Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Register
Examples: Monday, today, last week, Mar 26, 3/26/04
Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.

How long does it take to bring us here where we are at on earth and/or spiritually?

AstralProjecteeAstralProjectee
edited March 2012 in Buddhism Basics
How long does it take to bring us here where we are at on earth and/or spiritually?

Meaning how long did it take us to evolve to where we are at?

Peace!

Comments

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    since a distinction was made between homo sapiens and homo erectus.
    Between 1.3 and 1.8 million years ago.
    It's been downhill ever since.
  • SpinyNorman2SpinyNorman2
    It's been downhill ever since.

    Yes, it does look that way. I find it puzzling that people often conflate technological progress and spiritual "evolution".

    Spiny
  • personperson Don't believe everything you think The liminal space Veteran
    It is as if a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and kinsmen were to get a surgeon to heal him, and he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know by what man I was wounded, whether he is of the warrior caste, or a brahmin, or of the agricultural, or the lowest caste. Or if he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know of what name of family the man is — or whether he is tall, or short or of middle height … Before knowing all this, the man would die.

    Similarly, it is not on the view that the world is eternal, that it is finite, that body and soul are distinct, or that the Buddha exists after death that a religious life depends. Whether these views or their opposite are held, there is still rebirth, there is old age, there is death, and grief, lamentation, suffering, sorrow, and despair…. I have not spoken to these views because they do not conduce to an absence of passion, to tranquility, and Nirvana.
    And what have I explained? Suffering have I explained, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering, and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering have I explained. For this is useful.

    -The Buddha
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    Oh well, yeah, ok, if you want to be picky and split hairs - that WAS progress..... :D
  • DakiniDakini Veteran
    edited March 2012
    How long did it take us to evolve to where we're at spiritually? The Buddha would call that an "imponderable". Impossible to know. If you could call this evolution.

    Humanity has always had its mystics and visionaries, always had followers of same, and then....there's everyone else. Always had wars. There have been a few cultures that have been fairly free of conflict and have been based on cooperation, mainly due to living in extreme environments: the Inuit of the Arctic and the San or Bushmen of the Kalahari. I think those have been exceptional cases.
Sign In or Register to comment.