Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00531)

re BAG's " DOES 'MAYA' MEAN 'MOTHER' ? THE 
EARLIEST SANSKRIT"

That post seems scholarly, to me, as usual, and might in some 
cases by useful, possibly, re "earliest usages," etc, but seems to 
me that if we don't start putting some things in our own words 
and in keeping with our own interpretive tendencies more and 
more ... That is, how far can we expect the scholarly, literal 
versions, in general, to take us, without some kind of 
meaningful-enough self-participation that's more than 
parroting?

I suspect that, in the area of "cultivation of spirituality," in 
particular, there might be a p/Path related process which 
might be loosely described as "middle way," or (in a sense?) 
similar to walking a narrow plank, or path, in that one might 
find oneself addressing one's self values, interpretive 
tendencies, while at the same time acknolwledging and 
balancing in some way, in some sense, something or other 
about the mayavicity, irrelevance, non-applicability (from a 
certain "spiritual perspective") of one's apparent (small s) self 
aspects with respect to one's apparent spiritualistic goals re 
those substantially-less mainstream/dualistic aspects of 
reality/truth conveyed by such as Theosophy and Mahayanics 
... So that, (obviously enough?), there might be times when 
negotiating such a path might not be particularly 
straightforward in one's current environment?

But, having said that, and in light of all the complications, 
misunderstandings, misinterpretations that are possible, are we 
ignoring our own interpretive tendencies? Obviously not, or 
there wouldn't be any posts on these lists? So, (apparently?), 
how we interpret each others' posts on these lists might be 
somewhat more keyish than we might at times want to admit, 
especially if we convey the impression that we might have 
some interest in some kind of "middle way" approach toward 
spirituality?

Speculatively,
Mauri