I have just arrived back from a week away with Cat at a place called chisholme. It would describe itself as a school of esoteric education, and it is, but much more broadly it is a positive place of friendliness and tranquility, somewhere you can go to feel comfortable with your self and relatively at peace with the world. I have come back inspired by the people i have met there, and hopefully I can extend some of these feelings i have got from people into the rest of life.
One thing which I have become more aware of is how good it is to only say what you mean, there are many israeli’s, and a spanish girl, at chisholme, and to totally generalise they are more direct in there way of speaking. One may be offended at first, at the lack of pleasantries and common british introductory ways of speaking. How nice to speak only when you are inspired and what you say is interesting, funny, positive. How nice to feel comfortable in the inevitable silences between these good words. One can say that this is what the Buddha told us about right speech, he said to not gossip, lie, steal other peoples times with pointless words, and generally to speak compassionately and intelligently. I’m not saying that it is not good to gibber on in an amusing way to someone, but to do so only if the gibbering is full of passion and fun.
I sat in on a study sessions (they run courses), and the basic style of study is to read a text, or hear a reading or a teaching, and then to discuss this with your fellow students, helped along by a (wise?) supervisor who is there to lead the conversation in a good direction if needs be, but not to Teach anything.
and the food is spectacular
www.beshara.org
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January 8, 2009 at 2:46 am
heallan02
Label me intriged. However, I went to somthing very similar – called the Lion’s Gate, through a buddist teaching called the Longchen. I was at first quite impressed with how much one of the teachers seemed to know about the history and intricacies of the faith, if that is the correct term. However it became apparent pretty quickly that it wasn’t a happening evolving thing. I think alot of those places can get away with being below par as they are shrouded under the protection of ‘a thoughtful religion’.
It made me very glad of being at university and communicating with guinuine ‘learned people’ – who cannot under any scope of the word ‘make things up’ else they would be quickly saked! Speak to P.Donoghue if you don’t believe me!
January 8, 2009 at 11:20 am
drcaterpillar
Interesting. I suppose what could set this place apart from the rest is that they do not have specific teachings, and use mystical texts from a variety of religions/prophets/great people in order to discuss “deep” questions. I agree with you certainly that a lot of places aren’t that evolving, following a 2000yr old teaching to the letter cannot be a congenial point from which to start a flowing, evolving school of thought (however it still has the possibility to be quite valid)
I doubt that the teacher knowing the history and intricacies of his faith has much bearing on the real truth behind the words he is saying
Yes, university is full of very learned people, but they are generally concerned with intellectual and scientific matters, which seem to be separate (but not fundamentally different) from matters of the soul, or whatever you would like to call them. Not to say academic learning will not allow you to grow in a spiritual sense, but it would be one of many totally valid but more indirect ways to do so. Would you make a distinction between ‘learned’ and ‘wise’? Certainly university is a great place for rational, objective, factual truth focused on specific subjects, or does it have a broader meaning than that?
Views please, oh champion of education
January 23, 2009 at 8:45 pm
heallan02
It is tempting to compartmentalise thinking into sections, and I can see why we do it. Ideas are put (invariably) into words, and often in the form of books or journal articals etc. This process leaves ideas open to speculation, as my perception of somthing I read will be distinctly different from yours. But I think this is what is exiting about academic study. It’s not dry fact learning. Lectures are but one way of learning something. The idea, especially of a science is to question, to probe new areas for fertile researching. Of course this takes time, patience, immese drive to get there – but we only get one shot at life right? (I’m afraid I have to sweep aside religious ties to an afterlife quite flippantly here – not to say I haven’t considered the idea in more detail). The idea of science is to build up upon what we know, thats what the textbooks will tell you – but who wrote the textbook? Do you think they care if you do well at the subject, books make money for authers when they sell. So the glossier and funkier the better. But what really matters is that 50 years ago, the ideas within that textbook would have been completly new and unbroken ground. Someone had to get that knowledge, why do we even call it knowledge. Something that is in a textbook today may be falsified since and so have to be changed.
This is without mentioning journals, where the warefare is really happening. Is that not exiting?