The Awakening Ground (David Chaim Smith)
Pontificating Puffery, Mystical Mumbo Jumbo
[My 1-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Awakening Ground: A Guide to Contemplative Mysticism†by David Chaim Smith.]
If you’re looking for a pseudo-profound spiritual text flush with florid flotsam, then this word-salad work could be right up your alley.
The author of this text, steeped in Dowman-ized Dzogchen drivel and Kabbalah krappola, seeks to combine the two “Dharmas†into a mystical whole, and the resulting mishmash is, in a word, a Disaster.
This text, teeming with vacuous abstractions and head-shaking sentences, epitomizes pretentious prose. If Bon Jovi were to sing about it, the words would go: “You gave mysticism a bad name.â€
Here’s an example of the text’s writing:
“Contemplation mitigates its disruptions by returning them to the open continuum in which they arise. Immersing the maze of fixations within the continuous stream of pure possibility can liberate claustrophobic habits on contact. This releases billowing fields of poetic resonance that saturate the four corners of space, introducing the potential for a particularly vivid style of contemplation that works with the self-ornamenting openness of infinity. Pure poetic sensations shimmer beyond grasp, and cannot be reduced to either personal or impersonal terms. Within their shimmering an invitation into the essential nature of all phenomena opens through the sparkle of their ethereal fluttering.â€
Contradictions abound in the text. For example, the author writes, “There is no such thing as space itself.†Then elsewhere he writes, “The wisdom of space is that its absolute nature is always inherent in its relative display.†If there is no such thing as space, how can it have wisdom and an absolute nature?
The author’s Kabbalistic descriptions are so far from reality, it boggles the mind. For example, regarding the sephirah Binah, he writes, “The expanse of Binah, which is the basic space of all phenomena, is replete with the luminous crystalline dew of shefa.†Binah, which correlates with the limiting and binding planet Saturn, has nothing whatsoever to do with the “basic space of all phenomena,†which is the Dzogchen definition of the Dharmadhatu, the Dharmakaya (timeless Awareness) as the spaceless, unborn, illimitable Context in which phenomena arise and pass away.
The author writes, “There is nothing in mind but responsiveness.†Au contraire, I say, for there is also mucho hokum to be found in the author’s mind. So much so that, as I see it, one star is one too many for this text.
[My 1-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Awakening Ground: A Guide to Contemplative Mysticism†by David Chaim Smith.]
If you’re looking for a pseudo-profound spiritual text flush with florid flotsam, then this word-salad work could be right up your alley.
The author of this text, steeped in Dowman-ized Dzogchen drivel and Kabbalah krappola, seeks to combine the two “Dharmas†into a mystical whole, and the resulting mishmash is, in a word, a Disaster.
This text, teeming with vacuous abstractions and head-shaking sentences, epitomizes pretentious prose. If Bon Jovi were to sing about it, the words would go: “You gave mysticism a bad name.â€
Here’s an example of the text’s writing:
“Contemplation mitigates its disruptions by returning them to the open continuum in which they arise. Immersing the maze of fixations within the continuous stream of pure possibility can liberate claustrophobic habits on contact. This releases billowing fields of poetic resonance that saturate the four corners of space, introducing the potential for a particularly vivid style of contemplation that works with the self-ornamenting openness of infinity. Pure poetic sensations shimmer beyond grasp, and cannot be reduced to either personal or impersonal terms. Within their shimmering an invitation into the essential nature of all phenomena opens through the sparkle of their ethereal fluttering.â€
Contradictions abound in the text. For example, the author writes, “There is no such thing as space itself.†Then elsewhere he writes, “The wisdom of space is that its absolute nature is always inherent in its relative display.†If there is no such thing as space, how can it have wisdom and an absolute nature?
The author’s Kabbalistic descriptions are so far from reality, it boggles the mind. For example, regarding the sephirah Binah, he writes, “The expanse of Binah, which is the basic space of all phenomena, is replete with the luminous crystalline dew of shefa.†Binah, which correlates with the limiting and binding planet Saturn, has nothing whatsoever to do with the “basic space of all phenomena,†which is the Dzogchen definition of the Dharmadhatu, the Dharmakaya (timeless Awareness) as the spaceless, unborn, illimitable Context in which phenomena arise and pass away.
The author writes, “There is nothing in mind but responsiveness.†Au contraire, I say, for there is also mucho hokum to be found in the author’s mind. So much so that, as I see it, one star is one too many for this text.
