The inability to recognize the cultural contingents of practice is a problem that repeats over, over and over again.
The failure of yoga in the West is a good example. Buddhism, too.
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I am in the fortunate position of being two links of association away from many of those tasked with this stuff; too far to be entangled, close enough to understand broad strokes.
You can't just bring the practice into a foreign culture. It won't "click". Too much baggage. E.g.:
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- Metta, compassion and love-based yogic practice DO NOT WORK for majority of westerners.
- Social structure inimical to gurus, ashram, sangha etc. Those that flourish often (really often) are cults.
- Scientism vs. mysticism; porting language is hard, stuff lost in translation.
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I found a reply to this in my drafts I forgot about.
I’m curious what makes you believe the first point on metta/maitri/love practices? I don’t have much data to argue otherwise, I just have a very hard time believing it as a result of my own experiences. Never heard that before
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It's an interesting topic. I've seen westerners it did work for, so I was probably too generalistic in phrasing. It doesn't work for *most* westerners.
Why would that be? Poor cultural translation of what is meant by love. "Love" as defined here severely pathological concept.
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People I know who had good teachers got it right and had tremendous gains with it, but that was often after a long period of confusion - and even worse, damaging practice - until someone finally set them straight on the what, why, how of it.
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The problem is it's usually offered without context, and, well, that doesn't work well for people. It can be a tremendously damaging concept to misunderstand (see: compassion for bullies and other villains for a very simple example, but there are many, many others).
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That's why I was harping so much on cultural context. Practices work, but work for specific reasons, under specific circumstances.
A good western approximate is a lot of the thelemic practices etc. They're a good way to turn into a fuck-up junkie if you don't do 'em right.
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I know of more than one complete lunatic who thought "get high and fuck shall be the whole of the law".
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Vajrayana, even within its own cultural context, seems to have similar issues.