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Mar 5, 2021

people say this kind of shit all the time and i’ve decided i hate it. i think it is deliberately conflating a metaphysical claim with a tactical claim. incidentally, reggie ray, like many spiritual teachers, had himself a classic abuse scandal: matthewremski.com/wordpress/regg

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in the wilderless

@the_wilderless

· Mar 5, 2021

A dharma talk by Reggie Ray on the topic of: “there is nothing wrong with you. Nothing to fix. Nothing to run away from or improve. There is no problem. Can you accept that?” I heard it 2-3 years ago and it still wallops me every time I think of it.

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

“nothing wrong with you” and “nothing to improve” are wildly different claims. one can let go of “wrongness” as a fundamental property of the self without letting go of the desire to cultivate virtue. it sounds like reggie could’ve used some more of that himself \_(ツ)_/¯

7:08 AM · Mar 5, 2021Twitter for iPad

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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

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oh, reggie ray was one of chogyam trungpa’s students. w e l p matthewremski.com/wordpress/regg

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Mar 5, 2021

might check out this book. “attachment in cults” sounds exactly right to me, feels like it nails the mechanism really cleanly in a way i haven’t quite seen elsewhere

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Mar 5, 2021

promising first page. “...charismatic, authoritarian leaders control their followers’ attachment relationships...” this shines a whole new light for me on the thing where cults like tell their followers who to have sex with and who to marry and stuff. messing with attachment

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Mar 5, 2021

“But what is the meaning of ‘intentional’ when the self has been hijacked, the core of the follower’s cognitive and emotional self has been pulled into pieces that no longer form a coherent whole?” yo woooord. this is one of the things i was most confused about after my own exp

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Mar 5, 2021

“...total or absolutist ideologies reflect the totalist and all-encompassing nature of the social structures they represent.” checks out

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Mar 5, 2021

“The leader’s primary goal is to create a set of guaranteed attachments to others. This drive for relational control is an outcome of the leader’s own disorganized attachment.” 😩

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Yet, i perceive it as dangerous to create a self-optimization program out of buddhism. Often not intended by teachers, yet many pupils including me were hunting imaginations about enlightenment. This turns Buddhism absurdly upside down into a game of hierachies and state hunt.

Nikolaus

@SissiPhys

Mar 5, 2021

One of the most precious messages is still the intrinsic joy of (no-)self-development. Yet intrinisc joy can be vastly destroyed by hanging up carrots in front of the great vehicle :D