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snake
United Kingdom
280 Posts |
 Posted - Jan 19 2006 : 12:11:19 PM
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so Da is a mixture of wonderfull insight into the mystical path and workings of body/mind and a bit of a weirdo |
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Victor
USA
910 Posts |
Posted - Jan 19 2006 : 1:04:18 PM
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| you mean Da Free John or whatever he calls himself these days? |
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david_obsidian
USA
2602 Posts |
Posted - Jan 19 2006 : 2:37:46 PM
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Da is a great example of what can happen if you have spiritual talent, but refuse to face the ordinary core issues of growing up and being a person.
Everything you want to know about Da, but Da doesn't want you to know is here:
http://lightmind.com/Impermanence/Library/knee/
It's written by a bunch of disciples, some of whom are very witty.
For more, see
http://lightmind.com/daism/
The following is a posting I saw on a forum somewhere, (I can't remember where). It is very well written, and is sad and funny, and hits the nail on the head so well about Da that I kept it. With regards to its anonymous author, whoever you are.
Posted by Broken Yogi on Jul-13-04 7:59pm
(In reply to: Re: Epileptics at the wheel posted by dirty aghori on Jul-13-04 7:23pm)
But if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that Franklin Jones was a brilliant and charismatic yong guy who had some pretty severe personality disorders and likewise, some pretty profound spiritual karmas and capabilities. Playing chicken and egg isn't easy, especially if one looks at it from a karmic perspective. Why is a person born with such inclinations? Who really knows? If we simply confine ourselves to this lifetime, I would generally say he was born with some serious strikes against him, including some strong bodily inclinations towards panic disorder, megalomania, drug and alcohol addiction, etc. And his family life didn't help much either, being raised alone by parents who were pretty suppressive and had problems with alcohol and fought a lot. Between the two, it's pretty fair to say that young Franklin had plenty to deal with in himself, but like most people, didn't really want to do that, and instead chanelled his life-level frustrations and personality problems into all kinds of seeking, first sexually and bodily, then spiritually.
I don't think there's any question that Jones was a prodigy, intellectually, sexually, and also spiritually. A lot of energy in that guy. And he went pretty far in all those dimensions. But his emotional problems not only went unaddressed during much of that time, but even drove and came to rule over his spiritual achievments. One can easily see how Da's spiritual and yogic "progress" actually exacerbated his emotional problems, rather than purifying them. And so they continued even in the midst of profound samadhi experience and realizations of a profound or cosmic variety. In that sense, he's like any other "must", just of a modern western vareity, and his "mental derangement" is simply typical of modern western culture, which is plagued by narcissisitc personality disorders. Da's spiritual talents are of a much higher order than most westerners who use spirituality as a way of covering over their emotional problems, so we might say that's he's something of the "Picasso" of the modern spiritual west, a genuis, breakthrough talent who is plagued by narcissistic personality problems. One can well appreciate his "paintings", without the need to praise the person himself. And likewise, one can pretty well ignore his personal claims about himself, which resemble those of Dali and the "Dadaists" in their comic grandiosity, and yet still appreciate their artistic value. Picasso may have been an asshole, but he was still one helluva painter, even if he became something of a kitschy joke on himself in his later years. And Dali was great too, even if not nearly as great as he thought himself to be. Both could be total asses in their personal dealings with people. So Da is a lot like that, a prima donna of the spiritual world, but not an untalented one.
Asking which came first is like asking if Picasso was an asshole who became a great painter, or if he was a great painter who became an asshole, or if he simply needed to be an asshole in order to paint the way he did. Perhaps so, perhaps not. As with spiritual teachers, the record is unclear. There's plenty of great painters, like Monet or Matisse, who exhibited exceptional maturity and "sattvas" in their personal lives, and others, like Van Gogh or Picasso, who did not. All one can say is that artistic genius, like spiritual genius, can afflict almost anyone, and when it afflicts an asshole, one gets works that are a combination of both. With Da, we get genius spirituality combined with assholishness, just as we do in Picasso.
One could say that at least for a while, Picasso made his assholishness into a stimulus for genius. Cubism was in one respect an outgrowth of Picasso's being a megalomanical asshole who liked to tear everyone and everything apart. And the same goes for many aspects of Da's own teaching, even the aspects that are evidence of real genius. Da's deconstruction of egoity, his "radical" teachings about the avoidance of relationship, about narcisissm itself, would probably never have been formulated by someone who was not himself a narcissist with huge problems in those areas. So one can certainly see certain advantages to Da's own peculiar personality that a creative genius instinctively knows how to use to his artistic benefit. But those things also have a nasty way of catching up with one later on. Unless one has actually penetrated and transcended one's narcissism, it simply takes over at some point, and I think it's fairly clear that has happened with Da.
The idea, of course, was that by throwing himself directly into all his narcissism, it would be transcended and he would be free of it. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and even more unfortunately, Da clings to the illusion that it did. So the rest of his life has been devoted to somehow "proving" that he really did transcend the ego, that he really is perfect and Divine through and through, and he insists that everything and everyone around him affirm that to be the case. All that has come of that is Da's increasing isolation, as he slips towards the solitary death that is the fate of all narcisissts, like Raymond dying alone in his room, a universe unto himself.
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Edited by - david_obsidian on Jan 19 2006 4:31:04 PM |
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david_obsidian
USA
2602 Posts |
Posted - Jan 19 2006 : 2:56:27 PM
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P.S. interesting it was discussed today, but Da is a great example of a person having an ambition to fit himself into a 'Spiritual Superhero' role.
The expectations set up by the 'Siddha Tradition', with its spiritual superhero myths, may have partially helped to derail him.
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Frank-in-SanDiego
USA
363 Posts |
Posted - Jan 22 2006 : 3:24:13 PM
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Hari Om Tat Sat
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Re: this individaul Da, I do not know of him, his talents or contributions... but I am familuar with the name he has taken. If you have interest, here's the story [compressed a bit by me] from the Prajapatya Brahmana
Three type of Sons lived with their father Prajapati (praja = creation and pati = lord, or the lord of this round of creation). The 3 were the devas or gods, men or mortals, and the demons.
The three said to their father " O Lord do thou teach us".
Prajapati then said to them the single syllable 'da' . He then asked to the gods did you understand? They said yes, we have understood. You have told us with 'da' to control the senses (the indriyas). Prajapati said yes, you have understood.
He then asked to the men did you understand? They said yes, we have understood. You have told us with 'da' to be charitable. Prajapati said yes, you have understood.
He then asked to the demons did you understand? They said yes, we have understood. You have told us with 'da' to be merciful/compassionate. Prajapati said yes, you have understood.
Prajapati said you have all understood that this very same instruction, this divine speech (vak) the thunder-cloud repeats da da da. Hence one should learn this 3 fold instruction; self-contol (damam), charity (datta) and compassion/kindness (dayam).
[perhaps this is at the root of Sting the musician's song? do do do da da da ]
Peace,
Frank In San Diego
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Edited by - Frank-in-SanDiego on Jan 22 2006 4:56:16 PM |
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Eddy
USA
92 Posts |
Posted - May 06 2007 : 12:18:32 PM
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| i can see the I-ness all over the man... just look at his eyes |
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david_obsidian
USA
2602 Posts |
Posted - May 06 2007 : 2:03:02 PM
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Just a BTW, Eddy, I'm not sure the stuff I wrote above would pass forum rules these days -- it was written further in the past when the rules were more permissive of direct criticism of gurus.
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Da
