Vaj wrote: > > On May 2, 2005, at 2:43 PM, Alex Stanley wrote: > > > How is your own attachment and identification with a new set of > > codified dogmas any less blind? > > I go with my experience. You don't have to agree with it.
But Vaj, you just said our experiences have a funny way of matching what we've been taught they should be. Why should your experiences of the harmful effects of the TM- Sidhi program be any more valid than my experiences if its benefits? By the way, this "precept leads to percept" scenario is what Dana Sawyer holds. (Dana's the philosophy and religion professor who's been quoted a fair amount on this list.) He says that if enlightenment were really the ultimate reality, enlightened people would describe it pretty much the same the world over. But they don't. Enlightened Buddhists describe it the way Buddhists are taught to describe it, and enlightened Hindus describe it the way they've been taught it should be. And the two are very different. Enlightenment is described differently from culture to culture, and some cultures have no mention of it in their religious traditions. (Native Americans, for example, according to Dana, make no reference to anything like an enlightened state of being.) -- Patrick Gillam Vaj wrote: "It's easy to condition ourselves. How many times have we heard that this is the goal: silence in activity--CC, etc. We were conditioned to believe that from the start. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. ... Is it such a surprise that we have been told this precise same scenario--in a number of different ways and then ego fills in the blank?" To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/