Anders Honore wrote:Dechen Norbu wrote:Pursuit spiritual happiness or making such pursuit (his and that of others) into a fantasy sided by a business.
My take, not always shared, is that when some people feel disappointed with samsara they turn their attention for a way out. If instead of a real path they find those "feel good" neo advaitan" or, broader, "new agish" self tailored paths, they just dress samsara with a new mask, one much harder to recognize and remove. So they waste a life thinking they are doing what they aren't.
It's like a drug. Even though it makes you feel good, it damages your health. The problem with these fantasist paths is that. While you think you're going somewhere, you stay exactly where you are, stuck in a golden cage instead of freeing yourself. If you take the cage for a palace, you may even like it there and the consequences of this may extend beyond one single lifetime, which is saddening.
Buddhism is a popular comfort zone for many such people too. And of course, there are very few who think of themselves that way. We all pretend we are somewhere on the road to liberation.
If they live lives of harmlessness and do good to others, there's nothing damaging in it, imo.
I beg to disagree.
People can go to school and flunk, but at least they have the opportunity to learn. Now, if they go to the mall thinking it's the same as going to school, we have a different scenario. Let's not forget that people join these paths because they want to avoid suffering and be happy. In a fake path, they are buying a lie.
I mean, if they are practicing something worthy, Dzogchen or not, that is always good, even if their practice is far from perfect. Not all students are A stundets, yet they manage to benefit themselves somehow. If they're hooked in someone's ego trip, that's really nasty. The more they'll excel at it, the worse it gets.
Plus, mistaking people by teaching them a fantasy that doesn't lead to liberation is not, in my opinion, not doing harm. It's doing one of the worse kinds of harm possible. People who look at humanity or sentient beings by a different prism don't see it as harmful, since they are used to see harm in different ways. So they don't take this phenomena of "new agish" as something troublesome. I differ and see it as something worrying. Fast food, consumerist mentality applied to spirituality, if you want. This is a problem and it's very damaging. The more "ego trips" we have around, the less chances people get of finding a real path. If you don't see this as very harmful, perhaps your solidity in the contemplation of the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma should be strengthened, I'm sorry to say. You're perhaps failing to see how deep is the shit we're in and how valuable it is for someone to have a path that works.
... 