Comments on: A letter to Tricycle http://blog.metacentricities.com/2006/12/23/a-letter-to-tricycle/ The intersection of vertical lines through the center of buoyancy of a floating body when it is at equilibrium... A collection of centers... Where religion, politics, science, technology, the environment and Michelle's brain and life meet. Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:41:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Mike Doyle http://blog.metacentricities.com/2006/12/23/a-letter-to-tricycle/comment-page-1/#comment-276 Mike Doyle Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:39:23 +0000 http://blog.metacentricities.com/?p=477#comment-276 I'm glad I wasn't the only one given pause by that article. I think you hit my unease on the head when you said, "I meditate to become aware of everything in the moment - the unsatisfactory and the numinous." Me too, because they are both there in the moment. For Thatcher to claim the primacy of the numinous over the everyday, refute any hint of enlightenment in the everyday, to bluntly opine "the truth of the matter is" about anything, seems to me utterly dualistic. So every teaching of Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Shunryu Suzuki, or even Nagarjuna (as detailed in the same issue) regarding the use of the mundane as a springboard to glimpse enlightenment in the present moment was nothing more than mistaken myth-making? Come now. There is an unexplored assumption that pervades Thatcher's article: the assumption that the mundane world is unsatisfactory in the first place. Her assumption leads her explicitly to a nihilistic outcome: the mundane is to be transcended, to fall away, as the practitioner reaches deep enough that form no longer matters. Oddly enough, in the same issue it's noted that positions such as Thatcher's that confuse the mere concept of the numinous with the sublime, itself, would have earned the scorn of Nagarjuna. When the mundane is seen as something to be rejected, where, exactly, is room for compassion for your fellow sentient beings left to arise--or to be expressed, for that matter? I wouldn't call that arid Buddhism, or Buddhism at all. I'd just call that selfishness. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one given pause by that article. I think you hit my unease on the head when you said, “I meditate to become aware of everything in the moment - the unsatisfactory and the numinous.” Me too, because they are both there in the moment.

For Thatcher to claim the primacy of the numinous over the everyday, refute any hint of enlightenment in the everyday, to bluntly opine “the truth of the matter is” about anything, seems to me utterly dualistic. So every teaching of Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Shunryu Suzuki, or even Nagarjuna (as detailed in the same issue) regarding the use of the mundane as a springboard to glimpse enlightenment in the present moment was nothing more than mistaken myth-making? Come now.

There is an unexplored assumption that pervades Thatcher’s article: the assumption that the mundane world is unsatisfactory in the first place. Her assumption leads her explicitly to a nihilistic outcome: the mundane is to be transcended, to fall away, as the practitioner reaches deep enough that form no longer matters. Oddly enough, in the same issue it’s noted that positions such as Thatcher’s that confuse the mere concept of the numinous with the sublime, itself, would have earned the scorn of Nagarjuna.

When the mundane is seen as something to be rejected, where, exactly, is room for compassion for your fellow sentient beings left to arise–or to be expressed, for that matter? I wouldn’t call that arid Buddhism, or Buddhism at all. I’d just call that selfishness.

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