It was pointed out in a discussion here that Valentin Tomberg wrote the following on “exteriorization”, summarizing the respective attitudes of Buddha and Christ to the vision of a damaged world: The Buddha saw the true nature of the world and that it was sick. Considering it incurable he instituted … Continue reading
Category Archives: Buddhism
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
The I is the Supreme, except it does not know it. The apparitions of a dazzling and unbearable light strike the soul immediately after the separation from the body, with the experience of the real nature of the soul itself. Continue reading
Salvation, Deliverance, Action
If we take the view that consciousness is not a product of the world, but that the world is a product of consciousness, it becomes obvious that we live in exactly the type of world which we have created and therefore deserved, and that the remedy cannot be an escape from the world, but only a change of mind. Such a change, however, can only take place, if we know the innermost nature of this mind and its power. Continue reading
The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon
An ecstasy of joy, whose immense tension sometimes dissolves into a stream of tears, and whose pace is sometimes like a storm and sometimes becomes slow; a state of being completely beside oneself, yet with the clearest consciousness of an infinite number of fine tremors and wave-like vibrations running down to the very toes; a depth of happiness, in which all that is painful and dark, does not act as a contradiction but as a necessary condition, a challenge, as a necessary colour within such an abundance of light; an instinct for rhythmic proportions, which spans extensive realms of form — the extension, the need for an all-encompassing rhythm ins almost a criterion for the power of inspiration, a kind of compensating counter-force against its pressure and tension. Continue reading
The Demon of Dialectics
The premise from which the Buddhist Doctrine of Awakening starts is the destruction of the demon of dialectics; the renunciation of the various constructions of thought and speculation which are simply an expression of opinion, and of the profusion of theories, which are projections of a fundamental restlessness in which … Continue reading
Action and Contemplation in Dante’s Divine Comedy
Titus Burckhardt, in his essay “Because Dante Was Right,” argues that one of the main themes of the Commedia is “the reciprocal relationship between knowledge and will.” Knowledge of the eternal truths is potentially present in the human spirit or intellect, but its unfolding is directly conditioned by the will, … Continue reading
Buddhism and Tradition
Mahayana absolutism and the Advaita Vedanta are valuable as providing the basis on which a world-culture can be built. It is only absolutism that can make for the fundamental unity of existence and at the same time allow for differences. Continue reading