Buddhism: The Eightfold Path

I participated in a discussion recently about this topic. It became obvious pretty soon that the topic was too broad to really cover in an hour. Many of the comments and mini-discussions referenced parts of more general Buddhist principles rather than the Eightfold Path directly. Even so, many of the insights and perspectives were stimulating and thought-provoking. The main points of the discussion centered around:

• Inheritance and re-packaging of many Buddhist or Eightfold principles into many other philosophical, theological and psychological frameworks including Christianity
• Tendency of organized religion toward complicating and splintering principles from the founders
• What did the notion of suffering mean in the original context of the time period when Buddhist concepts came of age? What, if anything, does it mean for us in today's global and/or American culture
• Do desires really cause suffering, or is it the way we view and manage our desires that are the problem?
• Relationship of Buddhism to Stoicism

Buddhism and Stoicism were created during very similar times in history in very different parts of the world: India and Greece. Originally, Buddhism was a non-theistic philosophy. Later on as it splintered and became adopted by the masses, it morphed into more theistic clothing. As with other religions, the splintering, adopting and changing created the usual monster of organized religion, which has a tendency to distort or pervert the meaning of the ideas of the early founders and disciples into a complex, confusing and stifling expression.

Do we really suffer in our modern affluent American society? Certainly there are many people who suffer economically, physically and emotionally. However, what most of us consider suffering is hardly worth mentioning in the same breath as real suffering. Most of our suffering is caused by inadequate thinking. We think ourselves into a problem too quickly. We do not take the higher consciousness perspective regarding situations in our lives. Our perspective is too limited and focused. We are in the trees, not the forest.

Is suffering, whatever the manifestation, really caused by desire? Desire is fundamentally a very healthy force in our lives. Of course, unexamined desires can always be a problem, but at its root, desire is an expression of an important internal disturbance that may be a connection with a deeper spiritual purpose. Expressing that desire in positive ways through creativity and action is critical for healthy mental states. The separation between our desires and current reality can cause suffering. In this case we either need to 1) change our desire, 2) change our reality or 3) break our desires up into mini-desires that can be accomplished at a steady pace.

Analyzing the cause of the "suffering" and the relationship of our desires to it is a fundamental life skill that we must develop in order to move toward self-actualization. Otherwise we waste hours, days, weeks, months, even years in dysfunctional thought patterns that limit our development. The first tenet of the Eightfold Path is "Right View". This references clarity of thought as the first step toward the "good life", which has been called varous things throughout history including self-actualization, following your bliss, the middle way and more by such luminaries as Abraham Maslow, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Aristotle and Confucius.

Three Themes from Social Artistry

I mentioned that I attended a Jean Houston lecture. Most of that entry was a summary of her background and the experience. I did not say much about the content of the evening. Here I will pick three of the main themes and summarize. These themes and more are elaborated in detail in an online interview.

• We are in a time when something big is trying to happen


• We have lost touch with our senses, both externally and internally


• We have the potential to push through the current transition but we have to learn to fire on more burners

These are three of the themes that have been a part of her work over many years. They are elaborated even more in this interview. Much of her social artistry work is intended to help people find ways to add and express personas in order to get more in touch with the multiple dimensions that help us grow into change.

One way to move consciousness and being forward and upward is to remove negative patterns of thought, which in turn remove negative patterns of behavior. Houston agrees this is a valid approach, but prefers something that Jung also preferred that can be called "active imagination". In this approach, positive thoughts become personas and are added as dimensions to our being. As new things are added, old patterns wither and die due to lack of fertilization.

We are in a time window in the last quarter century that is the beginning of a momentous change in human history. Sadly, our brains, educational systems and culture is much better suited for the world as it was 150 years ago. The increase in speed of information transfer, cultural change and financial-political upheaval are building toward a new paradigm that has not been adequately articulated with a story that can carry the weight of the change.

We have become too uni-dimensional as humans. We allow our technology to run us rather than the other way around. We lose things that are valueable that have a much higher sensory value and is replaced by more cerebrally-focused activities to the exclusion of the senses. We do not have the inclination or the power to go within and explore an expansion of inner sensory experience that can grow us in the external world.

All of this is involved in "firing on more burners". As mentioned before expanding our awareness into new areas including artistic, scientific, physical, technological and emotional realms feeds new thought patterns and personas that turn on more and more existential burners. As thought produces action, the world is changed and created by opening the tap of infinite thought to express itself to the quantity and degree of open lines to each burner. Stopping up a burner produces a weak flame. Open the tap wide and the fire will blaze.

I am not a Jean Houston fan, follower or disciple but I have come to respect many of her ideas. Being able to have the live experience certainly added extra color and dimension to my concepts of human potential and expression that I can further synthesize into my continued search for truth.

Information, Spiritual Universe, Science of Mind and a dash of Jung

I only have a few minutes, but the connections between these 4 conceptual frameworks has been erupting in my mind over the last couple of days and I need to get some ideas down on paper before they disappear.

I have summarized the concepts in The Spiritual Universe in another blog. Information as it relates to the Universe is touched on in another blog as well. I believe the fundamental concept that underlies all these frameworks is the notion that everything is connected. There is one It, The Thing Itself (which is a term originally coined by Kant if I am not mistaken). God is the traditional name, but we get into trouble if we view God as something separate from the Universe or ourselves.

The Thing Itself is not physical in the sense that we traditionally think of physicality. Science of Mind follows from the long philosophical tradition from ancient Eastern religion, Plato, early Christian philosophers such as Plotinus, through Spinoza, some of Kant, Hegel etc. This strain of thought views the Universe as spiritual, not physical. Ultimate reality is not physical, but something else. We perceive the physical and use physical laws, but the underlying Reality of everything is "spiritual".

The Spiritual Universe views this ultimate reality as "physical" from the perspective of modern physics. That is, modern physics tells us that there is no "there" there. Everything is energy and relationships. Information and emergence talks about information being the ultimate "stuff" of Reality. Jung proposes the "Collective Unconscious" , another way that all is connected.

One division between these lines of thoughts is that the more secular strains (Spiritual Universe and Information) take a fairly agnostic and reactionary use of the stuff. Science of Mind proposes a constant interaction with Mind, the Universal Intelligence. Jung speaks of interaction to some degree, but mostly through archetypes that come to us through the Unconscious. Science of Mind definitely recognizes the importance of the subconcious in gaining proficiency in two-way interaction with the One.

That's all I have time for right now, but I just thought it interesting the way religion, philosophy, science and psychology are more connected and relevant to each other now more than ever. The more we learn about how little we really know about ultimate "physical" reality the more we understand that Ultimate Reality must run on higher laws and what we see is not what is really there.

Science of Mind is the one discipline that tries to tie all this eclectic thought together into a cohesive set of practices to maximize the usage of the power of getting out of the way of the Universal Intelligence and letting The Thing Itself express through the individual.

More later on this topic after my thoughts bake a little more.