tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8775078.post109892398890008227..comments2023-10-09T22:44:56.500-07:00Comments on WHAT enlightenment??!: The Narcissist Claims InfallibilityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8775078.post-1100969020025040502004-11-20T08:43:00.000-08:002004-11-20T08:43:00.000-08:00(quoted from previous post)
'What was good and wh...(quoted from previous post)<br /><br />'What was good and wholesome in the impulse to follow someone like Andrew has to be given some space too.'<br /><br />Its so easy to feel afraid of our own aspirations when these have led us into a situation where we've been wounded.<br /><br />What may help is to discover the distinction between persons who are inspirational and those who are actually qualified to serve as spiritual mentors.<br /><br />We are finding out (in some cases, very painfully) that inspirational persons are not always qualified to function in the mentor role. Very immature people can be quite inspirational. And inspiration does serve a purpose much like the spark plug in a car--it rouses our vitality, gets us off the couch, out of the rut, out of the house. That part is good.<br /><br />But once we are on the road, we need some trustworthy guidance, and as we go further that guidance has to be tailored to the special needs of each student. Thats where a mentor/coach/guru comes in. <br /><br />A genuine mentor has to be honest, has to be mature, able to see the needs of each student without the mentor's personal hang ups interfering. And if the mentor is leader of a community, he or she has to have received training on how to keep a community functioning in a healthy manner, and how to do things like conflict resoluation, train people to fill various leadership roles, how to make sure money and resources are used responsibly, etc.<br /><br />The one thing that few people seem to look at is that Andrew Cohen received virtually no training from his original guru. The various accounts indicate that after just two and a half weeks, the guru told his protege to go 'start a revolution amongst the young.'<br /><br />Thats like getting someone drunk, then giving them keys to a car without ever giving them lessons on how to drive. <br /><br />Any time we encounter a marvellously inspirational writer or teacher, it is very important to ask 'What training did this person have to function as a mentor, and especially what training did this person have to function as leader of a community or an ashram?'<br /><br />For purposes of comparison, survivors of the Andrew Cohen project may find it intriguing to read 'The Buddha From Brooklyn' by Martha Sherrill. This book, available on Amazon.com, describes what happened when an American born women was mysteriously singled out by a Tibetan rinpoche, seeminly told she was the re-incarnation of an obscure Tibetan lama, then after a gaudy coronation ceremony, found herself as lama, head of a Buddhist community, but given no practical training or support on how to function in the role. She found herself isolated, lonely, she'd been given all kinds of messages guaranteed to inflame personal vanity, and ended up reportedly behaving in ways that hurt her students. <br /><br />Alexander Berzin, in his book 'Relating to a Spiritual Teacher' reports that many problems came up when Tibetan lamas and monks were sent to the West, with inadequate training, then put in charge of dharma communities, but given little social support. Even the wisest human being can break down in such circumstances.<br /><br />Finally students rarely have sufficient background knowledge to ask 'Has this very inspirational guru been adequately trained to function in this role? Did he ever live in community under someone's authority before functioning as an authority figure himself? Is it possible that my guru was sent to the affluent West to serve as a publicist/recruiter for an ambitious guru back in Asia? And if the original guru in Asia never led a residential ashram, and never lived or taught in the West, how could this guru give his protege adequate preparation to lead a community of Westeners?'Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8775078.post-1100127801111329642004-11-10T15:03:00.000-08:002004-11-10T15:03:00.000-08:00Great response and very helpful and balanced. I ha...Great response and very helpful and balanced. I have a lot of trouble struggling with these polarities. Between feeling righteous anger at Andrew and his ruthless methods to achieve his lofty goals. Realization after realization that his motivation was not totally pure, despite being totally immersed in a system that did not in any way allow legitimate questioning....which of course dulled my own inherent ability to discriminate....rationalizations just ended up warping and blunting my own god given intuition. And still.........! What was good and wholesome in the impulse to follow someone like Andrew has to be given some space too.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8775078.post-1099712688158972112004-11-05T19:44:00.000-08:002004-11-05T19:44:00.000-08:00I must say I found your first entry, with the dial...I must say I found your first entry, with the dialogue between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilbur at the café in the south of France, a real riot. No kidding, I laughed out loud reading it, as did a few of my friends. No one more richly deserves to be satirized than those whose self-importance and grandiosity has reached epic, even mythic, proportions. Especially when two people come together and use each other to promote themselves in such a cloyingly self-satisfied way, then represent it to the naïve general public as dharma. One does not have to be an ex-student of Andrew’s to be irritated and annoyed at such unbecoming misbehavior in two grown men who claim to be enlightened. <br />However, reading "After Hours" I could not help but reflect on how there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Too much of anything becomes its opposite—not just a bad thing, but, in this case, in poor taste and unconscious of its own pain and aggression. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, because those are exactly the charges that can be levied (among others) quite fairly against Andrew Cohen<br /> Those who have known and observed Andrew Cohen for the past ten years have watched, with some sadness, as he has aggressively pursued world domination of the spiritual scene. Andrew started out as a brilliant, inspiring individual of extraordinary dharmic rhetorical power and clarity; he clearly had the potential to offer something of profound value to serious practitioners on the spiritual path. What a heartbreak to see him fall so far from grace! He has left a trail of "bloody bodies," so to speak, among his students, with serious allegations—that did not appear in Andre’s book, by the way, where the issues were watered down or left unexamined—of serious physical, emotional and spiritual abuse. Anyone who is vitally tuned into the western spiritual scene is aware of the pain of many, many ex-students of Andrew Cohen who have been bombarded with coercion and who feel deeply, deeply betrayed by the man they considered to be their guru. And for the record: it’s not only Don Beck and Ken Wilbur whose ideas Andrew has usurped and made his own—and here we can include both dharmic ideas and actual phrases that are either universally known principles of the spiritual path and the specific language and experience of other contemporary western schools, which he has claimed for his own.<br /> However, for your purposes, in order to strike at the root of the problem in a way that actually serves a higher purpose—rather than merely the immediate ego gratification of trashing someone who hurt you deeply—you could take a long, strong look at yourselves and assess what might be the most effective skillful means at hand. There is such a thing as satire and humor that is free of aggression, although, granted, it is a very difficult thing to achieve. Nonetheless, when you can free yourself of hatred and aggression toward Andrew, you will be more effective in achieving your goal, which might be to provide some real sanity and clarity for people who are lost in the swamp of Andrew’s unexamined shadow. Perhaps that is where the real possibility of "After Hours" can be found.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com