[OSList] Individual and collective master (was: OST - Open Systems Thinking)

[Bernhard Weber]

Harrison and all

I like the recently upcoming discussion about the history of Systems Thinking, but I would also like to make a big jump from this. 

I am not shure, but to me it seems to not be by pure "accident". 
1. Recently Stanley park wrote "Now is the territory of Peace- Nirvana" 
2. And some days later you Harrison wrote "Open the space of your life and the lives of those around you, and you will discover your own natural state". 

"Your own natural state", that is exactly how Buddhist masters (like e.g. Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, the contemporary Tibetan Dzogchen-teacher) refer to what is often called enlightenment, liberation, Rigpa, ... 

Although it is not really possible to "feel" something behind the words of a written posting, I always felt some kind of reluctance by side of you, when somebody in the group related the effects of OST or the OS spirit to central Buddhist concepts. Would you prefer to not discuss it (treat it as a tabu) or am I completely wrong here? (And my feeling demasked as pseudo-feeling;-)

I am here in Sri Lanka at the beginning of the 7th year of residence, the place/space where Gautamas words have been put into Pali language and written down some hundreds of years after his passing away/paranirvana. So all this is resonating in me as a kind of effect of the Spirit of the space/genius loci. 

Anyhow I would like to invite you and all to explore, if the following idea makes sense: 

What the two citations above seem to hint at in my eyes , is a quite specific function/effect of Open Space: being a trigger for processes during which not only things get done, as it has been pointed out again and again, but a trigger for processes that may also lead to enlightenment. If there is some value in that idea, then OS might be a collective equivalent of a master

A master also can only be a trigger, because as already the historical Gautama (called the Buddha) stated, that he can, on basis of his own experience only show the way, point to the right direction, but the practitioner has to do the work. There is no way that the master can do it (the full liberation, the reaching of the natural state) for the student.

So I am wondering if the efficiency and effectiveness of OST in getting things done, is not intrinsicly knitted together with (alias dialectically connected to) this "collective master function". Two sides of one medal?

Of course I am not interested to tie OS to Buddhism as a belief system. 
But of course my understanding of the ways to enlightenment is also not tied to a specific belief system. I have luckily been exposed to "passion, responsability and love " in- and outside of OST in various cultures like my own Christian culture in Austria, Candomblé in Brazil, animistic cults (as the christians call them) in Africa, Buddhism of the Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan tradition (Buddhism fused with Bön), Yoga in India...  And it always works and in all kinds of places.

So once again: might it be legitimate, make sense and be useful to look at OST as a kind of set up for a collective master without a present individual guru?
Or not?

Bernd/Colombo



 

. 

Bernd Weber
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Am 13.12.2011 um 22:11 schrieb Harrison Owen:

> discover your own natural state

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