The Fourth Turning

[Balder]

Ken Wilber has a new book coming out, and a series of teaching as well, called The Fourth Turning: Exploring the Future of Buddhism.  The link will take you to a website dedicated to these teachings, and includes several video clips of Wilber and Diane Musho Hamilton.

I've read a booklet-length document by Wilber called "The Fourth Turning," which I expect will serve as the basis for the book.  Unfortunately (for me with my own interests), I did not find anything in it that was new -- that I hadn't read before in earlier books, or that wouldn't already be immediately apparent to anyone wanting to look at a topic with an AQAL lens.  I am hopeful that the forthcoming book, and possibly the video talks (I haven't heard them yet), give more details ... more nuggets for those long-time students of Wilber's works who don't need another Integral 101 teaching.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I referenced examples of a different fourth turning in previous posts of this thread, like secular Buddhism and Bauwens' article "The next Buddha is a collective." Here's another example from Bauwens in an article that came out today, "If we can have p2p economics, why not p2p spirituality?" I like that it's in the journal Transformation, whose tagline is "where love meets social justice," highlighting my favored notion of spirituality as liberating social action.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Speaking of which, in Kennilingam's 2-minute introductory video at the site his tone is much less grandiose than when this thread first started. He mentioned that the fourth turning in nowhere near a final or complete elucidation. And that the purpose of the conference is to work out some possibilities toward such a turning in a community, since as he said "the next Buddha is a sangha." Good for him. His sangha though still needs to address the metaphysics of presence, which really is very old school.