TEACHINGS
Teaching of Vimalakirti
Vimalakirti's teaching is perhaps the gem of Buddhist literature of the great vehicle. Full of life and humor, it has neither the prolixity of the Mahayana sutras nor the technicality of the Buddhist commentaries, whose science and information it nevertheless shares. Far from getting lost in the desert of abstract and impersonal doctrines, its author reacts at every turn to the depth of Buddhist law to which he spares neither criticism nor sarcasm. He is a virtuoso of paradox who pushes independence of spirit to the point of irreverence.
~ Etienne Lamotte ~
suggestions
Source of reflection
Many Western thinkers help us to see the practice in new ways. Reading some of their writings is a great source of inspiration.
This project is not an attempt to revise Buddhism, but to open it — to free it from the cultural and conceptual enclosure that at times isolates it from contemporary Western thought. Far from diluting its essence, the aim here is to let Buddhist thought resonate beyond its traditional frameworks, to engage it in dialogue with continental philosophy, modern science, contemporary dance, and theatre. Beyond both exoticism and dogmatism, the challenge is to create a space where Buddhism is no longer confined to a cultural ghetto, but becomes a living interlocutor within the expanded landscape of thought.
Saint Augustin
The soul knows itself.The soul does not know itself as it knows other things — that is, through representation or abstraction — and therefore it does not know itself as another thing, nor as another. It knows itself as presence to itself: in, through, and as this very presence.
Hanna Arendt
To think by oneselfWhen everyone lets themselves be carried along without thinking, simply because others act and believe, those who think find themselves exposed; their refusal to join the others becomes obvious, and thus turns into a kind of action.
Ortega y Gasset
Beyond intellectIn the great crusade for the liberation of humankind that is the mission of the intellect, there has come a moment when it must free itself from what makes it most deeply enslaved — from itself.
Michel Henry
Life is known only by lifeFor life is nothing other than that which experiences itself without differing from itself, so that this experiencing is an experience of itself and not of something else — a self-revelation in the radical sense of the term.