XPost: alt.philosophy.zen, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.taoism   
   From: tanghuyen@gmail.com   
      
   On 8/21/2016 3:17 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
      
   > A superiority of the unwashed would perhaps suggest that the washed   
   > did see a lack in themselves and sought help.  The lack of gain in   
   > superiority would then reflect on the efficacy of the help they chose.   
   >   
   > Which is not to say that religious disciple can never have benefit.   
   > Complex creatures that we are, it would be possible to seek help for   
   > our failings while remaining unwilling to change.   
      
   Your ironical wording is an highwire act.   
      
   That said, spiritual teachers can be quite   
   complacent and rigid. Teachers of Tibetan   
   shamanism can give a blanket teaching on   
   visualisation to everybody, even if some   
   students are paranoid and susceptible to   
   have their paranoia exacerbated by the   
   emphasis on the imagination in   
   visualisation.   
      
   Teachers of Japanese Zen tend to take   
   the methods of their sect as panacea,   
   and teach them as such, namely as   
   panacea, though they may well require   
   some special ability that they themselves   
   don't command. For example, I may well   
   be wrong, but I have looked hard at   
   lectures in English and French published   
   in paper form and online, and scarcely   
   detect any penetration of their own mind   
   in their authors, be they Japanese or their   
   students. They can be quite proficient at   
   concentration, but not insight, and   
   Chan/Zen can use concentration as a   
   means but aims at insight as the end,   
   and the latter is hard to find amongst   
   Zennists, be they Japanese or foreigners.   
   This lack of insight becomes a   
   self-perpetuating, self-locking circle, an   
   institutional failure, as both students and   
   teachers are unable to recognise that   
   they lack insight. In Chinese Buddhism,   
   it is called "the blind leading the blind."   
      
   Tang Huyen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)