--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > Who here still believes that enlightenment confers > perfection on the one who claims to have realized (or > who actually *has* realized) enlightenment? Who here > believes that the actions of the enlightened are *by > definition* "in accord with the laws of nature" and > thus are *always* "life supporting?"
I don't rule it out. BUT: As I understand the premise (and have argued before a number of times), it has *NO* implications for the behavior of others. It does NOT mean, for example, that if someone who is enlightened tells you to do something, you should do it. It does NOT mean that if the enlightened person does Bad Things him/herself, you should accept them. This is where folks tend to get fouled up. The "perfection," if it exists, is in the enlightened person saying, "Do this." Nature "wants" the person to say that. But Nature does not necessarily "want" you to do it, only for the enlightened person to *tell* you to do it. Nature may "want" you to say to yourself, "That's dumb, I'm not going to do that." Nature "wants" the person to do the Bad Things (we cannot know why), but NOT for everyone else to accept them. Nature may "want" others to be outraged and prevent the person from doing the Bad Things, or punish him/her for having done them. It all goes back to the old "Unfathomable is the course of action." You can't second-guess it; you aren't relieved of the necessity of making your own decisions. The "perfection" of the enlightened person's actions is relevant ONLY to the enlightened person. Those of us in ignorance shouldn't respond to the enlightened person any differently than we do to anybody else. That the person is enlightened is irrelevant to the rest of us. > And who thinks that this piece of dogma is a self- > serving and often-abused piece of...uh...ignorance that > deserves to be flushed down the commode once and for all? The dogma that the enlightened person's actions are "perfect" is one thing. The dogma that THEREFORE you should accept everything the enlightened person does is something else entirely. That's the piece that's ignorant, IMHO.
