Out East 2

About my piece Out East 1 -- which I had left as a stub to start the process of explaining my disillusionment with Eastern thought -- Ran writes:

i had never heard about buddhism being hidden from the public for so long, but i'm generally mistrustful of buddhist authorities. i was reading in some forum where someone suggested doing some different thing in meditation, and got shut down with the comment, "these practices have been tested for thousands of years." and i thought, what happened thousands of years ago when someone had an idea of doing it differently? "these practices have been tested for decades, so we're sure they're right." a living system of practices and beliefs must always be open for experimentation. once it gets set in stone, it's dead.

None of these have been mass practices for thousands of years, but instead practiced in small, highly controlled groups. For the people, there were superstitions, and stories heaped on stories, needing retcons like any other bloated fictional structure. The people weren’t asked to do meditative practices, but instead ceremonies, donations, holidays.  Their daily practices included things like making offerings for good fortune, engaging in protective rituals, or even worshiping local deities alongside Buddhist figures.  

The first wave of Buddhism in the West wasn’t just a natural cultural exchange—it was heavily shaped by colonialism, the pressures of modernization, and the need for Asian Buddhists who were back on their heels to respond to Western imperial influence.  It is not the story of beautiful, untouched intellectual territory, but the strategic ways Buddhist leaders adapted their tradition for both survival and global outreach.

...

But I wanted to believe that there was some ancient book that had answers deeper than this day to day life and diseased culture.  I was searching for the Eternal.
 

"Read not the Times. Read the Eternities."

Thoreau.

So even if I had known all of this above and it had turned me off from Buddhism, and given me earlier ammo against a certain strand of hucksterism, I still would have at some point fallen for the Tao Te Ching (Daodejing). It’s beginning, highlighting something very important:

Dao called Dao is not the eternal Dao

Names that can be named are not eternal names.

Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth
Naming: the mother of 10,000 things

Truly, "rid of desire, one can perceive
the Wondrous."
With desire, one can perceive only outcomes.

I thought that last bit quoted was the key to ... like everything, man. I thought that if we could get everyone to see correctly, whether through meditation or whatever, then people could drop desires and (social) outcomes and live in a world of pure wonder ... Wonder.

And then I realized this is just neurodivergence. It wasn’t spiritual practice that brought someone to this, but autism, one of the ways a person can be shamanic to prevent the group perishing from the effects of too much conformity.