It is worth revisiting this question of applying Buddhist thought (or really any body of thought) which I vaguely hinted at, but did not focus in with enough detail.
If one is to take this thought as it is purely conceived and attempt to apply it in one's own life, one may find barriers or inconsistencies. For all of its explorations of cosmic consciousness, Buddhist practice still places a substantial emphasis on the self, which functions as a useful entry point into cosmic consciousness. One is to know the self, ever deeper through meditation and life practices, and consciousness then follows. The whole practice is built around it.
The purest application of the undisturbed doctrine leads to the logical conclusion of the monastery: broken off centers where students study the doctrine and practice its teachings in order to experience what the founders themselves experienced.
Which is appropriate. The best way to experience what the original practitioners experienced is to recreate the practical system as faithfully as possible, with all of its subtle variations and gradients. This is the most reliable way to find something which is buried so deeply, and which can be so difficult for the uninitiated to access.
But then what do these centers today look like? They are fed by donations brought in from the economic mainline. They are constructed with modern building materials using modern petroleum powered equipment. They are fed by modern transportation networks, and receive large quantities of mass produced foodstuffs.
Students are safely removed from the economic mainline, and may pass back and forth from it, entering and leaving its spheres without antagonizing it. If the economic mainline goes, these centers would be very seriously threatened, and would stop functioning.
As such, this system lacks the analytical and practical tools for facing the material and existential problems facing humanity today. Which is of course as it should be. Buddhism as a body of thought was conceived at a certain point in time, and the signature of the body reflected the constellation of affairs that its first practitioners found themselves in, which I am confident is something the masters understood well.
Through this initial process, great tools and practical mechanisms such as meditation were perfected, which have reliable effects that are still observable and useful today.
And so some of these tools and even substantial portions of the body of thought can be decoupled from the greater body and put to use in one's own time with one's own ideology and practices. This decoupling threatens the full experience that the masters were attempting to articulate, but questions arise as to how much of this full experience can even be articulated now.
The system has worked for many people of course, but now it must be put to use addressing the issues that we face today. A change of consciousness is especially important, which Buddhist practice can help with. This practice can also help to dissolve that tangled pattern of habits, sensibilities, and thought patterns which keep individuals bound to the body of empire, and which keep individuals proceeding with the logic of capital, and thus in a perpetual state of dysfunction.
Fortunately there are many ways to go about doing this. This is just one of them.
