by assumption

Posted on May 13, 2012 by BoT Student   4 comments
human eye

“When the world matches our assumptions, we see the world as it is.” Image is (cc) evinella.

When I was a child, there was a period where I got very interested in magic tricks – making a quarter disappear and reappear and so on.1 The climax of this period was when I staged a show for the neighbors.

And that was the end of my interest in magic. Not that the show was a failure, mind you. Rather, it was too successful – I found I could distract the audience and get them to make assumptions which allowed me do all sorts of things right in front of them without them “seeing” what I was doing. Which was cool but also unsettling.

In any case, how DOES perception work? And why does it matter?

Vision may not work all the time, but we should marvel that it works at all. Continue reading →

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Love of the Two-Armed Form – brilliant wisdom about intimate love from Adi Da Samraj

Posted on May 6, 2012 by BoT Student   1 comment
swans lovers

Photo by Steven Beger; some rights reserved.

Love.

We all want love. We all need love.

All human problems come down to a problem about love, in my opinion.

So why do so many of us seem to have sooooooo many problems about it in our intimate lives – divorce, infidelity, unhappiness, the never-ending search for Mr. or Ms. Right, the constant scheming, the one-night stands that leave us feeling more empty than before, strange fetishes, running from one disappointment to the next, coping with a loveless marriage, coping with being alone, keeping up false appearances of marital bliss, and on and on and on and on?

“Why does this keep happening to me?” we might ask.

Read on.

a loveless, sexless marriage

Mad Men’s Betty & Don Draper – good-looking, prosperous, holding similar values, envied by others – but their marriage was characterized by distrust, dishonesty, infidelity, and very little love or sex.

Self-doubting, weak-willed, promiscuous sex partners (real or potential) are erotic, attractive and fascinating. One tends secretly to desire and even to become sexually associated with such partners. If one is married to a man or woman who is essentially strong, loving, and giving, then one tends to doubt, and manipulate, and test that one – in order to prove he or she is really tending to leave you and not to love you.

This is because of one’s own Continue reading →

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