Re: Ole Nydahl and Diamond Way Buddhism
Date: January 28, 2010 10:23AM
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I think in this discussion it is important to seperate two different things.
1. There is the idea of teaching meditation to children, which if done correctly could have many potential benefits. As has been pointed out previously, the current DWB situation means that this would not be value neutral, which would seem to detract from any benefit for both adults and children.
2. There is the other question of social reproduction. Of course, in any family unit there is bound to be a degree of "indocrination" which is not exclusive to DWB families - eg. it is often the children of racist parents who themselves become racist etc.
This seems to raise several issues;
- it seems that the sort of person who would seek out a more spiritual path is possibly going to become a certain sort of parent.
- there is the question of those who seek out the DWB path - one which hedges it's bets between a spiritual path and a capitalistic/liberal/secular-christian one, and which seems to attract certain types...
- there is the question of whether Buddhism is a form of humanism or not - I think that for DWB it certainly is, but this would seem to put it at odds with the rest of Tibetan Buddhism.
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So, it seems to me that Ole wants to eat his cake and have it too. He imports a tradition which is historically a monastic one and tries to graft it onto a modern western lifestyle. On a theoretical level, DWB seems to have a confused philosophy which is a bit muddled and at odds with itself, being neither truly modern western nor really Buddhist, and on a practical level, at least from what I have seen, DWB seems to attract a certain type of demographic - young, desiring money, parties and sex, somewhat ignorant and/or intolerant of cultural differences, and people who are somewhat conservative and resistant to change.
The big question for me here is whether DWB actually improves the people it attracts;
- some of it's members were somewhat lost before and seem to have found themselves a "family" in DWB which has given them some security.
- the meditations also provide a degree of confidence, although it would seem to express itself in quite a selfish and individualistic way - which is of benefit to the individual but questionable as to whether it benefits the wider society or sentinent beings as a whole.
- on the question of racism - I think that it is unlikely that anyone has become a racist because of DWB, but rather like SteveLpool, Odelay, and myself, we have just had to move on. Equally, I think that no one in DWB has altered their racist beliefs if they were already present.
- the same goes for a lot of DWB values and viewpoints, certainly I found this close-minded conservatism to be like stepping back 40 years to an age that was viewed as golden by an elite minority who wrongly believed they were manning the gates against the barbarian horde! (and which seems even more ridiculous given the events of the last 40 years which shows those fears to be unfounded and divisive).
Personally, I would say that if we tried to list the environments that were unhealthy for children, we would have a very long list, and DWB would be somewhere on there, neither first nor last.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2010 10:45AM by suenam.