Today's muse, I had a chance to hear Andrew Olendzki talk yesterday. I can only image the level of mindfulness and the organic observational system that grows out of such a set of practices conducted over the last 2,500 years or so.
I was listening for what Andrew had to say about the collective, and I found it interesting that he didn't have much to say. Whether right or wrong, I assume that the collective is not very accessible from the practice, which I found personally unsettling. Unsettling because with this much wisdom and history, that it is not apparent, may call into question any meaningful concept of the human collective. It may also simply mean that with such a powerful focus on individual observation, that the collective is not particularly accessible through this approach. So as is often the case, with anyone operating from a system of beliefs, if something is not "knowable" from the system, it tends to take on the characteristic of being uninteresting, which had I asked Andrew this question, is the way I think he might have responded.
For me the unsettling part, give the power and history of the practice Andrew described, is that he may be right, that any attempt to "see"' the collective from our "cell" like position, is doomed to tautological failure. Perhaps the great questions are by definition unanswerable, and perhaps our thoughts are simply "events" on the wave of motions....
But I am a seeker, I seek therefore I am... or am I not?
I was listening for what Andrew had to say about the collective, and I found it interesting that he didn't have much to say. Whether right or wrong, I assume that the collective is not very accessible from the practice, which I found personally unsettling. Unsettling because with this much wisdom and history, that it is not apparent, may call into question any meaningful concept of the human collective. It may also simply mean that with such a powerful focus on individual observation, that the collective is not particularly accessible through this approach. So as is often the case, with anyone operating from a system of beliefs, if something is not "knowable" from the system, it tends to take on the characteristic of being uninteresting, which had I asked Andrew this question, is the way I think he might have responded.
For me the unsettling part, give the power and history of the practice Andrew described, is that he may be right, that any attempt to "see"' the collective from our "cell" like position, is doomed to tautological failure. Perhaps the great questions are by definition unanswerable, and perhaps our thoughts are simply "events" on the wave of motions....
But I am a seeker, I seek therefore I am... or am I not?
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