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

Artur Silva arturfsilva at yahoo.com
Sun Dec 18 08:59:12 PST 2011


Hi Bernd/'Bernardo'
 
I am trying to recup the mails I have missed when they were posted to
the OSlist. I have chosen this one to answer as I could have chosen any other
on the same topic.
 
1. I like your idea of a "colective master" in OST.
 
2. I also agree that there are similarities between OST and the Eastern
cultures.
 
3. You have mentioned a lot of religion traditions beginning with Buddhism,
but you have not mentioned Taoism, which, IMHO, is the basis for many of them -
with a small difference.
 
4. From the "Tao Te Ching" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching),
that I prefer to translate as "The Book of the Way and the
Virtue/Integrity", that I bought many years ago in Macao, in a (good)
Portuguese translation, I find some very interesting points:
 
4.1. The book is a cultural/philosophical tradition, nor a religious one,
and there is no Creator and no God (nor Gods) in it.
 
4.2. “In the beginning it was the Tao” that has "no name" and
"can't be named". Hence it is so compatible with the Big Bang hypothesis
as to any other (scientific or not).
 
4.3. As there is no God in Taoism there is no "God related moral"
and the virtue can be considered as an ethic (even - one could sustain - an
atheistic one).
 
5. IMHO mankind and the Universe need much more of Tao and an atheist ethic
than of a religious moral (that many of the “converts” often don’t respect,
btw).

6. I have no problem with Harrison being a priest (as well as Brian was), if he
(they) don't try to justify Open Space from their religious convictions, which
I never saw any of them doing - and, if they did, that would mean, btw, "invoking the name
of God in vain" ;-)
 
Regards  

Artur

   

________________________________
 From: Bernhard Weber <weberb at gmx.at>
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 5:12 AM
Subject: [OSList] Individual and collective master (was: OST - Open Systems Thinking)
 

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
Change Facilitation s.r.o., A Global Partner Who Makes Change Happen in Complex Environments; www.change-facilitation.com, www.change-management-toolbook.com bernd.weber at change-facilitation.org; Regional Phone  numbers: 
>-Austria: +43 664 135 4828, landline + 431 5968657)
-Sri Lanka: landline +94 11 2785859, iPhone +94 777740757



NEW: Intensive Learning Workshop 
"Playing with the Waves of Change" 
www.change-facilitation.com/

You want to have the design  for a "Playing with the Waves (of Change) WS 2 completely taylor-made according to your individual learning interests & needs & limitations? Then have a look to the questionnaire at
www.surveymonkey.com/s/5ZDS6JQ



If you get Email from my account <bernd.weber at change-facilitation.org> please do not use the reply button but answer to <weberb at gmx.at>, because my change-facilitation.org INBOX is not working for the time being.















Am 13.12.2011 um 22:11 schrieb Harrison Owen:

discover your own natural state

_______________________________________________
OSList mailing list
To post send emails to OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
To
 unsubscribe send an email to OSList-leave at lists.openspacetech.org
To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20111218/b4dae1f5/attachment-0008.htm>


More information about the OSList mailing list