Transcendence in Tribal Cultures ~Shinzen Young

Yes, in tribal cultures.

This is interesting.

Um.

Tribal cultures typically do not have a technical vocabulary.

For these kinds of things.

Typically they do not have systematic exercises.

That's characteristic of literary civilization literate literate civilizations.

Why now so?

The.

When these tribal cultures encounter the elaborate.

Philosophical and technological cultures of the modern world.

Previously, there had been a tendency to sort of.

Think of themselves as being less than because it's like wow. That's all you know all these ideas and and the literate cultures. Foster that notion and I don't just mean?

Um imperialistic western culture, there's also imperialistic Chinese culture. I mean, it's a human thing OK.

Now, but actually it's exactly the opposite.

It's actually to the credit of those tribal cultures that they didn't have techniques and didn't have concepts in a sets why.

Because they didn't need techniques and they didn't need concepts, they actually experience the stuff.

As part of their daily life and as part of their rituals. Their ceremonies so whereas the literate. Cultures had words for things but weren't necessarily actually having experiences.

The tribal cultures didn't need the words or the techniques life and ceremony sorted it for People.

So.

You so I would say you know it's not elaborated like that, yet Having said that look what's implied would just take one example of a tribal situation. The One I'm most familiar with which is Native American. Specifically, the Lakota or Western Sioux approach to things if you sort of look at the symbolism of the ceremonies. It's all.

About.

Complementary polarities the sacred object representative sacred object is the pipe that pipe has a bowl made of earth and a stem made of wood.

And they are kept separate.

The bowl stands for Mother Earth.

Which is a contractive force?

Speed stem stands for Father Sky, which is an expensive force. The tree grows up to the Sky. Eventually, the bowl goes back into the earth OK to its source. So you have these 2 actually holding in your hands the fundamental forces of the universe.

And when you bring them together.

OK then there's an empowering to do things when you do the Sundance you dance around A.

Cotton wood tree or ASP in that and they their forked like that OK. So it's one becoming 22, becoming one that's what you're looking at for 4 days.

When if you're

There's different ways that People get pierced you may have seen in movies like that movie The man called horse.

By the way, unlike in that movie you know, and screams and cries OK.

But let's say you get pierced the way it's shown in that movie, so you get hauled up by these skewers.

And you are.

Now completely.

At the mercy of.

An expensive force of the Sky. That's pulling your flesh up the contracted force of the Earth. Those forces are totaly beyond what any human mind can deal with.

So you just have to surrender to that and however long it takes for that which is caught in between the fundamental forces to give.

Exemplified by about a square inch of skin on either side.

You just have to wait and at the moment when it breaks.

And you fall to the ground is when your prayer is delivered to the source so this sort of.

Polarity thing is over the symbolically it's all there is there in the ceremonies. I've heard one. Medison person when you start a sweat lodge.

You put

5 rocks in the center.

Like that, so one medicine man, said that actually.

The original Lakota way.

Was there was just for rocks?

Indicating the basic directions.

Um.

And the source.

God Gosh Sheila was represented by the absence.

But because People couldn't rap their mind around that they just they ended up actually pudding something there. Just to symbolize that so I could go on. Anon sorry for getting digress, but you asked about tribal cultures. I think it's there in the life. It's there in the symbolism. It's there in the ceremonies. It is not as I've ever been able to see, there in terms of.

Organized techniques or philosophical concepts, but as I say I don't think that that represents a less than situation. I think it represents a better than situation. They didn't need that stuff. They just lived it or at least some of them. I'm not saying all our remote ancestors were like that, but is that a sufficient answer about tribal.