From: psc@sei.cmu.edu (Peter Capell)
Subject: Well, well, well...
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 16:20:42 EST


...so you want to push hands do you?  

			(okay okay :-)

Steve, (you ignorant slut)

07-Jan schan@birch.srg.af.mil Nothing to do with MA (was Re: guts and spirits)

>	Jeez Peter, don't those Hindu spiritual leader types ever warn about
>going to extremes?

And can't you see that I completely agree with myself!

>	Plato and Nietzsche both lived, and thought a lot about what it was all
>about. Discounting them out of hand is just as numb-skulled as slavishly
>believing them.
 
Well, actually I mostly discounted Nietzche, Plato was sort of eastern
sounding.  I like his cave analogy.  Nice guy, okay he passes.

Mr. N, on the other hand, is a boring megalomaniac.  Great bathroom reading.
I keep him next to Reader's Digest.

>	There is a strong tradition in Zen and Taoism to denigrate "book
>learning" and purely intellectual pursuits. But if you examine it in it's
>full (or at least, broader) context, it was meant to be used as a corrective
>measure against excessive scholasticism...

...complete agreement.  Precisely the intention of my comments.

> - by applying their one extreme against
>the other extreme, the students would come closer to the center.

This is your conjecture.  The way a yogi might study the Vedas for example, is
to take a single line and meditate on it for hours, maybe days, maybe years.
Sound familiar?  

	NOT!

>	My understanding of those traditions...

...obviously questionable at this point.

> is that book learning is VERY
>important - but that everything you learn must be examined, and made real
>with practice. Ultimately, book learning must be discarded, but you have to
>learn it before you can discard it.

...you made this up didn't you?

>	Lots of people seem to adopt an extreme anti-intellectual position
>which (as I understand it) is just as erroneous as extreme "book learning".
>The spontaneous but IGNORANT person is no better than an animal and can never
>rise above their environmentally conditioned reactions.

I don't know how "anti-intellectual" I am.  I like to think I hate everyone
equally.  What I am against is talk (and writing) against which there is no
standard for comparison.  As far as I am concerned, Nietzche is as much myth
as the Bible--until I see God, there is only belief.  Belief without proof is
only discussion.

>	Its all predicated on the belief that your yogi isn't just plain
>deluded. Your yogi sits around opening his chakras, and Nietszche sat around,
>arguing with people, studying history and analyzing things.

I didn't claim proof.  I claimed that yogis have a defined "practice" and that
the results of these practices can be measured.  That is, at the very most
basic level, if you follow yogic practice, including diet, you will at the
very least reduce blood pressure, and be able to reduce breathing and heart
rate at will.  These side effects are measurable, irrespective of perceptions
one may have.  

>	On what basis can you claim that the yogi's methods are more effective
>than the western philosopher? Just because you can "feel" it? Lots of people
>feel things.

See above.  I can also tell you that you can sit in a church from now until
doomsday and you will never have the consistency of perceptions or the
residual calm effected by consistent yogic meditation.  

>	Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. One could easily say that all a yogi does is mumble
>lofty platitudes to impressionable, spiritually starved westerners, who are
>jaded by their local spiritual heritage.

Indeed, could be, the difference being that in one case it is true and in the
other, it is not.

>	I saw a book called "Karma Cola" - it's about all the spiritually
>desperate westerners who went to India, looking for truth. I keep meaning to
>buy it and read it, but haven't had a chance. The blurb seemed to indicate
>that average Indian considered many of these seekers to be chumps.
>	Sorta like if some Chinese guy came over to the US to seek out the
>wisdom of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, because he discovered that all the Chinese
>Taoists and Buddhists were fakes and bozos.

"There is counterfeit because there is real gold."

>	He's the anti-Christ. Or is that the Pope?

"Pompous kraut" comes to my mind first.

>	Well, who does he have to be in order to have an opinion? Many people
>seem to think that his analysis of reason, morality and power are insightful.

The point is that he is not treated in a useful framework such that his
"knowledge" might actually serve a purpose.  People cite him in the same way
they do scripture, as though it had inherent, obvious value. 

>	Perhaps - maybe they still exist in strange niches like witchcraft,
>or in fringe movements like theosophy - which pops up and then gets disproved.

Ah, so this is it, you discount all things "metaphysical."

Well, metaphysical or not, I did see a documentary on QED (local ed. station)
depicting three yogis who volunteered for a laboratory experiment in which
they were locked in to a meat-freezer-type compartment, and where the oxygen
was allowed to dissipate over several hours.  They stayed in the room for more
than six hours past the point where the scientists claimed humans would
normally begin having brain damage.  Hey, it's not levitation, but it is
something.  It took demonstrations of this kind of power to get western
science to finally acknowledge that one actually could consciously control the
socalled "autonomic" nervous system.  Biofeedback is now common.  No one ever
provides the proper attribution that basically the yogis (and others in the
east) invented this.  There are a lot of things like that.  

>...there is a long and constant tradition of contemplation and mysticism in
>Christianity.

Which you aptly pointed out: "which pops up and then gets disproved."
The west has nothing to do with mysticism, unless you count the appearances of
the Virgin Mary (and Elvis) on the sides of refrigerators.

>	You're going off the rhetorical deep-end on this one, Peter. I refer
>you to folks like Theresa of Avila, Kant, Spinoza, and Aquinas. They
>all lived deeply spiritual lives - it wasn't all just talk for them - they
>claimed to experience their philosophies.

Anh, yer probably right.  But anyway, each of the philosophers you mention are
mostly unknown to most people.  And they are in no way represented in the make
up of our culture.  This is of course also rapidly becoming true in the east
as well.  As your "Karma Cola" book will point out, Indians are becoming
overwhelmed by the spiritual deficit of our time just like in the west.
Eventually the real practice of their own inventions will disappear there too.

>	Maybe you should give the Chinese some credit for deciding how their
>language will be represented to westerners, instead of passively accepting
>Wade-Giles, or other foriegnly produced system?

Okay now this I really don't get.  Actually I'm not passively accepting
anything except that I have never pronounced any word in the English language
beginning with the letter "Q" with a "ch" sound.  Is this a difficult concept?
Further, more and more in recognition of this same principle, Indians have
come to spell Indian words such as "rajnish" as "rajneesh," recognizing that
in American english, we pronounce "i" as "fish" not "feesh."  Big concept
hunh?  Also, I never say "xit!"  or "xame on you..." or "xe sell sea xells at
the sea xore..."  

In other words, I give the Chinese linguists credit for nothing in light of
their ignorance of my language.

***** ***** ****** ***** *****	   AND    ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

...these are just my opinions after all.  I don't really care who believes
them.


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