Criticism of Leo: I don't think he understands Islam

[UnbornTao]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

You are being too flippant about how much culture and survival forces shape people's understanding of Reality.

If you lived in the Middle East 1500 years ago, you would in for a rude awakening indeed. These people were hardly more developed than chimpanzees. And you want them to give you some kind of pure spiritual textbook that can compete with today's work?

By that logic, neither Jesus nor Buddha would have existed. Or, alternatively, we would have far more enlightened people today, proportional to humanity's accumulated knowledge. One could argue that contemplation was actually easier in ancient times, with far fewer distractions. Consider the contrast between the average Western lifestyle today and that of a monk in a monastery.

Unless you're talking about intellectually constructing new worldviews, the requirement for direct consciousness has remained constant throughout history. The accumulated "content" or knowledge does not change that fundamental requirement. Perhaps there's a reason we don't see many figures like Plotinus or Heraclitus today. If they were born now, they'd likely spend their days scrolling TikTok rather than reading Kant - and even reading Kant wouldn't guarantee understanding.

The Dark Ages emerged after the Greeks, demonstrating (perhaps) that this dynamic is not linear. Also, the ancient skeptics would demolish the average person's reasoning today - and that was thousands of years ago.

The common ground is this: a lack of authentic experience applies equally to the average person today as it did in past eras. Knowledge alone cannot alter this fact.

And you can be a profoundly awakened "barbarian." Experiencing what's true does not depend on cultural context or environment. Development and "what is" are not the same thing.

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"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

- T.S. Eliot

What a tryhard.

[Jodistrict]

I think it is exactly the opposite.  People were more likely to wake up in the past.  We are  handicapped because we are so locked into our minds, continuously distracted, and are spoiled with too much comfort.  Having minds full of information doesn’t give you any advantage.  We aren’t fully embodied.  People in the past were in contact with nature.  The ancient Rishis of India realized non duality thousands of years ago, even before Buddha.  Of course, we are talking about a very small number of enlightened sages waking up in a sea of ignorance.