Buddhism and Thelema
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@Diogenos said
"Hello everyone, this is my first post on this board, I hope my english isn't as bad as I think it is and you'll understand my question... So, first at all, what was exactly Aleister Crowley's opinion on buddhism ?"
I would say that he deeply respected the Buddha, if not all of Buddhism. In The Urn, we find Crowley using both Buddhism and Jung in order to help him understand his Magus initiation, for instance.
That said, I honestly think that Crowley had a fairly narrow view of Buddhism early on, at least as shown from his early writings.
Later on, he appeared not to write much about it directly, although he has based even Grade descriptions of the A:.A:. on Buddhist principles in some cases. These later cases show a much more developed understanding of Buddhism.
That said, Crowley wrote about Buddhism in spurts, aside from works like Science and Buddhism, which were early works. If you want to get your hands on Crowley's later, more initiated views of Buddhism, you really have to do some homework.
@Diogenos said
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I know that he was a buddhist when he received Aiwass's revelation in 1904 and that it was at the begining against his faith and philosophy, but did his opinion on buddhism changed with time ?"As in, did he stop 'believing in Buddhism'? I don't think so, and not according to The Urn. But, after his 10=1 Initiation, I'm sure many things changes that we will never know about.
@Diogenos said
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I mean, I know that Buddha is one of Thelema's saints, but does buddhism gets along with Thelema's philosophy ? The Book of the Law seems to me closer to Nietzsche's states of mind, but I hope you'll contradict me
"Thelema and Buddhism can go hand-in-hand in many cases. In fact, they appear in some instances to be two poles of another system. Of course, outer teachings and practices are similar but different between the two, and that is where most of the distinctions are, in my opinion.
The more inner teachings of both Thelema and Buddhism coincide quite beautifully, and make for a wonderful ride along the way. The distinctions are often less obvious, more subtle, and appear to be mainly a matter of perspective.
Some may say that Buddhism is "abrogate", but I would call shenanigans on that, with one exception.
The finger pointing to the moon is abrogate to the moon itself. Any teaching, or system, is but a finger pointing to the moon, and the line between the finger and the moon. At the moon, neither the finger nor the path between the two matter one bit. So in that sense, all systems are "abrogate", even Thelema.
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@simhanada said
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@chris S said
""In the end these things matter most.. How well did you love?
How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?"..Gautama Buddha"
"I didn't say either of these quotes" - Gautama Buddha
"It's completely Westernised so it couldnt possibly be a pulled quote from the canon, the authors didnt write in that fashion.
The thing is, Buddha didnt write anything down, the canon is put together from oral traditions by writers who fancied they knew what he was on about. He might not have said most of it, its the jist of his teachings.
Nevertheless it was compiled ingeniously and cant be approached like the normal linear books we are accustomed to, the texts are interwoven holographically and have to be unpacked by skillful means.. even if the primer keys waffle on repeatedly sometimes.
If you take even just a swift glance at the various schools out there you'll see that its been entirely interpreted with some speaking of union with gods and spirits.. even though it might seem he wasnt into that himself.. didnt seem interested in religion at all.. yet he we are today.
As Tibetan buddhism/Tantra was mentioned, it is believed within that school that the teachings were magically encoded, hidden and only received by supernatural means.
The versatility comes from what he was actually pointing to, once that has been revealed you can read 'Ethel the Aardvark goes quantity surveying' it wont make any 'difference.'..Gautama Buddha
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Personally, I have found Zen Buddhist meditation (zazen) most useful, more so than the yoga meditation practices as described by Crowley in Mysticism, etc. Perhaps instead of focusing on one subject like in Crowley's yoga meditation, zazen is more like no subject, the present moment, simplifying the life, etc. As such it seems to me like a general purpose practice that can enchance different types of lifes or philosophies. Actually, for the last years I've not really practiced explicit kind of Magick, in part because I noticed I was doing lots of work and not really getting enough benefit of it. With zazen, the practitioner can enter different types of states of mind or experiences. In Zen, they say that they're just makyos ("bad things"), just keep on with the practice. I noticed that for me, some of the makyos can be seen as magical phenomenen in the psyche.
In any case, I've found zazen a very strengthening and clarifying practice for me and my nervous system. As such it does not force any dogma on me and I don't find it at all incompatible with magick practice, in fact I've now become more interested in magick because of my zazen practice.
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Well, there's zazen and zazen.
Out of interest, there's a rather excellent book on Zazen, one of the few actually worthwhile books on the subject, IMHO, called Zen Training, by Katsuki Sekida. It's totally congruent with the way AC describes meditation.
The problem is this: "insight" in itself is fairly easy to get - one can have flashes of satori or non-dual realization in all sorts of situations. And for most people that's enough, just to have that flash of insight, it helps put life in perspective.
