Herbert V Guenther - 1987 - The Creative Vision (196p).pdf

Herbert V Guenther - 1987 - The Creative Vision (196p).pdf

Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Wisdom Pubns (July 1987)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0932156037
ISBN-13: 978-0932156037

The Symbolic Recreation of the World According to the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition of Tantric Visualization Otherwise Known as The Developing Phase

I think this pretty well sums up the general look and feel of any of Dr. Guenther's texts:

In the process of the symbolic re-creaiton of ourselves and our world, initiated and effected by the so-called developing phase, which pertains to that aspect of Buddhist thought and level of human growth where the individual has broken away from a mechanistic perspective of himself and his world and increasingly attempts to tune in to the forces working in and around him, the principle of complementarity plays a decisive role. This principle is summed up m the idea of the Inseparability of appropriate activity and appreciative discernment, each facet expressing in its own way the underling dynamics of a single reality, in this case the reality of the human individual.

The first stirring of this principle is noticed when, having outgrown our childhood phase, we set out on the long and often arduous road to adulthood and spiritual maturity. The initial step in this direction is taken from the level, referred to as Mahayoga, on which the developing phase becomes distinctly operative. In the overall development of the human individual this phase is, in a very special sense, tied in with appropriate activity, which basically means the activation of one's inner potential whereby physical and spiritual meaning fuse into a single life· sustaining and life-enhancing dynamics. The emphasis on appropriate activity points to the fact that knowing, in the vital sense of self-cognition, is ultimately possible only by means of doing. "In the beging was the Deed" (Im Anfang war die Tat!)-Goethe's insight is more than a mere restatement of Romantic idealism, which, in its theoretical presentation by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, (1762-1814) displays certain similarities with the idealistic trends in Buddhist philosophy whose reductionism one attempted to overcome by an existenttal-experiential approach to the problem of becoming truly human.

Any questions?