mikenz66 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:17 pm
Saengnapha wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:40 pm
Forget what I say and just read some conversations with U.G or look at the video I first posted in the other thread. You don't need me as a mouthpiece for U.G. If you can relate to what he says, fine. If not, just move on. IT was never my intention to be some kind of interpreter of U.G. I can just give impressions of what it was like to observe and be around him. What else do you expect? You seem very opposed to even that!
I've listened to a few minutes of UG, read some JK, and read hundreds of your posts, and to me they all have the same evasive quality of not actually answering questions, but instead asking questions to put the questioner off balance.
Now, that sort of approach is appropriate for those who have decided to become students of one of these people, but for those of us who are not, it often sounds like evasive posturing and clever word play. As we've observed, there are thousands of such gurus to choose from, so why should I spend much time on these particular ones.
As for your impressions of UG, they sound quite similar to what many report or experience, with various Buddhist teachers, such as (to mention some famous ones) Ajahn Chah, the Dalai Lama, or Thich Nhat Hanh.
I've said before that you'd make a much better impression if you actively engaged with Buddhist ideas, and provided some insight into where you see they need to be modified based on what you have learned. A Krishnamurty-inspired examination of assumptions along the lines of Ven Nananada's Nibbana sermons would be very interesting, for example.
Mike
Mike, Because you are a Buddhist, you expect/want a dialogue concerning Buddhist ideas. That's fair enough. That's not what U.G. was about. His conversations were not sectarian, religious, or mystical. The same for JK. When you assume that some things exist, you build up a body of knowledge surrounding that assumption. Both K's seem to have exploded the religious myth that has been around for millenia. They are probably not the first people to do it in history. If the myth gets exploded, why would anyone continue the myth with dialogues about Nibbana, Christ Consciousness, or Brahman? These were concepts to them and not the ineffable which both have said was 'unknowable'. The grasping of the unknowable was the point that U.G. constantly grappled with people about, not grasping concepts like Nibbana and feeling like you 'know' something. It was the impossibility of knowing that was the point. That impossibility triggered something in U.G. He knew he had fooled himself all his life. That grasping ended for him and as he said, would end for anyone if they saw it for a split second.
If someone is not interested in hearing what U.G. had to say, that is fine. But to create all sorts of ideas about who he was or what he said and then put them into the bag of right or wrong view, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, Hindu or Christian is just plain a waste of everyone's time. Then we are back to papanca and the content of world mind and endless problems. Sorry, not for me. But I appreciate your non-judgemental posts.
As far as Nanananda goes, I've read quite a bit and like him. But they are not dealing with the human being directly. They all deal with concepts, Buddhist concepts. The scholarly trumps the transcendant. What I like about U.G. was the fact that there was not another language to learn, nowhere to rest your weary brain, and the letting go of what need not be pursued. U.G.'s was not an intellectual engagement at all. If you sit around thinking about Buddhist ideas all day long, you are thinking, not living. Many people like to think. They are sure that they can think themselves out of all dukkha. Ain't gonna happen. It is like a replacement therapy, exchanging one set of ideas for another.