But it's pretty fugitive, and useless in terms of giving you something solid in life, or in terms of enabling you to teach others (and the A:.A:. is all about teaching), without a parallel training in "calming" meditation. (The equivalent in Theravada would be that you *have *to pursue the Jhanas to a certain extent in order to be able to meditate on the Four Noble Truths properly.) The insight has to be "fixed" by a good grounding in (initially) rather boring calming meditation and the occasional deep bath in nescience.
Now the real gem in Sekida's book is that he points out there's a certain stage before which you haven't really gotten your foot in the door of that kind of meditation yet, and that stage is absolutely parallel to what Crowley calls "Asana" - no signals from the body. And there's no getting around it - it's quite difficult and painful to get to that stage.
It's the same with Asian martial arts - understandably, Easterners have been on the whole quite chary of giving away their "secrets" to Westerners, and usually cynically fob Westerners off with things that are easy to do and that they can be charged for. But Sekida gives it all open-handedly. Well worth purusal by any Thelemite.
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"Well, there's zazen and zazen.
Out of interest, there's a rather excellent book on Zazen, one of the few actually worthwhile books on the subject, IMHO, called Zen Training, by Katsuki Sekida. It's totally congruent with the way AC describes meditation."
I think there are probably many good books about Zen or zazen. But one of the things I like about my zazen is that it doesn't require many books, just the simple techniques such as counting breath, following breath and shikantaza. It has many of the same things that Crowley described in Mysticism and other places. For instance, new practitioners of zazen start by sitting still cross-legged and counting breath in a relaxed and focused manner, keeping the mind in lower belly. Maybe it's just a preference, but I found it useful not to think 'now I'm mastering asana and now I'm mastering holding a cup of water on my head, now I'm mastering dharana, now I'm mastering dhyana', etc. I've been practicing just following my breath for years now. Other thing I didn't so much learn from Crowley is the emphasis of kind of a slightly passive yet focused and relaxed state of mind and body. For instance, Crowley maybe suggested things such as focusing on a mantra so strongly that other thoughts will be splintered away. I found the approach of kind of passively letting the thoughts come, observe them and let them go away instead of forcing it more beneficial for me. One more thing I personally found useful is to simply consider even fancy seeming experiences just makyos and continuing with the practice, such as following the breath.
"The problem is this: "insight" in itself is fairly easy to get - one can have flashes of satori or non-dual realization in all sorts of situations. And for most people that's enough, just to have that flash of insight, it helps put life in perspective.
But it's pretty fugitive, and useless in terms of giving you something solid in life, or in terms of enabling you to teach others (and the A:.A:. is all about teaching), without a parallel training in "calming" meditation. (The equivalent in Theravada would be that you have to pursue the Jhanas to a certain extent in order to be able to meditate on the Four Noble Truths properly.) The insight has to be "fixed" by a good grounding in (initially) rather boring calming meditation and the occasional deep bath in nescience.
Now the real gem in Sekida's book is that he points out there's a certain stage before which you haven't really gotten your foot in the door of that kind of meditation yet, and that stage is absolutely parallel to what Crowley calls "Asana" - no signals from the body. And there's no getting around it - it's quite difficult and painful to get to that stage.
"One of the reasons I like zazen is that it at least somewhat de-empathizes different stages, attainments, etc. Currently I value the benefits of zazen in being more relaxed, focused, etc, in everyday life and I'm not trying to reach dhyana and satori, etc. In a sense, I now view even zazen an advanced kind of practice. For many people, it would be much more efficient to first get their body and nutrition in condition, maybe exercise, hiking, martial arts, chi kung, whatever, and only then start with more rigorous and advanced meditation practices.
In any case, thanks for the Sekida reference, I'll put it on my books to read list.
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It's all horses for courses, what I'm flagging up is that the interpretation of zazen as "just precisely sitting" is one among several, and that there are others that are more in line with what Crowley taught (where the aim is to definitely get into a deep trance state, rather than rest in non-dual awareness per. se.) In fact, you are quite right that Shikantaza is an *advanced *practice.
I know I was baffled for ages by this *apparent *difference between what Old Crow had said and what some of the influx of teaching from the East (Japan first) since him have said, but the resolution is that Shikantaza is an idiosyncratic non-dual interpretation of "just sitting" as a practice sufficient unto itself, introduced by Dogen. The majority interpretation in Chinese Can is more in line with the traditional Buddhist idea of calming meditation (shamatha), first leading to sufficient calm to analyze the teachings, then as a means to introduce the practitioner to non-dual awareness as a *break *from the calm state - as Crowley says, Dhyana is actually a *break *in what you've been "trying" to do with meditation. Only after that point does zazen become "just sitting", just as walking is "just walking", etc., etc.
