16th July

Just seven of us but small numbers make it easier for everyone to join in the discussion so it was a good meeting enjoyed by all. We discussed the search for the holy grail which I suggested was within us and not buried in some secret cache.
We then listened to a short video by a sage giving his views on enlightenment. After a stop for tea and a biscuit we then read and discussed this paper a critique of philosophy although it is referring mainly to Western philosophy

Philosophy means knowing something about the unknown without knowing it.
It is just preconceptions, hypotheses, man-constructed ideologies.
Philosophy tries to explain things -- never succeeds. At the most, it can succeed only in explaining away things, but it never succeeds in explaining them. Religion makes no effort to explain life. It tries to live it. Religion does not take life as a problem to be solved -- it takes life as a mystery to be lived. Religion is not curious about life. Religion is in awe, in tremendous wonder about life.
Philosophy is a substitute for religion. Those who go into philosophy are lost to religion, and those who want to go into religion, they have to drop all kinds of philosophizing.
Philosophy is just intellectual gymnastics, it has nothing to do with reality. It talks, argues, creates magnificent systems of thought, but it does not change the man who is creating all this. He remains the same man.
Philosophy is baseless. It makes castles in the air. Ideas are just ideas. You can project an y idea you like, nobody can prevent you; and once you project the idea you can find all kinds of rationalizations to support it. There is no difficulty.
Science grows out of doubt. Religion grows out of wonder. Between the two is philosophy; it has not yet decided -- it goes on hanging between doubt and wonder. Sometimes the philosopher doubts and sometimes the philosopher wonders: he is just in between. If he doubts too much, by and by he becomes a scientist. If he wonders too much, by and by he becomes religious. That's why philosophy is disappearing from the world -- because ninety-nine percent of philosophers have become scientists. And one person -- a Buber somewhere, or a Krishnamurti somewhere, or a Suzuki somewhere -- great minds, great penetrating intellects, they have become religious. Philosophy is almost losing its ground.
Beware of getting lost in philosophy and religion if you really want to know what truth is. Beware of being Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, because they are all ways of being deaf, blind, insensitive.
RELIGION IS NOT CONCERNED with philosophical questions and answers. To go on looking this way is stupid, and a sheer waste of life, time, energy and consciousness, because you can go on asking and answers can be given -- but from answers only more questions will come out. If in the beginning there was one question, in the end, through many answers, there will be a million questions. Philosophy solves nothing. It promises, but never solves anything -- all those promises remain unfulfilled.

Still it goes on promising. But the experience which can solve the riddles of the mind cannot be attained through philosophical speculation. Buddha was absolutely against philosophy -- there has never been a man more against philosophy than Buddha