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 Newsletter Nr. 687 
 Amsterdam, November 11, 2017


DO YOU THINK YOU'RE SMARTER THAN BUDDHA? - Thoughts on Spiritual Intelligence - GARY STOGSDILL

In earlier essays for Integral World, I have critiqued the perennialist model of spirituality, prompting one reader to dismiss me with, “Do you think you're smarter than Buddha?” I enjoyed that zinger a great deal and used it as a koan for several days. This essay is my reflection on that question.

Yes, actually, I suspect that I, along with almost everyone else on the planet, am smarter than Buddha in some ways. For me, mathematics is probably a safe bet of one intelligence where I'm smarter than the Enlightened One. All of us consist of many different intelligences, and no one, not even the spiritual giants, are good in all of them. In fact, the presence of genius in one intelligence almost guarantees a significant lack in one or more of the other ways that humans can express intelligence. This becomes apparent when we closely study the lives of geniuses in art, music, literature, science, mathematics, athletics, sainthood, and spiritual panditry.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/stogsdill5.html