unclesophie
I'm interested in all sorts of formal meditation and philosophical systems, Zen-style practice, popular culture, technology (working as a MS Excel vba programmer), poker, gambling, and saving all beings from suffering.
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2010 2011 prediction... mass starvation and enviromental destruction
We can say with confidence that in the future, each of individually will die, and also the species and planet won't last forever. It may or may not happen in 2010 or 2011, but is that really the important thing? The fundamental point is: everything appears and disappear, and all we can or should do is try to act with clarity and compassion in THIS moment.
Anony (2008-06-12 21:16 p.m.) wrote...
> I don't understand where she is coming from either because Im not enlightened
Making the claim "I'm not enlightened" implies that you understand what "enlightened" is (otherwise, how could you know that you haven't got it?). Better not to hold ideas about "enlightenment," and not make unsupported claims like this.
Anony (2008-06-12 22:23 p.m.) wrote...
> It still amazes me that Amma is allowed off the hook and instead her followers
> are the nutcases. Amma tells her followers to worship her as god. [snip]
> So who;s responsible?
Each person is responsible for how they keep their own minds. Each person who believes that Amma has a special "god" status will themselves receive the blowback from holding such a belief. As in the political world, in the meditation world also it's best for us common people to take responsibility for our own decisions. When we talk to Amma followers, it's best to focus on their own choice to be a believer, rather than to hold Amma or anyone else responsible.
Anony (2008-06-13 17:05 p.m.) wrote...
> Amma DOES know what her devotees think. I am a professional and respected
> in my field of expertise and have experienced her divinity first hand.
> i doubt that people who reach a certain level of success in their professional
> and public live are THAT deluded.
Open your eyes just a little, pay attention to what goes on in the world... and you'll EASILY find mountains of evidence that people can be rich, educated, successful -- and still be damn crazy (at least in particular compartments of their minds/lives). Plenty of successful people have murdered family members, or perpetrated scams. Plenty have sunk into addiction, or violence, or rank superstition. The fact that someone has professional success most certainly does NOT indicate that their sanity is intact. So if Amma has a bunch of successful professional followers, it means pretty much nothing.
A great deal of Amma's following comes from people with a tendency towards sheep-like following of autorities or crowds. Isn't that precisely what Anony is saying? That when we see a number of successful professional people doing something (following Amma, believing in horoscopes, supporting racial bigotry, etc), we can short-circuit our own intelligence and just follow along blindly... because surely if a bunch of people who look superficially sane and act with authority believe it, it's safe to follow along.
This happens to me all the time. I write something (or say or do something), and then wonder if it was a mistake.
My original Zen teacher used to say, "Mistakes don't matter." The point, I think, is that absolutely all we've got is what we're doing right now. Always, always, the only thing we can ever do is try our best in this moment. Making a mistake (or 3 mistakes or 10,000 mistakes)... the challenge always remains meeting each new situation.
Everything appears out of emptiness, and returns to emptiness. So, for example, you can get born, make few mistakes, and then die. Or you can get born, make many mistakes, and then die. Those may be different paths, but they lead to the same destination.
A couple years back, I visited a long-time friend, someone I know through many meditation retreats and discussions and such. He'd become a big Tolle fan, so we watched about an hour of a video of one of Tolle's programs. One thing stood out for me, and I wonder if anyone else relates. Tolle was talking about some particular contemplation or practice, and suggested that during the course of ordinary life, if we'd just dedicate a minute or two of each hour to remembering it, it'd serve to bring us back to Now. But what about the other 58 minutes of the hour? It sounded like Tolle was offering a way to periodically rise above our mundane lives and enter his spiritual Truth. Like: his is a teaching of discarding the mundane for the spiritual. It didn't include any inspiration for questioning the very duality of spiritual/mundane.
I think doing business is wonderful. I don't begrudge anyone for making a buck. And yet... it does seem difficult to reconcile good teaching with a profit motive. If you really are teaching people that Truth has already appeared, right now... the problem is that you're not inspiring them to BUY anything!
