An Integral meta-paradigm

Edward Berge Says: July 30th, 2006 at 8:02 am I think you on right Marko that Buddhist and Postmodern thought are both on to some very similar ideas, though both sides would vehemently deny it. I’ve read numerous articles that suggest as much, though there are still some differences between the two. I intepret those differences through my personal, idiosyncatic integral lens as the pomo version being of a higher structural level of development and therefore more inclusive and relatively better than the Buddhist intepretation. (Ironically I also realize that I shouldn’t be able to make this judgment if I were the type of postmodernist criticized by Ken.)

I’d also agree that Ken uses more the Buddhist intepretation through his integral lens. But he also sees that the pomo worldview is an advance in some respects and I think he rightly includes some of those discoveries. I just think that due to his Buddhist bias he sometimes misinterprets some of pomo’s conceptions and misses how close it is to some of the Buddhist ideas of emptiness, witness consciousness and nondual realization. Only better.

alan kazlev Says: July 30th, 2006 at 2:52 pm Buddhism and postmodernism. To me this seems like yet another attempt to make Buddhism “respectable” to the secular West, much as Wilber is trying to do with traditional spirituality. Sure there are superficial similarities, but likewise there are superficial similarities with quantum physics, as Fritjof Capra showed. Jorge Ferrer, in Revisioning Transpersonal Theory, has some pertinant critical comments to make regarding these sort of apologetics...

For me it is very important that an Integral meta-paradigm break free of the shackles of western secularism. That means going beyond western academia and the limitations of the physical-secular consciousness. I am not here denigrating the vital role of academia in helping to elucidate the facts of the objective material world, and our physical consciousness’ individual and collective responses to and interaction with it and with each other. But this can only be a small part of the larger picture.

This is why I see Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as better exemplars for an Integral tradition than Wilber or any other academic or quasi-academic theorist, brilliant and insightful as they may be, and useful as their contribution may be in adding to the much larger understanding and praxis.