Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
With big cognitive dissonances of the sort I mentioned in the previous post, we have three options: two involve clinging to one side and ignoring the other, while the third entails rejecting neither. Dwelling in a space of non-finality. Staying open to learning new things and seeing in a clearer and larger way.
Needless to say, this perspective isn't a best-seller these days. In the first place, social media has made everybody an expert, from actual experts down to the guy who read something somewhere by someone else who read something somewhere, and now knows everything. And then, if you're of the wrong tribe in whatever subject is being aired, then nothing you say can be right. We've come a long way from the remark -- proferred by many, but I'm most familiar with the formulation attributed to Maimonides: "Accept the truth from whoever utters it."
With regard to this particular contradiction which many have faced, we find a certain number of apologists. They have always existed within Shambhala, interpreting every action ever taken by the guru as a teaching, insisting that someone so realized could not possibly harm another person, could not possibly ever exhibit self-centeredness. On the other side is the view that the corruption which has existed within the organization throughout its history necessitates an unceasing effort to destroy it, and furthermore to attack anyone who has anything at all good to say about any of its teachers, teachings, or programs.
I would like to do something different here. I'd like to deny neither side. In particular, I'd like to see what this particular community, with its 50+ years of teachings, and buddhism more generally, have to offer the world, in this time of great crisis. I won't be ignoring the negatives. There will be posts exploring what has gone wrong, and why. But in case anyone hasn't noticed, the earth is on fire. Climate change will be bringing one humanitarian crisis after another to grapple with as the years go by. We are so thoroughly interconnected at this point that other pandemics are certain to arrive, and we will have to relate to them within a political context in which various tenets of basic science are rejected by large numbers of people -- including some in the incoming US administration. Many thousands of nuclear weapons exist in multiple countries, including some which are enemies of others, and there's no guarantee we will be able to stop all others from obtaining their own.
Social media has effectively removed gatekeepers from the paths of knowledge, a result applauded by those who believe that if we just allow everything to be advocated for on a level playing field, the truth will win out. Well, personally, I think this is one of the most naive ideas ever invented, and we are seeing what happens today when it has been implemented. A Youtube video featuring someone who has spent their life diligently and deeply exploring, with integrity and humility and care, their particular subject, might be automatically followed by some Joe Schmidt or other who actually knows almost nothing but has set up a studio in their basement and attracted a huge following because ... they dependably feed a particular party line. Careful, broad reading of good scholarship has almost completely given way to the watching of videos or skimming of three-line "tweets" (sorry, "X's") et al.
And everybody is shouting. And also distracted, multi-tasking every which way. Speedy. And all the while those with the power to do so are propagating disinformation like there's no tomorrow (which seems to be their unconscious aim -- eliminating tomorrow, that is). A mere couple of generations after we were supposed to have finally learned our lesson, fascism is on the rise yet again. We can see, in the wake of the last election, that though we have made a ton of progress over the last couple of generations with regard to establishing equality and accepting difference, clearly our society remains vulnerable to demagogues and their scapegoats. Gigantic corporations have enormous power to do both good and harm, but we see far too much of the latter occurring, with no effective means to counter it. The holocaust of industrial agriculture is an abomination, unbearable. One could go on.
Yet this will not be a political sub. The aim here is not to focus on that layer of the problem (let alone to get lost down rabbit holes, to have to debate basic realities). There are thousands of other places for that. I would like people to feel free to write both about the process of working with themselves and those they know interpersonally, and also about society and the world, but in both cases to do so with regard, principally, to the buddhist teachings. Because I think they have a great deal to offer us right now.
So, yes, there will no doubt be posts about the bathwater. But babies: one of the best things around (along with dogs). Let's focus more on all that, because the world needs as much of the positive as it can get right now. Well, it always did.