Theos-Talk Archives (August 2002 Message tt00073)

leonmaurer@aol.com wrote:
> To answer your questions it would help if we defined the "right hand path"
> simply as the path of selflessness and compassion for the welfare of others
> -- and the "left hand path" as the path of selfishness and unconcern for the
> welfare of others.

Spoken like a true partisan.

While your definitions, speaking from strict definitions, might be
considered valid, they use certain loaded terms which carry connotations
which are not valid at all. Because, ultimately, the right hand path and
the left hand path end up in the same place. 

In the right hand path, one's concern is for the evolution of humanity
as a whole, and one's actions are geared in that direction. In the left
hand path, one's concern is for the evolution of one's self. In that
regard, what happens to others is, in the short run, irrelevant. But as
one evolves, one has better recognition of universal principles, and
therefore would generally act towards the welfare of others, if for no
other reason than it speeds up one's own evolution. 

As I had mentioned, due to the concentration on self, the left-hand
path contains a much greater temptation for self-delusion; confusing the
lower 4 principles for the upper 3. When that happens, it can lead to
what is commonly termed "evil." But that doesn't mean that such
temptation does not exist in the right-hand path; there are people out
there who, through religious beliefs, participate in actions that also
may be referred to as "evil," even though, in their minds, they are
working for the good of humanity. For example, there is a strong group
(especially in the faculty of many colleges) who sincerely believe that
if Western Civilization were destroyed, then a Communist paradise would
arise from its ashes, and greed and other forms of selfishness would
disappear from humanity. They therefore work to create hatred and war,
all in the name of the good of humanity. Hell, we even have
representatives of them right here in this group.

> As the Buddha said,
> "Everything we are is the result of what we have thought -- and everything
> we will become is the result of what we are thinking now."

Didn't Buddha also advocate taking some sort of "middle path?"

Bart Lidofsky