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| On 2006-07-29 23:41:49 -0700, "hrwire@gmail.com" <hrwire@gmail.com> said:
> I think you forgot to mention about the sexual abuse of children by the
> priests in the church......two sides of a coin..........Stu?
I did not "forget" to mention it. But now that you brought it up it is
interesting to note that the higher-ups in the Church felt that xtian
spirituality would be enough to take care of the pedephilia.
The results bolster the Wilber argument that there are lines of
development beyond spiritual development that need recognition.
>
> If you go to any ashram in India.........you can clearly see what kind
> of people throng these places, most of them are the people who are too
> independent that they they have lost sight of where they're heading and
> think that they can find their inner self by just ending up in an
> ashram!
In the last 100 years Indian culture has changed a lot. Older Indian
society followed a strict caste system with very strong social
restrictions. For the most part as a citizen your course in life, your
career, your marriage, your village was set from birth. Please correct
me if I am wrong.
Yoga itself was never a path for the general population. Much of its
texts were kept secret and were not accessible to the average Indian.
One message of the Gita and many of the sutras is that life is
determined, it is a wheel of causal events. In order to escape this
determination one could not change the dharma outside oneself, the
change has to happen within. Only then can a student transcend the
endless cycle of life and death. Perhaps it is this form of freedom
that individuals from the west where looking for when they come to
ashrams. After all the height of this movement came at a time when
many Americans were facing strong social determinism and conformity. I
am thinking here of the draft as well as the fear of coming out of
college and going into "plastics".
Self determination as a concept came to India with the British and
Dutch. The modern cultural values almost were the death of traditional
Hindu values in the 20th century. In the 30's and 40's there were a
number of holymen who focused a great deal on trying to hold on to
traditional values in India. For the most part the younger Indian
middle class began to embrace western values. Many converted to
xtianity. They viewed the ancient traditions as dead.
By the 50's and 60's some of these holymen were bolstered by interest
from the west in yogic traditions. In many cases these men found a
greater audience in the west than in their own community. I am
thinking here of BKS Iyengar and Swami Prabhupada for example.
As for westerners who come to India to learn yoga from ashrams, yoga
communities and studios, I suspect these seekers (I include myself as
one) are looking for an authentic practice that is not available in the
West.
> If the society here was so rigid, why would all these people
> end up here, maybe you can start your own discourse about your culture,
> right?
>
>
> Om Shanthi
> Sharath
I believe that has become the topic of this thread.
--
~Stu
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