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Grassroots Philosophy in East and West
Walk the bridge between East and West (you see more when walking) and reopen the gate between inner and outer Man
Permalink : http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/jern
Saturday , March 15 , 2008
Caterpillar versus Butterfly
Posted by talkfact , Reader : 228 , 18:41:53  
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I left Chiang Mai and Thailand a couple of weeks ago. And now,  Back in Europe: in Copenhagen, working for 3-6 months.

There’s nothing to say about the food in Denmark (or Sweden or Norway). There was an immigrant in Sweden, when asked about Swedish food, his comment was: The Swedes, they only eat spaghetti and bread, we, the immigrants, eat proper food, meat, fish, vegetables every day.

Still, compared to England they eat good food in Scandinavia. There’s a saying that in Hell the British do the cooking. If your meditate on that for a minute you realise that in Heaven the Thai do the cooking.

Anyway, every town in Sweden has a Thai restaurant, so why complain…

 

A few days before I left Chiang Mai I found a book at the Geckos bookshop, “pathways in space”.

The book was written by a Buddhist-minded American mathematician (!) brought up in a Christian family. He ended his life as a Buddhist.

The writer takes the lifecycle of the butterfly as a description of spiritual human development. The life of the caterpillar is two-dimensional. It crawls on the surface of things and the only thing it has in mind is to feed itself from the material things (leafs or whatever).

Then, later, as a Butterfly, life is three-dimensional, moving about freely in space, feeding on fluids, the mind occupied with mating, taking part of Cosmos, sharing the beauty of the world.

 

The life of the caterpillar reminds me of life in the Western world. Here we are stuck in a materialistic view of the world. Living a life on the surface as we are empty inside, there’s very little, or none, spiritual life at the inside. Energy, power, insight, all is expected to come from external sources. It’s a two-dimensional life and there’s no heaven waiting us afterwards. If you don’t find heaven on earth you won’t find it in heaven either.

 

People in the East (in India or East of India) they were born into a three-dimensional world; they were born with a life of the inside as well. It’s in the culture, in the atmosphere. Any Easterner can have access to it whenever he or she so wishes.

This is not so amazing. People in East Asia are the youngest people on earth (genetically speaking), where the Westerners are the mid age, and the Africans the oldest. A map of genetics can show this. Humans were born in Africa, and they first spread over the European continent. East Asia was the latest region to be inhabited by humans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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comment 11
talkfact date : 24/03/2008 time : 19.26
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/jern
penfact 

FelixQui, when I talk about the Executives as the black sheep of present Western culture, the stress should be on “present”. I’m referring to a situation which came into existence in 1980s or somewhat earlier or later. At this time pensions fund backed by enormous capital started to be main stock holders of the big companies. They sent ignorant civil servants or officials to the board of directors. This development has accelerated ever since. The Executives and the management of the companies suddenly discovered there was no more control whatsoever in their doings as now the members of the boards either consisted of ignorant blockheads or of their own best mates. They seized the opportunity. To transfer money from the company to their own bank accounts now became a common feature, calling it bonus, golden parachute or whatever. In running a big company nowadays the main issue seems to be the supply the Executives and the rest of the management with a satisfying bank account – and as the Executives in fact take care of this problem themselves there’s no complain.
This is the same nowadays in all Western world countries and you can read about it every week in the papers. Now and then the management of a company makes to many mistakes and gets caught. Most often they don’t get caught. This kind of bank account manners has spread, in fact, to other groups in the society. It has spread to lawyers, politicians, journalists, etc.
The whole Western world culture has become a bank account culture. This is very close to Stone Age time. At that time the only issue was survival and now we are heading at that situation again.
Millions of ordinary people have no say in this as they don’t know what to do about it.
I’m sure the Stone Age people had a gift of spirituality and this they used it in the best way they could.
And I’m sure there are many spiritual people in the West today also, but I cannot see that the leaders of the Western world today have any spirituality at all. Except as confession by lip (like the recent worries about the environment). The program of any political party in any Western world country of today is no more than a simple bank account program (the only political party that would differ are the Green parties in Europe).

You happen to mention an interesting fact – Western world has managed to build up a culture based on law and rules with a proficiency which exceeds any other culture as the degree of justice in that system is higher than perhaps anywhere else. However, this is only half of what it means to be a human being and you seems to have forgotten or neglected the other half…As this is an issue in itself I have to catch my breath before entering into that.
comment 10
FelixQui date : 19/03/2008 time : 17.17
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/FelixQui

talkfact,
Do you mean that the values and aspirations of millions of ordinary people, say young black men, are irrelevant in deciding whether or not a people and its culture are spiritual? That teh ONLY ones who count in making that determination are teh tiny number who are teh elite?
That seems to be what you are saying. That we must judge all of the US by an examination of the thousand or so top executives. I'm sorry, but that total devaluation of the millions of ordinary people seems to me obnoxious and unreasonable. And if that is how you are going to judge teh US, will apply the same standard to Thailand and thus argue that Thai culture is profoundly corrupt, money hungry and arrogant?

Materialism? A religion? I don't think so. Nor do I think your simplistic assessment, as outlined above, is even remotely correct. All teh Western people I know, even teh filthy rich, are concerned about a lot more than making money, important as that may be to them. I wonder, do you actually know any of the wealthy that you so eagerly excoriate? And do you honestly think that the poor of EVERY country would not like a lot more material goodies? On what evidence have you based that? It is certainly not true of Thailand.

On any reasonable standard, the West is at least as spiritual as any other culture, and it is far more just and free than EVERY other culture. So far as justice and liberty go (and they seem like spiritual things to me - they are certainly not money!), the West has been better than EVERY other culture for at least two thousand years.

