the anti-mushroom culture

"Well, I was making hyperbole for the sake of levity

I don't take either of those statements to be "true".

Christians want love, buddhists want love, all beings want love...but some cultures pervert that drive for love and shape it into a meme of hate.

As I often say to my christian fundamentalist friends:

If God/Jesus was love, so can you."

i guess I knew that

"@betawave: ... the whole value of anti-mushroom culture is... to get across the simple idea that there is something to the practices that goes beyond moment by moment stoicism. Maybe stoicism is actually more complex than I'm giving credit, I'm using the term to mean dumb endurance.

I got this idea as I was reading Kenneth's latest interview on Buddhist geeks. I was imagining someone reading the description of first gear practice and it struck me that without the idea of enlightenment -- some quantum jump in perception/understanding -- it doesn't come across as particularly compelling. Objectify, objectify, ad nauseum... The benefit is you get better at objectifying. On the surface, not so compelling. A good practice, but maybe the cost benefit is one where it doesn't make senes to devote much time to, maybe just enough to smooth over the rough patches.

But testimony that says there are quantum leaps (paths) and there is completion (4th path) is the miraculous thing to me. It was what was missing in terms of my own motivation to practice... and it's important that it happened not just to a mythical figure in the distant past.

So even though no one can describe the nature of the excellent attainment of enlightenment, the declaration of attaining it tips the scales for me just slightly enough to make a difference.
"

I just want to call attention to this quote by Betawave and say how brilliant I think this insight is. This is why the mainstream "mindfulness" movement feels so deeply unsatisfactory to me. When you throw away the precious jewel of enlightenment and start pitching meditation as snake oil to cure everything from chronic pain to stress to depression, it's no wonder that meditation is met by the general public with indifference.

This is precisely why we must tell the truth about enlightenment.