For sure, I'm no Buddhist and don't believe we're all going the Bardo and back until we achieve enlightenment. As one who doesn't claim any version of enlightenment, I'm not going to claim I've got the path to wisdom and generosity of spirit. But I'm 100% certain the path is not through abdicating all responsibility and believing the onl…
For sure, I'm no Buddhist and don't believe we're all going the Bardo and back until we achieve enlightenment. As one who doesn't claim any version of enlightenment, I'm not going to claim I've got the path to wisdom and generosity of spirit. But I'm 100% certain the path is not through abdicating all responsibility and believing the only path to purity or holiness is supplicating to a magic fairy. That framing structurally blocks you from truly seeing yourself or others. The wisdom I've found has in many ways been driven by secularized and westernized learnings from various strains of Buddhism. In fact, my take on fallenness is more or less directly taken from Pema Chodron. One of my favorite quotes from one of her talks:
Behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there’s always fear. [to your point, shared by the Buddhists, that the default is force, violence, and suffering, which engenders fear in us from the start] But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungraspable, and unbiased.
Perhaps because there is nothing worth fearing. Which does not preclude assessing a threat to lives you love, and confronting it with force if necessary.
For sure, I'm no Buddhist and don't believe we're all going the Bardo and back until we achieve enlightenment. As one who doesn't claim any version of enlightenment, I'm not going to claim I've got the path to wisdom and generosity of spirit. But I'm 100% certain the path is not through abdicating all responsibility and believing the only path to purity or holiness is supplicating to a magic fairy. That framing structurally blocks you from truly seeing yourself or others. The wisdom I've found has in many ways been driven by secularized and westernized learnings from various strains of Buddhism. In fact, my take on fallenness is more or less directly taken from Pema Chodron. One of my favorite quotes from one of her talks:
Behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there’s always fear. [to your point, shared by the Buddhists, that the default is force, violence, and suffering, which engenders fear in us from the start] But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungraspable, and unbiased.
Perhaps because there is nothing worth fearing. Which does not preclude assessing a threat to lives you love, and confronting it with force if necessary.