"In this temple," there are *different* doors, but "no wrong doors." - This piece is too good to be read quickly, as I just did. I'll be back. You walk this talk so well in your "The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd: Finding Christ on the Buddha's Path" (2013). - I just discovered that "The Long Search" series (BBC) was re-issued on DVD, and is currently distributed by "Ambrose Video" but is planned for Netflix. See https://www.netflixtvseries.com/tv/47685/the-long-search. - Thanks for your own work on this.
The Long Search series is available in its entirety through the app Kanopy. I very much enjoyed it and also bought the book. Thank you for the great recommendation.
Needleman’s Lost Christianity is a great book (really), and is his deepest Christian engagement I know of. He single handedly rescued a living modern heir of the Christian desert mystic tradition from certain obscurity. And it seems that Underhill’s Practical Mysticism, not just Mysticism, is ripe for the plucking in future posts. Published after the war started, I find it much more helpful than Mysticism. Perhaps it hints at where this exciting substack is headed.
I used "Lost Christianity" with my students in that course I taught in 1982 at UMBC, mentioned in my first post. I agree that it's a superb book and I've read it a number of times. Underhill's "Practical Mysticism" will certainly show up in these posts in due course.
The Long Search! Yeah, my fond memories of that series are sure to date me too. I even recall (or think I recall) a sequence at the end of one episode: a traditionally robed Theravadin monk performing a slow walking meditation. I’d never seen anything like it… and I was mesmerized. Not long after that --and not coincidentally-- I’d find myself at a retreat in New Mexico with Bhante Gunaratana experiencing, along with much else, precisely that exercise.
In that vein, I’d like to risk a modest defense of Frithjof Schuon, the target in one of your footnotes. Feet of clay? Indisputably. Never met the guy; doubt I’d have liked him if I had. However, in my life at least, I think his writings were, on balance, a good influence. And from what I can gather, when it comes to messianic tendencies, he was pretty small potatoes compared to Carl Jung.
A devastating article about Schuon (who Huston Smith glowingly endorses even in his late autobiography). Thank you for calling our attention to it. Stratford Caldecott’s sympathetic Trintitarian critique of FS in The Radiance of Being is excellent.
I'm not enamored with either, although Guénon is certainly not without interest. That said, where Guénon and Jung differ, I follow Jung. Schuon, on the other hand, as the essay cited should make evident, is the one whose documented activities I find the more disturbing. While I share some views with the Traditionalist school of perennialism, especially with Huston Smith's version of it, I am more on Huxley's wavelength.
"In this temple," there are *different* doors, but "no wrong doors." - This piece is too good to be read quickly, as I just did. I'll be back. You walk this talk so well in your "The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd: Finding Christ on the Buddha's Path" (2013). - I just discovered that "The Long Search" series (BBC) was re-issued on DVD, and is currently distributed by "Ambrose Video" but is planned for Netflix. See https://www.netflixtvseries.com/tv/47685/the-long-search. - Thanks for your own work on this.
Excellent news. Thank you.
The Long Search series is available in its entirety through the app Kanopy. I very much enjoyed it and also bought the book. Thank you for the great recommendation.
Needleman’s Lost Christianity is a great book (really), and is his deepest Christian engagement I know of. He single handedly rescued a living modern heir of the Christian desert mystic tradition from certain obscurity. And it seems that Underhill’s Practical Mysticism, not just Mysticism, is ripe for the plucking in future posts. Published after the war started, I find it much more helpful than Mysticism. Perhaps it hints at where this exciting substack is headed.
I used "Lost Christianity" with my students in that course I taught in 1982 at UMBC, mentioned in my first post. I agree that it's a superb book and I've read it a number of times. Underhill's "Practical Mysticism" will certainly show up in these posts in due course.
The Long Search! Yeah, my fond memories of that series are sure to date me too. I even recall (or think I recall) a sequence at the end of one episode: a traditionally robed Theravadin monk performing a slow walking meditation. I’d never seen anything like it… and I was mesmerized. Not long after that --and not coincidentally-- I’d find myself at a retreat in New Mexico with Bhante Gunaratana experiencing, along with much else, precisely that exercise.
In that vein, I’d like to risk a modest defense of Frithjof Schuon, the target in one of your footnotes. Feet of clay? Indisputably. Never met the guy; doubt I’d have liked him if I had. However, in my life at least, I think his writings were, on balance, a good influence. And from what I can gather, when it comes to messianic tendencies, he was pretty small potatoes compared to Carl Jung.
Well, perhaps; although in Jung's case, I think his high opinion of his own genius was justified.
Thank you. For me, these two "Defining Terms" pieces are, by themselves, worth the price of a subscription.
A devastating article about Schuon (who Huston Smith glowingly endorses even in his late autobiography). Thank you for calling our attention to it. Stratford Caldecott’s sympathetic Trintitarian critique of FS in The Radiance of Being is excellent.
This was a terrific post, not too lengthy at all, and one I will return to. Already glad to be a subscriber.
I'm not enamored with either, although Guénon is certainly not without interest. That said, where Guénon and Jung differ, I follow Jung. Schuon, on the other hand, as the essay cited should make evident, is the one whose documented activities I find the more disturbing. While I share some views with the Traditionalist school of perennialism, especially with Huston Smith's version of it, I am more on Huxley's wavelength.