Ideas
Ken McLeod is highly regarded for his ability to present the traditional Buddhism – its philosophy, teachings, method, instructions & practice – in clear, lucid language that makes them more accessible to Western students He also has pioneered new class, retreat and dharma center formats, and has reworked the student-teacher relationship and the individual practice path.
Two principles underlie his work:
- Direct Experience. Conceptual understanding is no substitute for the kind of knowing that comes from direct experience. Buddhist material must be presented in a way that transmits, points to or elicits direct experience.
- Transparency. The customs and traditions associated with Buddhist practice in other cultures have been an obstacle for many Western practitioners. The solution is to distinguish the teachings from the overlay of medieval, Asian, cultural forms.
Read more about this topic: Ken Mc Leod
Famous quotes containing the word ideas:
“What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle-class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice—is often the means of their regeneration.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“Chinese were born ... with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.”
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)