Stripping the Gurus

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yes,I did.

My feelings about him are long and winded, actually this is just one of many things that have confirmed what I always felt deep inside.

Lets just say, the warning bells went off around the time I realised if you have a question for his holiness, it must be screened and processed and be the "right" question before you get to hear his answer,.

This has nothing to do with my feelings about the guy; I assume religious leaders are total shits. I'm just calling bullshit on what you said because the actual chapter on the Dalai Lama didn't really contain anything condemning of the current one. And the book doesn't look like anything I'd cite with confidence anyway... it's very tabloidesque. And,  you didn't answer my questions.

I read the chapter about the Dalai Lama. So unless all the dirt about the Dalai Lama was in chapters that weren't about him, I'm confused about what you said. How much of it did you read? What parts confirmed which thoughts you'd had about him being "off", in what ways?

Sorry, I'll answer your questions Nigel:
1- I read it all, it's been a while since I've read it all, as I found this info a long time ago, it's only now where I decided to share it after getting into an e-argument about the dalai lama, so I admit, maybe there's stuff I'm just assuming is in there that probably isn't and that I'm thinking of different sources that also say stuff that have confirmed my suspicions of him (and pretty much any leader of a religious organisation).
Yeah, from the sounds of it, he's nowhere near as bad as the previous Lamas, but he ain't the enlightened saint that everyone makes him out to be.
I used to be a fan when I was in highschool. HE visited Australia at one point and I went with a group of other students to go see and meet him.
It bothered me that questions had to be pre-approved before he would answer them, and they were all questions which I thought were kinda... how to put it... not important I suppose.
Ever since then, I had suspicions he wasn't all he was cracked up to be.
Ever since then, I've found more and more sources suggesting he isn't the awesome guy that I once thought he was.

Better?

Oh.

I thought this thread was about the book you linked to.

[Lies]

Yes,I did.

My feelings about him are long and winded, actually this is just one of many things that have confirmed what I always felt deep inside.

Lets just say, the warning bells went off around the time I realised if you have a question for his holiness, it must be screened and processed and be the "right" question before you get to hear his answer,.

This has nothing to do with my feelings about the guy; I assume religious leaders are total shits. I'm just calling bullshit on what you said because the actual chapter on the Dalai Lama didn't really contain anything condemning of the current one. And the book doesn't look like anything I'd cite with confidence anyway... it's very tabloidesque. And,  you didn't answer my questions.

I read the chapter about the Dalai Lama. So unless all the dirt about the Dalai Lama was in chapters that weren't about him, I'm confused about what you said. How much of it did you read? What parts confirmed which thoughts you'd had about him being "off", in what ways?

Sorry, I'll answer your questions Nigel:
1- I read it all, it's been a while since I've read it all, as I found this info a long time ago, it's only now where I decided to share it after getting into an e-argument about the dalai lama, so I admit, maybe there's stuff I'm just assuming is in there that probably isn't and that I'm thinking of different sources that also say stuff that have confirmed my suspicions of him (and pretty much any leader of a religious organisation).
Yeah, from the sounds of it, he's nowhere near as bad as the previous Lamas, but he ain't the enlightened saint that everyone makes him out to be.
I used to be a fan when I was in highschool. HE visited Australia at one point and I went with a group of other students to go see and meet him.
It bothered me that questions had to be pre-approved before he would answer them, and they were all questions which I thought were kinda... how to put it... not important I suppose.
Ever since then, I had suspicions he wasn't all he was cracked up to be.
Ever since then, I've found more and more sources suggesting he isn't the awesome guy that I once thought he was.

Better?

Oh.

I thought this thread was about the book you linked to.

Well it is but it's also to do with what I think of the dalai lama and other gurus, I just figured this book might be interesting to you guys. Sorry for the confusion.

[Kai]

Vietnamese Buddhism isn't, as far as I'm aware, anywhere near as militaristic and tied to state power as Japanese Zen Buddhism was.  I assume it had some power, at least, but I know under some of the South Vietnamese generals in the Vietnam War it was brutally suppressed, often with minimal resistance from the Buddhists themselves.  And I doubt the Communists in the North were very keen on it either.

