We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
(1904-1987)
A Joseph Campbell audio file collection from his talk on the Eastern Way. Here is a 55 mns long lecture, nicely cut into 10 segments, from his section on Buddhism. The talk is a great introduction to the concepts of buddhism, extremely clear and concise.
Enjoy:)
Lecture:
Play the entire playlist.
1. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 01 (2:57)
2. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 02 (8:30)
3. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 03 (9:15)
4. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 04 (4:29)
5. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 05 (5:46)
6. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 06 (4:04)
7. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 07 (5:43)
8. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 08 (5:59)
9. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 09 (4:21)
10. Joseph Campbell - Buddhism - 10 (3:38) The Man:
Campbell was born and raised in New York City in an upper middle class Roman Catholic family. As a child, Campbell became fascinated with Native American culture when his father took him to see the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He soon became versed in numerous aspects of Native American society, primarily in its mythology. This led to Campbell's lifelong passion with myth and its similar, seemingly cohesive threads among all human cultures. At Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided that he preferred the humanities and transferred to Columbia University. He received a B.A. in English literature in 1925 and M.A. in Medieval literature in 1927. He was also an accomplished athlete, receiving awards for track.
"Read myths.
They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols.
Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts - but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.
Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive.
Myth tells you what the experience is."
(from The Power of Myth)
He wrote on mythology and comparative religion and gained fame with such works as The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1948), an examination of the archetype of the hero, The Masks of God (1959-1968), exploring the complex mythological heritage and its implications for modern humanity, and the multi-volume Historical Atlas of World Mythology (1989), of which only the sections on the early stages of human culture were completed. Campbell's theories were made popular with Public Broadcasting System series of television interviews with Bill Moyers. The PBS interviews were also published as a book, which became a bestseller.
On Buddhism:
Buddhism is one of the three world religions--the others beging Christianity and Islam--into which one is not born, but rather converts or professes. In this talk, Joseph Campbell humbly argues that Buddhist doctrine is, in many ways, the supreme expression of religious techique; for, unlike Christianity, Buddhism is a psychological system. Campbell then surveys the Buddha's life, describing the crisis that led to his illumination under the Bo tree. Directing our attention to fundamental similarities between the mythological symbols of Buddhism and those of Christianity, he observes: "In the Christian tradition, we find Jesus on a cross; and this cross is also the tree of immortal life, and he is the fruit of that tree. Jesus on the cross, Buddha under the tree--these are the same figures."
Related links:
Joseph Campbell Foundation.
J Campbell on wiki.
Joseph Campbell on FusionAnomaly.
Full lecture of the Eastern Way.
J Campbell on Amazon.
For further readings, here is a nice introduction to buddhism.
Lotus flower.
