ENOUGH GURUS ALREADY!

(From Facebook.)

I warned you!

Thoughts came.

I started reflecting on how we humans seem hardwired to seek out someone to do our thinking for us and then to idolize whomever we choose as our guru and proclaim anything that doesn't mesh with it as blasphemy and that blasphemer as an heretic.

I have a lot of respect for buddhism. Not enough to become a fawning sycophant like I once was at Armstrong and company's feet, but I do respect wise observations when I encounter them. There are many of those in buddhism. Some of them even migrated almost word for word into other religions, including christianity.

Why are we so prone to fawn over people who clearly had a psychotic crisis of some sort while observing and doing some profound thinking? I've had a few of those in my own life when the you-know-what hit the fan and I was completely at sea as to which way to turn or what to do. If you are a normal human, you know exactly what I'm writing about.

Sidhartha was a very conflicted and troubled guy. Being in the royal class, he had plenty of time to let those conflicts and troubled thoughts sink in deeply. It got to the point that he took off and sought enlightenment through an aesthetic lifestyle. It almost killed him, but a thoughtful and charitable intervention by another human being came along at just the right time, and he began coming to his senses.

I don't deny the fact that he came up with some mighty good sayings and approaches, but we sheep-minded humans have to construct some great religion or movement around just about anything to somehow give us a feeling of belonging, superiority or something.

The same thing happened in Arabia with a guy named Mohammad. It's abundantly clear he had mental problems that led him into a cave and a multitude of hallucinations he and some fanatic followers with nothing better to do proclaimed as a great revelation from an ancient diety called Allah. Being from a basically violent and hardassed patriarchal society, that religion became a basically violent, hardassed, do it our way or here come the stones, swords and the human bombs religion.

So, I'll keep on posting wise sayings from whatever source, but I certainly am not going to set their authors up on some pedestle and lobby for people to start following them as some anointed spokesman from some ethereal place. We've had enough of that crap, and look where it has gotten us!