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.
Tag: Tibet
The Mysterious Stone Tablets of Ancient China
Within Chinese texts the Dropa Stones story is referred to as ‘杜立巴神秘石’ which in modern pinyin is written as ‘Du Li Ba Shen Mi Shi’ – with ‘Dropa’ of the conventional transliteration equating to ‘Du-li-ba’ (杜立巴). The terms ‘Shen Mi’ (神秘) literally translate as ‘spirit’ and ‘secret’, and when used together implies a ‘profound mystery’ originating beyond the material world. The character ‘Shi’ (石) simply translates as ‘stone’, but can be used to refer to stone tablets. Therefore the Chinese title ‘杜立巴神秘石’ (Du Li Ba Shen Mi) refers to mysterious stone tablets associated with the Du-li-ba (Dropa) people, despite the fact that the Du-li-ba people had allegedly been responsible for the killing of the aliens who had apparently created the stone discs. The other connection with the Du-li-ba is that the aliens who survived the killing might have interbred with the Du-li-ba There appears to have been an expedition in 1938, but the details and consequences of that expedition have remained uncertain and obscure ever since. and that their genetic distinctiveness passed on as a consequence.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 