"Sakyamuni means "the silent one or the sage (muni) of the Sakya clan". Though he is the founder of a widely taught world religion, the ultimate core… - Joseph Campbell
"Sakyamuni means "the silent one or the sage (muni) of the Sakya clan". Though he is the founder of a widely taught world religion, the ultimate core of his doctrine remains concealed, necessarily, in silence."
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Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell (26 March 1904 – 30 October 1987) was an American professor, writer, and orator most famous for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion.
CAMPBELL: There has to be a training to help you open your ears so that you can begin to hear metaphorically instead of concretely. Freud and Jung both felt that myth is grounded in the unconscious. Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the Muses — or, in biblical language, “God.” This is no fancy, it is a fact. Since the inspiration comes from the unconscious, and since the unconscious minds of the people of any single small society have much in common, what the shaman or seer brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone. So when one hears the seer’s story, one responds, “Aha! This is my story. This is something that I had always wanted to say but wasn’t able to say.” There has to be a dialogue, an interaction between the seer and the community. The seer who sees things that people in the community don’t want to hear is just ineffective. Sometimes they will wipe him out.
Now, eternity is beyond all categories of thought. This is an important point in all of the great Oriental religions. We want to think about God. God is a thought. God is a name. God is an idea. But its reference is to something that transcends all thinking. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of thought. As Kant said, the think in itself is no things. It transcends thingness, it goes past anything that could be thought. The best things can't be told because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood, because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about. The third best are what we talk about. And myth is that field of reference to what is absolutely transcendent....That's why it's absurd to speak of God as of either this sex or that sex. The divine power is antecedent to sexual separation.
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"The boy answers, "Don't ask unless you are willing to be hurt." Indra says, "I ask. Teach." (That, by the way, is a good Oriental idea: you don't teach until you are asked. You don't force your mission down people's throats.)"