If you are using some definition of "spiritual" whereby the wishes of the vast majority are irrelevant, or where things like a concern for justice and liberty do not count, then please explain a little more what you have in mind.
comment 9
wch date : 19/03/2008 time : 12.25

In understanding a history, many people of today judged on the recorded chronicle generally, without knowing the general circumstance of that society, how people moved, what they wanted and trusted, why they could not avoid such massacre and so on.

People simply judge Jews were gone on so called the grand diapora because they lost the land by hostile enemy.

Why dont they check the possibility that it was the Jews themselves who discarded the land. This is very potential assumption.

Why do Chinese do harshly against Tebetans ?.
Why cant they think Han people was once mercilessly contended, abducted and killed by Tibetans in past history ?.

Many nonsenses are around in so called history.
comment 8
talkfact date : 19/03/2008 time : 00.25
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penfact 

FelixQui: Priests have no voice in the Western world of today. Western world’s leaders are the Executives of the Multinational companies, the big corporations. They have only one aim in this world – to get more money to feed their bank accounts. This is the opposite of a spiritual life which by definition implies that your aim is directed to your inner life, to improve and develop your inner life (and not to have basic aim to improve and develop your bank account).
From this point of view the war in Iraq is a result of manoeuvres by those big corporations, even though their obedient servants, the politicians, have to face the public and by using rhetoric do their part of the work which is to obscure the facts. The very same politicians might not even be aware of this as the whole thing is nowadays a built-in cultural behaviour.

“(They)…believe so strongly in afterlife that they might well decide that Armageddon would not be such a bad idea.”
Well, those people never face the enemy. They who do that, they who face the enemy and sometimes death are the foot soldiers enrolled from poor background rural countryside. For many poor black young men, and some women, in the US, their only chance to enter into society and a decent life is to enrol in the army. This, because the army promises to give them a higher education if they are willing to “die for their country”. Although it might be difficult to grasp how you can serve your country by going to country far away and demolish that country’s whole infrastructure and rewind the development hundred years backwards (women’s rights in Iraq).

If you are a Western world Christian and support this war, as I see it you are either a bank-account Christian or you have got stuck in the Book of Revelation.
Here we face the fact that many stories in the Bible are no more than fairy tales. In old times, when ordinary people couldn’t read and write those fairy tales were a common way to put a message. But today, it doesn’t work, except for the fact that in many regions in this world, for example in South America, there are many who are not literate.
I don’t say there is no substance behind those fairy tales. But I say that even among those who have found this substance and believe in it, as time goes by their belief might erode due to the fact you have to rest it upon fairy tales instead of a proper modern interpretation.
And then you have the fact that a new religion has risen in every developed country: Materialism. This movement, this religion, has no written scripture, no written dogmas, and yet it has all the criteria of a religion except for one thing: its believers do not have an inner life.
comment 7
talkfact date : 18/03/2008 time : 18.51
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/jern
penfact 

Felix: I have to catch my breath before I answer you, otherwise I might be like David when he went out to face Goliath, only armed with a sling as he was...
comment 6
talkfact date : 18/03/2008 time : 18.48
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/jern
penfact 

TomFin: "The meaning of this dribble is what?":
I just listed a few interesting facts. And as you have a comment on another page as well I'm going to answer you more fully there.
comment 5
talkfact date : 18/03/2008 time : 18.43
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/jern
penfact 

wch: As we agree on that civilization didn't rise all of a sudden, the issue is only about the start of the first signs of civilization. In that probably painfully slow process I think it's difficult to decide what is impossible and what is not.
You are right I should have distinguished between India and East Asia. I mentioned India because it is a birthplace of so many phenomena in West and East. Such as the origin of Indo-European languages, the origin of Buddhism, the origin of Yoga, etc.
comment 4
GGrass date : 18/03/2008 time : 11.54
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/GGrass

marrily marrily marrily marrily life is but a dream...
comment 3
wch date : 16/03/2008 time : 11.12

Here you project a bundle of issue to me.
One thing to you, the first homo erectus in Kenya and Beiking are now proven much near to animal, than to homo sapien. The most problematic thing is the impossibility to connect such animal to the first human civilization.

If you are talking about "Eastern Grassroot philosophy", you are supposed to distinguish between Indian and north eastern asian one.
In this area, I may suggest to you, to make the first comparison between Thailand and your home country. This is the best start to understand such as big issue, Western and Eastern things.
comment 2
TomFin date : 16/03/2008 time : 09.17
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/justconsiderations

And the meaning of this dribble is what?

Sure, I may not understand what you have said. I probably do not understand in reality as well as you do in your spiritual self, but to me you are saying nothing about everything.

Try reading a good book. You will learn more.
comment 1
FelixQui date : 15/03/2008 time : 21.05
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/FelixQui

It is in the West that people are concerned about global warming, about human rights, about living a meaningful life: do you mean none of those things count as spiritual concerns? They do not seem especially "materialistic" or selfish.

There is at least as much rabid Christiantiy in teh US as there is karmic nastiness in Asian countries, like Thailand. And far too many Americans do in fact believe so strongly in an afterlife that teh current president and his supporters might well decide that Armageddon would not be such a bad idea. Both the Christian afterlife and karma are alive and well, and both devalue human life in the here and now. And the here and now is all there is for us. That seems to me a spiritual truth with has the advantage over so many other "spiritual" claims of actually being true, and both truth, and the pursuit of truth, seem to me to be genuine things of the spirit.

I think your basic premiss that Eastern people are more spiritual than Western people is wrong. Or have I completely misunderstood what you mean by "spiritual" and its value?
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