XPost: alt.philosophy.zen, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.taoism   
   From: tanghuyen@gmail.com   
      
   On 9/14/2016 7:50 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
      
   > Black dialects are not so important as depicting black attitudes.  Oh,   
   > dear, is there such a thing?  In any case, if you can't render   
   > authentically, don't try.  That is a pretty good rule, I think.  Which   
   > is why they tell fledgling authors to write about what they know.   
      
   I often say that mental culture is not so much about   
   technique, however fancy, as about attitude. In our daily   
   life knowledge is required, in the sense of know-how. We   
   often get what we want (like money, food and esteem)   
   by knowing how to do something, both in the senses of   
   knowing a craft (technical know-how) and knowing how   
   to massage others' ego (social know-how). We   
   automatically extend the usefulness of knowledge to all   
   domains.   
      
   This is where the above extension of knowledge fails. It   
   is true that in the regimen of survival, know-how helps   
   us survive, by hook or crook. But in the regimen of   
   grace, know-how doesn't do anything. We must know   
   how to deal with ourselves to attain to liberation, but   
   this kind of expertise has almost nothing to do with   
   know-how in the everyday sense. In the regimen of   
   grace, what is required is more of a feel for being than a   
   know-how in terms of doing something to get something   
   else. We must leave details behind (which are required   
   in the regimen of survival) and rise to a higher   
   perspective (gasp! an higher consciousness!), where we   
   take in the bigger picture and feel our way toward peace   
   and contentment. The less we identify with whatever we   
   deal with in our daily life, the more apt we are to float   
   toward peace and contentment. It comes down to an   
   attitude, rather than to any know-how. This is what   
   should be taught in mental culture, but most people are   
   in mental culture merely to learn technique.   
      
   Mental culture helps us develop an attitude of allowing   
   for what happens to happen without the imposition of   
   ourselves on it, and our imposition consists in language   
   and thought, in chunking and bagging. The Old One   
   (Lao-zi) teaches us to drop knowledge and learning,   
   and he means knowledge and learning by way of   
   chunking and bagging. By mental culture, we gently   
   cease our attachment to details and rise to the whole.   
   It is not that we ignore the details or block them out,   
   but that we take in the whole without distinction of the   
   details, without discernment to the details, in   
   detachment and equability (with regard to the details).   
      
   This is why I am always surprised by grooved-in   
   practitioners of mental culture who, after studying and   
   practicing under (presumably) reputable teachers   
   from exotic lands for thirty, forty years or more, still   
   blow up all over the place when confronted by mere   
   words on the screen, which moreover may not be   
   directed at them, at least not by name. Why don't they   
   just go to parks and fly kites?   
      
   To return to your post, if one can't render mindfulness,   
   don't try mental culture. That is a pretty good rule, I   
   think. And if one can fake mindfulness, one has   
   mindfulness. The attitude counts. Technique doesn't   
   help if one cannot muster the attitude. But if one has   
   the attitude, technique doesn't count.   
      
   Tang Huyen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)