Tag Archives: Monasticism

A Shamanistic Dimension

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Vajragoni

Just finished reading the Zennist’s post entitled Restoring our spiritual senses. It evokes a shamanistic-dimension to destabilize our “despiritualized culture.” Reading this for me was one of those synchronistic moments as my blog from this past summer, Notes from the Iron Stupa , had as its salient theme a Shamanistic-Dimension. As the Zennist states it may indeed take a “modern form of shamanism” accompanied with “spiritual artifacts” that include special forms of incense and ritualized techniques to help remedy the despiritualized material malaise. If one were to read from the blog category here, The Divine Liturgy of Vajrasattva, then one would be privy to a mystically-charged form of Spiritual Liturgy that I conduct alone once a week—accompanied with my monk’s robe and the ritual tools required. From reading the “About Us” tab above I have now totally devoted my life like a spiritual anchorite “choosing to withdraw from the mundane affairs of samsara in order to devote myself to lead a life of intense meditation/contemplation and dharma-study in Light of the Buddhadharma.” The very creation of this website was done in the spirit of creating an online-monastery, where one is free to withdraw for a while from the hustle and bustle and just savor the sweetness of the Buddhadharma.  It has become obvious to me for many years now that the monastic-hermetic route is a viable option in today’s increasingly dharma-ending age. read more

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Melancholia

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Vajragoni

Writing about Colin Wilson’s, The Outsider, recently reinforced for me a main pericope within its pages—that this “Outsider” is someone who sees “too deep and too much” into the nature of reality and as a result suffers from a lingering existential crisis. Wilson’s main protagonists are prominent figures in literature like the early Romantics, Blake, Keats and Wordsworth; also with philosophers like Nietzsche, and artists like the dancer Nijinsky and Van Goth the painter and visionaries like H.G. Wells. In his subsequent publication, Religion and the Rebel, Wilson says that these “Outsiders” are like “pimples appearing on the face of civilization” and that they are never prone to resigning themselves to the “insider” malaise of conventionality, or what the Zennist recently described as “consensus reality.” As a result, many of them succumbed to the depths of despair—some falling into madness like Nietzsche and Nijinsky, and some even committing suicide like Van Goth. What is it about the essential nature of these “Outsiders”, possessing great creative talent and keen insight into what really makes things tick, while at the same time feeling the eternal pangs of seeing “too deep and too much.” There was a term very much in vogue one time in creative circles that aptly describes this “Outsider” condition, and that is Melancholia. read more

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