I am curious about how there can be such an extreme dichotomy between Ammachi and her followers. The meetings of hers I've gone to, she does seem simple, innocent and only interested in hugging people. And yet every one of her followers I met (I even dated one) seemed a bit 'off'.
I've lived in spiritual ashrams myself. I noticed that it's one thing when the full-blown true-believer devotees are amongst themselves... and quite a different face is presented to relative outsiders who come by for brief visits to see the show.
For example, it may be that among the Ammachi hard-core, there's a hugely dogmatic shared belief-system that Ammachi is the Supreme Lord Herself, Absolute Perfect Love Personified (yada yada). This gives a special spiritually elevated status to everyone and everything in Amma's orbit (an consequently devalues every life experience perceived as outside said orbit). It requires all sorts of crazy mental gymnastics to maintain an unquestioned complete faith. The point is: the group-think may be rooted in subtle signals and jargon etc shared among the insiders, and it may be far far less visible to someone who just drops by and sees Ammachi hugging folks on a stage.
The effect of the Amma org, in the type of people it attracts and how it affects them once they join, is based on a complex dynamic of group interactions, belief, lifestyle, and the entire atmosphere of the ashram or travelling show. It's presented as if everything is an effect of Amma's personal magic or energy or some such, but it's much more complicated than that. The dynamics within the Amma family may include all sorts of swirling desires and fears and superstitions that aren't under the control of any single person, including the guru herself.
because it resonates with me so much, I'd like to know if she really is who she presents publicly.
Why do people leave a Gangaji satsang wondering about who she really is? If she's teaching about true nature... I'd expect people to emerge from satsang asking stuff like "What is Truth?" or "Why am I alive?" Gangaji's autobiography is entitled "Just Like You." If she really means that, and really teaches it... then there's little reason to focus on who she is... since "What am I?" addresses the issue more clearly and efficiently.
It's true that many people initially approach a guru or satsang teacher with the hope that the teacher is someone with superior attaiment, whom we may follow and believe in and get something from. Gurus oblige with teachings that at least subtly encouraged focus on the teacher him/herself.
There are other teachers who don't emphasize themselves as individuals, but rather encourage self-inquiry. The clarity of such teaching is reflected in how much the students focus on their own experience, behavior, and thinking... rather than believing this or that about the guru him/herself.
Millions of years ago, when our species was less evolved, I can see how it improved our chances of survival if we stuck in tight-knit tribes. As individuals, we'd quickly starve or get eaten by wild animals etc. It makes sense that DNA would wire us to blindly follow a leader, so we'd all stick together in the tribe, and we'd have a fighting chance to keep nature at bay, long enough to procreate and all.
Evolution is brilliant that way, but it moves very very slowly. After all, natural selection has no tools except trial-and-error. We generate a bunch of offspring, and the ones best designed for survival last long enough to pass on DNA codes to future beings. Amazingly effective adaptions arise, but only over the course of many many generations.
Then we got these incredible new tools. Rational thinking allows us to run "what-if" scenarios, and conclude what's best for our survival so much more quickly than the brute fforce of trial and error. The development of language and the printed word allow us to accummulate information/knowledge across populations, and pass it on to the future. What to speak of the internet.
Rationality, technology, scientific method bring us to our current condition, in which individuality and independent thinking are a far more effective survival mechanism than they were in our caveman days. (When I need food, I pop something into the microwave. Satisfying my needs apart from any tribal allegience has become a lot easier, compared to when I'd have to live off of dinosaur meat (joking, joking).
The new tools of rationality etc allow at least part of the population to live as free-thinkers. But for many generations to come, this advancement towards personal freedom and independent thinking will be bumping up against the hard-wired drive to adhere to a tribal authority, that drive being a hold-over of a strategy that was more appropriate millions of years ago.
