Is the loss of narrowm mindedness and dogmatism characteristic of a saint?
Hixon: “When you say narrow-mindedness and dogmatism, you are using two negative terms. But must the processes we’re discussing be viewed as negative? As I said earlier, a saint or a realized person may retain a hypercritical attitude toward practices of other traditions or even practices in his or her own tradition which.seem to be a -distortion. So two Islamic saints or two Buddhist sages could seriously disagree with each other on very key points in their own tradition. Hopefully, they would not resort to violent means to settle the disagreement, but short of that they would use every bit of personal power and verbal facility to uphold their point of view. That’s formalized in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, where debate between novices in training is a common practice. Likewise, Christian priests and ministers in seminary are taught argumentation and rhetoric in order to defend their faith. Hixon: “Yes. And that suggests something about the value of a rigorous exploration of spi