Yeah, this is the denomination that Thich Quang Duc came out of, and we all know what he did.

You never hear /anything/ bad about Nhat Hahn. You hear all sorts of things about the Dalai Lama, but TNH has a clean record as far as I can tell, which is either wonderful or suspicious.

[Lies]

Vietnamese Buddhism isn't, as far as I'm aware, anywhere near as militaristic and tied to state power as Japanese Zen Buddhism was.  I assume it had some power, at least, but I know under some of the South Vietnamese generals in the Vietnam War it was brutally suppressed, often with minimal resistance from the Buddhists themselves.  And I doubt the Communists in the North were very keen on it either.

Yeah, this is the denomination that Thich Quang Duc came out of, and we all know what he did.

You never hear /anything/ bad about Nhat Hahn. You hear all sorts of things about the Dalai Lama, but TNH has a clean record as far as I can tell, which is either wonderful or suspicious.

As far as "terrible" things go for vietnamese biddhists, they seem cleaner than a whistle, although I can find critique of their philosophies, corroption seems almost non-existant, as far as I can tell.
As you said, this strikes me as either wonderful or suspicious. Or wonderfully suspicious.

[Salty]

I only read the chapter on Krishnamurti since he's one I'm familiar with and...
meh.

I came away from his stuff with the idea that there wasn't going to be any particular set of words or some set path or some UNset path that you make up all on your own that's going to lead to The Big T Truth. He even says that you won't reach any kind of enlightenment through the words he says as your listening to them or afterward or ever.

He said something to the effect of "Truth comes like a breeze, you can open a window but that act in itself will not make the breeze come." For simple a metaphor I find it useful. He also talked quite a bit about "Grooved thinking" repeating patterns without considering alternative possibilities.

Most of the stuff about him being a hypocritical, evasive, self-entitled asshole has been available to anyone who bothers to look. Of course he was an asshole.

In 1932, Krishnamurti and Rajagopal's wife began an affair which would last for more than twenty-five years. The woman, Rosalind, became pregnant on several occasions, suffering miscarriages and at least two covert/illegal abortions. The oddity of that relationship is not lessened by Jiddu's earlier regard for the same woman. For, both he and his brother believed that Rosalind was the reincarnation of their long-lost mother ... in spite of the fact that the latter had only died two years after Rosalind was born (Sloss, 2000).

Beyond the  factor

Consequently, apologetic protests that Krishnamurti's behavior with Rosalind was "not dishonest/hypocritical," simply for him not having spent his entire life preaching the benefits of celibacy or marriage, ring hollow. On the contrary, if we are to believe Peat's report that Krishnamurti "had spoken to Bohm of the importance of celibacy," there absolutely was a contradiction between Krishnamurti's teachings and his life.

On at least one occasion, Krishnamurti was likewise inadvertently overheard making unprovoked, uncomplimentary remarks about others ... in his bedroom, with the married Rosalind (Sloss, 2000).

Ok. He was a hypocrite. Well done.

So?

The entire point of his "teachings" after disbanding the Order of the Star was "You're never going to learn anything about Truth and Freedom that you don't learn yourself."

At least, that's what I got out of it.

He once wrote to [Fritz Wilhelm] that he thought that his chest pains were a result of K's [i.e., Krishnamurti's] misbehaving towards him. "This problem with K is literally crushing me" (Peat, 1997).

Literally.
That sounds suspiciously like MIND CONTROL LAZORS.

Just judging from this chapter this book looks like it's targeted at people who firmly buy into this crap, that you NEED someone to show you the way, wholeheartedly. And those folks are rarely open to having their idols stripped of Godhood. I guess. I read J. Krishna's stuff, got the point where I realized it wasn't going to do me any good and moved on. None of his stuff appears to be very original, but useful in certain respects.  Just like this book, as far as I can see.