To put it another way, Can/Zen has always had an internal tug of war between what's been called a "sudden" and "gradual" approach. Some people think that the "sudden" approach is definitive of Zen, because that's what some of the first Zen people like DT Suzuki introduced the West to, but actually Zen has always had "gradualist" schools too, and the "gradualist" teachings are not very far at all from what Crowley taught (which is unsurprising, considering we're dealing with human universals here).
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@kasper81 said
"93
If the HGA is akin to Atman then would you say that Buddha would dismiss the Western magical tradition and Thelema? He would have encouraged aspirants to take off the ten fetters, including a sense of a spiritual Self, and aim for Nirvana?"
HGA is closer to "Buddha Nature". The HGA is just as essential to Buddhism as to any others, with the difference being on where the emphasis is placed within the respective system.
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@kasper81 said
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@Azidonis said
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@kasper81 said
"93If the HGA is akin to Atman then would you say that Buddha would dismiss the Western magical tradition and Thelema? He would have encouraged aspirants to take off the ten fetters, including a sense of a spiritual Self, and aim for Nirvana?"
HGA is closer to "Buddha Nature". The HGA is just as essential to Buddhism as to any others, with the difference being on where the emphasis is placed within the respective system."
HGA isn't a Buddhist concept at all is it?"
Neither is Atman, if you want to get technical. The closest thing you will find to the HGA in Buddhism is the Mahayana concept of Buddha Nature, and even then only in certain schools.
Madhyamika, for example, is a Mahayana school that would most likely care less.
Even so, taking the HGA as Atman is placing the sense of the 'core' in a decent enough location on the Tree. But then we get into little rhetorical things like - if the Light in Yesod is a reflection of the Light of Tiphareth, as the Atman, then what is there to say about the Anatman in Kether?
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Kasper, you understand (don't you?) that Buddhism is an early Osiris Aeon religion. There were ideas not yet discovered, others not articulated as distinctly as they are today, and whole faculties of consciousness not yet developed in 99% of all people. The best Buddhism (as voiced by Buddha) could hope to achieve is the stabilization of Yetziratic consciousness and liberation from it to Briah; in other words, what the G.D. would have called the threshold of the Abyss and A.'.A.'. marks as Dominus Liminis. It's damn fine D.L. work.
Today, we can take the same principles and see some other things to do with them. I wonder, though, if those nouveau applications are rightly called "Buddhism."
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The best Buddhism (as voiced by Buddha) could hope to achieve is the stabilization of Yetziratic consciousness and liberation from it to Briah; in other words, what the G.D. would have called the threshold of the Abyss and A.'.A.'. marks as Dominus Liminis. It's damn fine D.L. work.
Today, we can take the same principles and see some other things to do with them. I wonder, though, if those nouveau applications are rightly called "Buddhism.""
Nagarjuna is said by some to have been the "Second Buddha".
I have yet to see such works as the Mulamadhyamakakarika come from any other "Thelemite" than Crowley.
Are we still saying that Buddhism wasn't/isn't capable of producing legitimate Masters, or that the "Thelemites" just aren't up on their game?
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@Azidonis said
"Are we still saying that Buddhism wasn't/isn't capable of producing legitimate Masters, or that the "Thelemites" just aren't up on their game?"
I'm saying neither. I did say that "Master," as currently understood in A.'.A.'., represents a state of conscious that wasn't active in more than a trace of human consciousness in the 6th C. BCE and, therefore, Buddhism defined as "what Buddha taught didn't address it. However, as little as a century and a quarter or so ago, the term "Master" had a much lower threshold - what A.'.A.'. would call Adeptus Minor - and Buddhism as Buddha appears to have taught it can take one to (and across) that particular threshold.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Azidonis said
"Are we still saying that Buddhism wasn't/isn't capable of producing legitimate Masters, or that the "Thelemites" just aren't up on their game?"I'm saying neither. I did say that "Master," as currently understood in A.'.A.'., represents a state of conscious that wasn't active in more than a trace of human consciousness in the 6th C. BCE and, therefore, Buddhism defined as "what Buddha taught didn't address it. However, as little as a century and a quarter or so ago, the term "Master" had a much lower threshold - what A.'.A.'. would call Adeptus Minor - and Buddhism as Buddha appears to have taught it can take one to (and across) that particular threshold."
Do you not agree that the Four Noble Truths, and the system founded thereon, are capable of producing "Masters" as such?
I'm not seeing a correlation between the ratio of "Master vs non-Master" as having anything to do with what Aeon it is. I just don't by into such artificial restrictions as "old Aeon", I suppose.
