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Audio | view transcript
Exposing a modern disease of frustrated craving for experience, Sangharakshita suggests that spiritual life is better seen in more concrete ways; as growth, work, and duty.
Talk given in 1975.
| 1. | Buddhism: the path and the goal; thinking of Enlightenment in terms of an experience (6:04) | |
| 2. | What do we mean by experience? Why do we think of Enlightenment in terms of an experience? Elightenment as expressed in the Scriptures (9:00) | |
| 3. | Buddhism in the light of the religious history of Western Europe (10:23) | |
| 4. | What is our usual approach to life? What do we turn to? (13:36) | |
| 5. | An emphasis on experience, both natural and neurotic (7:28) | |
| 6. | Attainment and acquisition; motives in approaching Buddhism (6:35) | |
| 7. | Thinking of Enlightenment as an experience that will come from somewhere; three syndromes: i. pseudo-spiritual exoticism (5:49) | |
| 8. | ii. pseudo-spiritual projection (6:13) | |
| 9. | iii. pseudo-spiritual technism (2:32) | |
| 10. | Thinking of Enlightenment as a non-experience; Nirvana and the Unconditioned (4:36) | |
| 11. | Three ways of thinking of religion as non-experience: i Growth - humanity as a bed of lotuses; Parable of the Rain Cloud in the White Lotus Sutra; advantages and limitations of thinking in terms of growth (13:39) | |
| 12. | ii. Work - the productive expenditure of energy (2:47) | |
| 13. | iii. Duty - what is the duty of a Buddhist? (2:25) |
Total running time: 1:31:07
