Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
studied Advaita Vedanta through the Chinmaya Mission, the
Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, and Francis Lucille. He studied the
Mahayana teachings of Pure Land Buddhism through Jodo-
Shinshu, and studied Chinese Middle-Way Buddhism through the
lineage of Master Wen Zhu and the pre-eminent scholar of
Chinese Buddhism Master Yin-Shun, author of The Way to
Buddhahood.
Greg has also been influenced by the teachings of many teachers
he's never met, both Western and Eastern, ancient and modern.
The Western teachers include Protagoras, Heraclitus, Gorgias
[Laughs], Sextus Empiricus, George Berkeley, David Hume,
Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V.O.
Quine, Nelson Goodman, Brand Blanshard, Jacques Derrida,
Wilfrid Sellars, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Richard
Lanham and Richard Rorty. Eastern teachers include Shankara,
Gaudapada, Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Tsong-Khapa− quite a few!
− Honen Shonin, Shinran Shonin, Sri Atmananda, Shunryu
Suzuki, Thich-Thien-Tam and Chin-Kung. That's quite a list, Greg!
[Laughs].
WIZARD: They say it takes a village to raise a Dalai Lama.
TRIP: Hey, Greg, I was curious, how is it that you studied under
so many teachers, and your own direct experience of the Truth
happened before, during, or after all of this education?
GREG GOODE: During. I like reading, and I actually liked the
subject matter of all that philosophy, and whatever else it is, I
actually like it. So I was never doing it in order to become free of
suffering. I mean, there were parts, part of the time I was, but
when suffering was no more, when like my nondual search had
come to its end, I continued to read those things. So I guess, one
of your questions is how did I come to have so many folks as
teachers. Well, that's what happens when you're in graduate
schools, you can't avoid it and you read a lot of stuff. And I just
continued reading, Eastern and Western.
179