Reddit mentions of Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Shambhala Dragon Editions)

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism knocked my, "I'm spiritual and everything is solved by talking about Buddhist concepts" self on its ass. Rightfully.

Just wanted to let you know I'm not the one downvoting you. I think it's good you care so deeply.

But there's a difference between a lack of respect, and humor. Go read the Pali canon. Even the Buddha used some gentle ribbing occasionally. While reading through it I definitely laughed out loud more than a couple times. Humor can be a great tool to point out some failings in your practice in a easy way.

If your practice is making you a humorless zombie, or even worse you can't laugh at your own expense every now and then -- how big of a hold does your ego have over you? How self important are you?

Yes, there are some horrible atrocities in the world, and yes we should be doing something about them. But this (rather bad) page has nothing to do with that, nor was it insulting the people harmed by that. Instead it was more poking some fun at some of the silly materialistic things we can do that really are unrelated to the goal.

One of the main links on that site was to the book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa. Which is a rather fantastic book that goes into this issue in detail.

I recently finished a boom that sounds like it may be what you're looki for. It's by a gentleman name Daniel Ingram, and it's entitled Mastering the core teaching of the Buddha. It approaches meditation in a very straight forward manner that I found quite refreshing . Here is a link http://interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml

Another is Cutting through spiritual materialism by Chogyam trungpa, link here http://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Spiritual-Materialism-Shambhala-Editions/dp/0877730504

This book will explain the situation:
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

>nobody wanted to do any real study and meditation any more, just receive blessings.

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, by Chögyam Trungpa, 1973.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_materialism -

- http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-57062-957-0.cfm -

- Introduction, text online - http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tib/cutting.htm -

- http://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Spiritual-Materialism-Shambhala-Editions/dp/0877730504 -

Try to distance yourself from the desire of wanting to be called, or labelled as anything. A good book to read that is full of wisdom is Chogyam Trungpa's Cutting Through Spirtual Materialism.

When one starts to awaken, Ego will often try and get in the way. The wisdom and realizations you come into, are often bound to ego. I find the trick is say very little about your own personal realizations. The more and more you talk about something you've realized (that may very well be so exciting and incredible) the more the experience is diminished and replaced by 'the story' of a realization. This is like watering down your epiphanies so they can be communicated with others.

Finally, try and remember that the people you see, who you talk too, are projections of your mind, and if you feel a certain way about them, there must be a karmic cause for this. Dig into that. Try and see/feel where it's all coming from.