From Huang Po:  Paths to the Buddha are many. Most are incremental. This can work, but it is slower than Zen, when the Mind is Dharma.  (The Chun Chou Record, 20) From Eric Hoffer: Cities and other "compact corporate structures [read: groups]," in which restrictions are loosening, are fertile ground for mass movements. It's not the restrictions people are rebelling against, but the loosening. They become seekers for a new system into which they can lose themselves.  The seeker, coming from a totalitarianism which has begun to liberalize,  <<...longs for certitude, camaraderie, freedom from responsibility, and a vision of something altogether different from the competitive free society around him — and he finds all this in the brotherhood and the revivalist atmosphere of a rising movement.>> Cf. Christianity before the Reformation, France before the Revolution, Germany before the Nazis.  <<In the countryside, where the communal pattern was leas...

From Huang Po:   What we are looking for is hidden. When we think we see it, it is not. It is behind what we see. It is behind , prior to and fundamentally necessary to,   what we (think we) understand.  (The  Chun Chou Record, 19) From Eric Hoffer:   To judge the potential success of a mass movement, ignore whether it's doctrine is true or false or its promises feasible. Look, instead, to how well it provides a community in which ineffectual people can find a place to melt away and become an anonymous part of the machine. Unresponsible. Unnoticed.  (The True Believer, V-34) From Diogenes of Babylon:  Contemplation is good — it is natural for the philosopher — but practicality is good as well.  While we must search for Virtue and wisdom, we must also live in the world.  A Republic lead by sages might be the best possible society, but it isn't practical. It's never going to happen. Therefore, we should strive for the ideal and l...

From Lao Tzu:  "The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao." (Tao Te Ching, I)  Siddhartha : "Wisdom cannot be communicated. Wisdom that a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish." (Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse, ISBN 978-0-14-243718-6, Neugroschel trans, p. 124) Wisdom must be experienced. From Huang Po, I have learned that enlightenment is a sudden flash, not a process. From the Tao and Siddhartha, I learn that enlightenment cannot be communicated. It must be personal, immediate to the self.  These guide my personal search. I must discover wisdom for myself. ======================== From Eric Hoffer: Western colonization can have problems because it is disrupts the native social order (tribes, families, religious groups) and replaces it with freedom and independence.  <<What it all actually amounts to is individual isolation. It means cutting off of an immature and poorly finished individual from the corporate [read: unified] whole and releasin...

From Huang Po:  Gradual enlightenment does not happen.  Either you achieve enlightenment or you are not. <<There is just mysterious tacit understanding and no more.>> (The Chun Chou Record, 17) From Eric Hoffer:  Mass movements denigrate the family during their rise.  You have to dedicate yourself wholly to the leader or the cause and distance yourself wholly from your family and any other community.  By doing this, they increase your dependence on the movement and solidify their hold on you. Early Christianity did this. (cf. Matthew 8:22; 10:21, 35-37; 12:47-49) War does this as well through physical disruption of family cohesion. (cf. Japan's invasion of China and the Nazi dislocation of families to internment camps) This can also be achieved economically.  Economic independence of women, and earlier economic independence of young people, lessen parental authority, loosening familial ties. (The True Believer, V-31)

From Huang Po: <<Nothing is born. Nothing is destroyed. Away with your dualism, your likes and dislikes. Every single thing is just the One Mind.>> (The Chun Chou Record, 16) From Eric Hoffer: The Unified Poor, those who belong to a compact group (family, tribe, racial, religious, or other), make for poor recruiting by revolutionaries. They have a higher "revolting point" than someone who is alone in the world. <<It requires m ore misery and personal humiliation to goad him to revolt.>> Mass movements must work harder to break those ties to induce people to join the cause. They must break down those bonds first. Later, after the revolution has succeeded, we see the movement *encouraging* the formation of just such groups because, now that power has shifted to them, they have a need to (re)establish an order and baseline acceptance of life so as to stop further / a different revolution. (This while simultaneously continuing to try and break down social ...

From Huang Po: <<If you wish to experience Enlightenment... you must avoid all concepts of existence and non-existance.>> There is nothing except Enlightenment. Thinking about it only makes it recede from you. (The Chun Chou Record, 13) [He said, unironically.] From Eric Hoffer: <<Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the the passion of a small minority.>>. Fanatics, zealots often come from disgruntled creatives who could not realize their dreams of creation. Those whose talent did not measure up to their desire. These are ripe for wholeheartedly engaging in mass movements. The movement offers them the purpose denied them by their lack of talent. Truly creative people have an outlet for their passions and become disenamoured with the movement. They are forced out as heretic, shunned or executed. (The True Believer, V-29, 30; XVI 111) From Aristo of Chios: Not all early Stoics agreed. Aristo, a challen...

From Huang Po: Buddha must be realized through sudden insight ("tacit understanding"). "Any mental process must lead to error." (The Chun Chou Record, 14) From Eric Hoffer: Mass movements, during their opposition to the prevailing order, require surrender of the individual to the movement to focus on unity and self-sacrifice. "The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up the tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.... They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society." (The True Believer, V-27, 28) From Cleanthes: Listen. Listen more. Speak less. Allow gracious humor to shine through in your acceptance of criticism and in your approach to life. (Lives of the Stoics, pp. 21-25) <<I have no need of a friend who chang...

From Huang Po: the paths we are taught to achieve Buddha are themselves distractions from achieving Buddha. (The Chun Chou Record, 13) From Eric Hoffer: the newly poor are frustrated because they have tasted freedom. For those where freedom has never been an option, but who have a community of similar people in similar straights, the rise of mass movements is rare. Talentless people find freedom a burden and look to the mass m ovement to both give them structure and relive them of responsibility. (The True Believer, V-26) From Cleanthes: accept ridicule and insults as an opportunity to practice Stoic virtue. Accept apology graciously and readily. When examining your faults, be strict but not abusive. Self-criticism is necessary; self-abuse is not. (Lives of the Stoics, pp. 20-21)

From Huang Po: the right use of the senses. (The Chun Chou Record, 12) From Eric Hoffer: how distant hope is a pacifier, but near hope is an agonist. (The True Believer, IV-18 to V-25) From Cleanthes: the value and connection between hard work and philosophy. (Lives of the Stoics, pp. 13-19)