| | We're definitely on a fringe with this "pragmatic, hardcore dharma" approach for sure. I highly respect the teachings of Buddha and the raw, unchanged teachings in the Pali Canon remain an amazingly valuable source. In my experience (still pre-SE, it seems), after reading the original texts, I was enthusiastic and saw truth, but had a lot of trouble actually knowing how to practice from those texts. I dabbled but couldn't quite get things right, and found myself sitting, mind wandering, frustrated, and not sure how to actually do the things. Coupled with the high reverence and extremely high standards in the texts, I was discouraged and under the impression that I had to give up the home life, take alms, perfectly follow the precepts in order to start making progress. I'm not disputing the high standards or the trainings in morality that are recommended in the original texts, but there's another side to it. After reading some pragmatic stuff, where people were openly talking about attainments and talking about tweaks here and there, different ways of looking at states/stages/original lists/enlightenment/practice techniques, practice opened up, I started crossing the A&P, getting into soft jhanas, feeling in a better place, and feeling like there was a community where I could talk about my experience, what I thought was going on, and get a lot of good feedback in my original language, without the loss of meaning due to translating an extremely old language. There's also the fact that Buddha was constantly using analogies, changing the phrasing of his teachings and techniques, and modifying the approaches to suit the audiences he was teaching, with their various backgrounds and tendencies (all of which are from over two thousand years ago). If we had Buddha here now, I'm sure he would adjust his teachings to suit the minds and predispositions of our time. He gave so many different methods of practice that were all designed to lead to the same end-goal. He used all his various fingers to "point to the moon", though the moon (end-goal, essence of dharma) itself remained the same. But after long enough, people start to make maps and compasses and telescopes and technology/language/culture/predispositions change, so why not find new ways to point to the moon? Besides, in the end, we have amazing technology nowadays... we have cyber information that isn't rusting, that can't be lost just because word of mouth isn't there. We won't lose the Pali Canon, we won't lose the original discourses. If you're worried about the sasana dying, perhaps you should make a dozen time capsules for 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 years from now and scatter them to assure these original teachings aren't lost.
Just my 2 cents, as someone who personally admires and finds practical application in the new frameworks that we have to help get to the moon. |