The Enlightenment Lottery
There’s a documentary made in 2009 about spirituality called Who’s Driving the Dreambus? It includes interviews with a number of prominent spiritual teachers (Jeff Foster, Timothy Freke, Gangaji, Amit Goswami, Boris Jänsch, Tony Parsons, Genpo Roshi, Guy Smith) and gives a fairly useful overview of contemporary spirituality. For one thing, almost everyone in the movie agrees that there is nothing the seeker needs to “do” to get enlightened. But while I was watching it I started to wonder, if that were the case, why were all these spiritual adepts even talking about it? Why not talk about beekeeping or baseball? Wasn’t listening to a spiritual teacher tell us there’s nothing to do to get enlightened doing something? Why even make the movie?
I found myself wondering, did spiritual teachers teach that there was nothing to do because it was what sold? Was it a way of…
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