[MD] The MoQ and Politics? part 2 of 3

[MarshaV]

On Jan 28, 2011, at 4:35 PM, John Carl wrote:

> Marsha:
> 
> There is a time when one's attention should be oriented toward external
>> duties, and there is a time when one's focus should be towards inner
>> processes.  Society will constantly prescribe what the former should be,
>> but for me the latter is to cultivate one's own understanding and virtue.
>> 
>> 
>> 
> See?  Flexible lines all over the place!  I see "one's own understanding" to
> be in actuality, itself a social construct of aspects of the self that
> you've gotten from readings or teachings.  In the end, there really is
> nothing that comes entirely from within.  It's just which voices you heed in
> the moment.

Right - Quality (unpatterned/patterned).   


> I don't know about Zen's zazen  It's interesting, though, that the
>> "dharma combat" that mentioned the other day was described as a Zen
>> practice for advanced monks.  Seems there is more to Zen than "just
>> sitting."
>> Also I have heard the Zen has more written about it than any other form of
>> Buddhism.  I happen to love Nargarjuna's MMK.  The more I read of it, the
>> more I understand and appreciate its wisdom.  No dogma there!   I think in
>> the Tibetan tradition meditation is as much about grounding one's
>> understanding of emptiness as seeking realization.  Both.
>> 
>> I wouldn't trust what any man or group of men might say about Lila, or
>> women.  I understand her to represent the play, or dance, of life.  The men
>> who denigrate Lila seem mostly afraid of their own inability to control
>> their
>> passions.   It's not just the Buddhists, the early Greeks and Romans were
>> just as bad.  The three Abrahamic religions too.  Phooey!
>> 
>> 
> 
> Well, it sounds like you're going "Phooey" to pretty much our entire
> cultural heritage!  If we throw out all teachings of men in Buddhism, the
> Greeks, the Romans and the three Abrahamic traditions... well that's pretty
> much the whole shootin' match right there.  What are you left to stand
> upon?  Seems to me, you've got some unexamined assumptions in such a
> stance.


On man's understanding of women, I pay no mind.  Before I read ZMM, or a 
word of Buddhism, I read a little book:  The Social Construction of Reality: 
A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge by Peter Berger and Thomas 
Luckmann.  What is left for me to stand on is  "neti, neti."  


Yours,

Marsha 

 
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