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I'm not insisting that your spirituality is weak. You're demonstrating it. I'm just observing it. You have nice manners though. Not that they matter. Spirituality requires neither manners nor travel.
There are common denominators in mystical traditions, travel isn't one of them. One can achieve Buddha-hood without ever leaving home.
But, one can't achieve Buddha-hood without altered states of consciousness. States that transcend time and space. States that are transpersonal.
Traveling through time and space is nice, but its no substitute for transcending time and space. They are after all just illusions.
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Aphorism
Buddha had to leave home. Loazi travelled west. I could only imagine what their philosophies would have been like if they didn't see the world first.
Aphorism
On Travel and Spirituality
seeking imaginary worlds rather that the real one
In all acts of stationary meditation and prayer, one learns mostly what the back of his eyelids looks like, or how to sit, how to kneel, how to lay down, how to calm, how to seek quiet of environment for quiet of mind, how to seek quite of mind for quiet environment—how to not experience. Meditation without movement is instead a desire to sleep; and it is no wonder that meditation and a good nights rest have the exact same health benefits. Seeking mindfulness involves first seeking an external world to be mindful of. The rest is seeking sleep, seeking not-seeking, rest, retirement, resignation—they call it bliss, divinity, nothingness, peace—the satiation of desire, idleness and a self-satisfying, self-gratifying, hedonistic affair with oneself. If one doesn’t get an adequate amount of sleep this method might be useful; but beyond that it is called laziness. Being able to rest isn’t necessarily a quest of the highest order. Even the most evil of people sleep well and dream.
3.
A spiritual path is never so linear and straight a line. Certainly it is never a point. Then why go straight? Why stop? Why not change directions?
4.
Spirituality requires movement. Braving spiritual valleys and mountains requires going through real ones. One cannot learn about oneself without putting oneself in different environments, different languages, experiencing new things, new cultures, new customs, new religions, new gods, new food, and the highly unconventional situations a wayward wanderer often finds himself in. To learn about oneself requires new scars, new memories, stories, experiences, variety, new perspectives, new peoples, and an affair with the rest of the world. True mindfulness is finding ourselves mindful not in in rest and relaxation, but out amongst our lives, neither here nor there for too long a time lest we become stagnant. Spirituality requires travel, not rest.
I didn’t write this for them. I wrote for myself and the ones walking by.
Aphorism
I'm not sure I would recommend one (introspection) over the other (extrospection). I am saying that one without the other is useless. But yes, spirituality is applied mostly to the immaterial or internal. Why can we not apply it to everything else? Because spirituality teaches only inner-value, and it's advocates teach that we should hide and retreat inwardly instead of act.
Buddha didn't have to leave home.
I never said my path was better. As a matter of fact, I never said I had a path at all. I merely asked a question, to which you responded with a deflection, so I will consider my question answered in the negative.
Some New Age adepts seem to have gotten rid of their fear of death, but remain afraid of living....
....which I also kinda suspect is what you're poking at here, no?
Meditation is not 'to not experience.' That is completely wrong, and any views of sitting in mindless bliss, empty being, is misunderstood. Everyone wants the golden ticket without knowing how to get it, or what it really is. So they think they have it, there they sit, mindless empty and in bliss. THAT MEANS NOTHING. Rather, it is the work that you put into your meditation when one has achieved powerful states of mindfulness and concentration, where one can do good work and not be in the swells of resistance of heart and mind.
Why is it that Atlas holds up a sphere that is supposed to be the Earth, when in relations to how one is generally educated. Evidence that the earth was a sphere (in general) was not officially admitted to by the European Powers until 1492?.
Differences between our cultures could very well be totally irrelevant.
Aphorism
reply to post by BlueMule
Buddha didn't have to leave home.
But he did. He didn't have to do anything but he did. He threw himself into life rather than hide behind his palace walls.