We Are A Blend Of Dust And

The Notion That Western Religions Are More Rigid Than Those Of Asia Is Overdrawn. Ours Is The Most Permissive Society History Has Ever Known - Almost The Only Thing That Is Forbidden Now Is To Forbid - And Asian Teachers And Their Progeny Play Up To This Propensity By Soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's Rules.

Swami Ashokananda Was A Brilliant And Accomplished Spiritual Teacher In The West.

We Are Free When We Are Not The Slave Of Our Impulses, But Rather Their Master. Taking Inward Distance, We Thus Become The Authors Of Our Own Dramas Rather Than Characters In Them.

Modernity Sees Humanity As Having Ascended From What Is Inferior To It - Life Begins In Slime And Ends In Intelligence - Whereas Traditional Cultures See It As Descended From Its Superiors. As The Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins Put The Matter: We Are The Only People Who Assume That We Have Ascended From Apes. Everybody Else Take It For Granted That They Are Descended From Gods.

I Don't Want To Justify Religion In Terms Of Its Benefits To Us. I Believe That, On Balance, It Does A Lot Of Bad Things, Too - A Tremendous Amount. But I Don't Think That The Final Justification Of Religion Is The Good It Does For People. I Think The Final Justification Is That It's True, And Truth Takes Priority Over Consequences. Religion Helps Us Deal With What Is Most Important To The Human Spirit: Values, Meaning, Purpose, And Quality.