/lit/ - Literature

>>20652178
But the paradox then comes in, that in traditional teachings such as of Zen (although Buddhism itself is clearly somewhat of an outlier in Traditionalist circles, since it seems to deny God and self, although Guenon supposedly later came to believe there could have been an earlier, more authentic form of Buddhism which was closer to Tradition, later forms being corruptions of such teachings, and Coomaraswamy was a scholar of both Hindu and Buddhist traditions, regarding both the two major Dharmic ways as somehow compatible in some transcendent, holistic, non-linear, supra-logical way), Indian yoga or Sufism themselves, you can find this very heterodox tendency. They are IN but not strictly OF the culture they grew in, and this is not just a “New Age” conception but can be found running hundreds and hundreds of years back in such traditions. Jalaluddin Rumi, for instance, whose disciples founded the Mevlevi Sufi Order, tells you that he is not a Muslim, Jew, Christian nor Zoroastrian, not of the East nor of the West, in some ecstatic lyrics of his. Zen scriptures tell you that if you seek outside yourself for centuries, kalpas, even, in sutras, practices, and precepts for the truth of the Buddha-nature, you are veiling the Buddha-nature in that very activity.

This then leads to the paradox that if you really get into this from this angle, you’re not necessarily much different from a figure like Rajneesh (“The Tibetan way, the Sufi way, the Zen way, the Hasidic way, the way of Christ, and the way of yoga are ultimately the same”), who was NOT just an idiot, mind you, he was shockingly intelligent and well-read, having started out as an Indian philosophy professor, but DID also become a shockingly, famously corrupt New Age guru; or the Westerners who get Coleman-Barks translations of Rumi tattooed across their nipples. “Just be. #Zen.”

So you might decide you’re back at square-one of the dilemma, which is, “I need to become authentically Muslim (for instance), so let me travel to the Middle East or Central Asia and find the real dervish order to be initiated into”; or an authentic Indian yogi, authentic Buddhist monk, and the like. But doesn’t this itself seem like a runaway tendency of the outer physical ego and personality — thinking it’ll divinely regenerate itself, feel closer to the Truth, through exotic new decorations of its body and exotic new circumstances surrounding it?