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@Azidonis said
"Do you not agree that the Four Noble Truths, and the system founded thereon, are capable of producing "Masters" as such? "
Again, what definition are we using for "Master"? Osiris Aeon or Horus Aeon? What the Golden Dawn would have called an 8=3 (Master) a century-plus ago is literally what A.'.A.'. calls 5=6 (Adept) today. We have crossed a line from a vast period of time when the fundamental developmental step of the human species as a whole was the awakening and maturing of Ruach to a time when the fundamental step (resting atop a stability awakened and matured Ruach) is to open N'shamah. The technical term master does not mean the same thing now that it did, say, a century and a half ago, let alone two and a half millennia ago.
Since you asked for my opinion: In today's terms, the Four Noble Truths can at least take one to the threshold of adepthood. "Master," as I use the term, is far, far, far outside their purview.
"I'm not seeing a correlation between the ratio of "Master vs non-Master" as having anything to do with what Aeon it is. I just don't by into such artificial restrictions as "old Aeon", I suppose."
It's not a restriction, it's a functional definition of where the species sits.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Azidonis said
"Do you not agree that the Four Noble Truths, and the system founded thereon, are capable of producing "Masters" as such? "Again, what definition are we using for "Master"? Osiris Aeon or Horus Aeon? What the Golden Dawn would have called an 8=3 (Master) a century-plus ago is literally what A.'.A.'. calls 5=6 (Adept) today. We have crossed a line from a vast period of time when the fundamental developmental step of the human species as a whole was the awakening and maturing of Ruach to a time when the fundamental step (resting atop a stability awakened and matured Ruach) is to open N'shamah. The technical term master does not mean the same thing now that it did, say, a century and a half ago, let alone two and a half millennia ago.
Since you asked for my opinion: In today's terms, the Four Noble Truths can at least take one to the threshold of adepthood. "Master," as I use the term, is far, far, far outside their purview.
"I'm not seeing a correlation between the ratio of "Master vs non-Master" as having anything to do with what Aeon it is. I just don't by into such artificial restrictions as "old Aeon", I suppose."
It's not a restriction, it's a functional definition of where the species sits."
This is going nowhere.
I know what Crowley's writings say, re: new Aeon and the "new mastery". It's crap.
Even if we discount the "Magi" that Crowley listed in Heart of the Master, there are still plenty of actual Masters (on the A:.A:. level) throughout history.
I have seen zero data proving that more people have achieved this Mastery since 1904 than before.
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@Azidonis said
"I know what Crowley's writings say, re: new Aeon and the "new mastery". It's crap."
OK. Then we're done here. There's no use talking further if you refuse to define the pivotal word in the conversation.
It seems, perhaps, that your hunger to attach the word "master" to a particular process is an identifiable seed of your dukka.
"Even if we discount the "Magi" that Crowley listed in Heart of the Master, there are still plenty of actual Masters (on the A:.A:. level) throughout history."
"Plenty" is surely an exaggeration.
"I have seen zero data proving that more people have achieved this Mastery since 1904 than before."
OK.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"I did say that "Master," as currently understood in A.'.A.'., represents a state of conscious that wasn't active in more than a trace of human consciousness in the 6th C. BCE"
And you said this based on what, exactly?
That's a sweeping statement, and I'm curious to know the evidence that leads you to think it's true.
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@Los said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"I did say that "Master," as currently understood in A.'.A.'., represents a state of conscious that wasn't active in more than a trace of human consciousness in the 6th C. BCE"And you said this based on what, exactly?
That's a sweeping statement, and I'm curious to know the evidence that leads you to think it's true."
The history of evolution of consciousness across the centuries is pretty well documented - from the epic work by Julian Jaynes and coworkers through the more limited tracings by Bucke. (And, for that matter, anything at all, anthropological and otherwise, on the subject of humans previously being herd animals gradually developing additional cognitive faculties.) Self-consciousness as we know it was not exist as recently as a few thousand years ago, and the maturation of its faculties can be watched from as recently as 1st millennium BCE.
It would take at least a large book to answer your question beyond a summary remark. This one is pretty basic, though.
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Jim, i think i understand what you explained concerning the systems according to the aeons. Though, could you precise what was the level of Bouddha himself(not his system, his personal attainement)in terms of new aeon/AA map? Would he still be a master or an adept today? What about Lao Tse?
I thought they were masters in the new aeon/AA sense although their systems focused on attainement of adepthood(in the new aeon/AA sense)but now i'm not sure anymore...
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@kasper81 said
"On your point about Buddha only reaching 5=6, I'm not trying to catch you out but didn't you contradict yourself, therefore, in the Nirvana thread when you said that the Eight High Trances (of Buddhism) are the work of 8=3?"
Haha Kasper, you understood Jim implied that like me? I'm not sure though he meant that thus i just asked him above....
As for "contradiction" let him answer but i dont see it that way necesarly. Because "as above so below", you see, similar things exist on all planes, they just get different levels of mastery and meanings each time.