The Christian monastic tradition, as manifest through Western Christianity, has generally combined a stringent discipline with voluntary poverty and celibacy. The idealised image of the Buddhist monk, as it has entered the Western psyche, is one of a man who has abandoned what is here (real material life), for what is over there (imagined religious realms). Of course, as what is over there, by definition, is never here and now, its presence can never be empirically confirmed. The Buddhist rules followed by monastics and the laity take the place of Christian piety in the West, but are adhered to by most Westerners with a similar fanatic attitude that completely misses the point the rule is assumed to be designed to achieve. The physical practice of Buddhist meditation is of course the act of Christian prayer wrapped in saffron robes. Western converts meditate as if they are praying to a divine being, but with the added titillation that the divine being in question is their own imagined self-essence – or god removed from his heaven and relocated into their own head. Chanting mantras – the holy syllables of the East – replaces the singing of hymns and the chanting of monks, and sutra reading is bible study by other means. Just as god in heaven can never be logically verified, enlightenment in the head can not be seen in the environment or known to exist.
Category: Philosophy
The Paranormal as Inverted Reality
Applying Marx’s critique of idealism as conveyed in The German Ideology, religious perception of the world is the wrong way around. God did not create the world in a mysterious manner, but rather it is the mind of humanity that has created (or imagined) god and his heaven.
The Pointlessness of CS Lewis
Tolkien, himself a fantasy writer famous for his Lord of the Rings, stated that Christianity was of course a myth, like all other religions in the world, with the only difference being that Christianity was real. This type of nonsense underlies the bourgeois educational establishment, and serves to demonstrate the danger of thought regression from the progressive state back into the reactionary.
Leave No Stone Unturned
The only reason we take suffering over inspirational thought is because we have been trained to do so by those who would capitalise on our self-imposed limitations.
Marx & Buddha: The Middle Way
Theistic religion was once suitable to the emerging intellect of humanity, but is no longer suitable for an advancing species. Modern humanity benefits from science, technology, medicine and the internet, and no amount of praying will save the life of a relative, or produce space travel, or the latest breakthrough in the fight against human disease. The Buddha denied the validity of theistic belief and advocated mental development and discipline (behavioural modification) as a means of over-coming alienation. The Buddha taught non-identification with thought (i.e. non-attachment), and can not be considered ‘idealistic’, and he criticised certain types of materialist thinking prevalent in his day, and can not be called a ‘materialist’. Karl Marx advocated the study of the physical circumstances humanity finds itself within, (i.e. historical materialism), but as he fully acknowledges the existence and functioning of human consciousness, he can not be termed a gross materialist. Marx wrote often about human consciousness, and stated that when consciousness is inverted, (i.e. deluded), it can not perceive things as they actually are, and falls into the error of religiosity. However, as Marx denied the validity of philosophies that limit the interpretation of the world to a set of thoughts, or thought constructs, (i.e. attachment to thought), he can not be called an ‘idealist’, or ‘ideologue’.
China Follows Marx
The USA pays billions of dollars to China in an attempt to destroy Communism, whilst China uses the same money to ‘strengthen’ the infrastructure of its country to pave the way toward the achievement of Socialism and Communism.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 