Category talk:Spiritual writers

earlier comments

Something wrong here? A 'spiritual writer' is something of an artificial category. What's wrong with 'spiritual teacher' and 'spiritual master'? Many of the people listed here are primarily 'spiritual teachers' and writing is only one of their modes of communication.

I completely agree. Seems like Spiritual teacher should be the category, with Spiritual writers redirected to it. Incidentally, Spiritual Teacher used to be redirected to Guru, which is way off base if you read that latter article. I changed it to redirect here. I'm not sure what's involved technically in reversing that redirection and moving everybody to Spiritual Teachers.

I oppose the term Spiritual Master though because it's not NPOV by definition. Redirect it to Spiritual Teachers too, I say. Msalt 20:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, spiritual teacher is a much better category but perhaps it should co-exist alongside spiritual writers as looking at those named under s. writers, many are not teachers but commentators or something else. Probbably many of them would be better fited into other categories included in 'People known in connection with religion or philosophy'. A bit of re-organisation is called for. 62.164.251.220 16:44, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to thicken this discussion, I proposed a merge of Religious Writers into Spiritual Writers. Once we start populating these categories better, there may be enough of each to keep Teachers and WRiters separate -- Jesus for example should be in one of them, and he's not really a writer -- but I think there should be some sort of distinction, so that few if any people are in both categories. E.G. since most modern spiritual teachers anyway write books, maybe the major historical figures, and anyone who basically has followers, should be a "teacher" -- including Buddha, Jesus, etc. -- while Writers is limited to those who specifically do NOT have followers (Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, etc.) Still, it will always be ambiguous. The first thing any modern wannabe religious "master" does is declare that he doesn't want followers, doesn't want money, he just sells books and tapes and accepts "love offerings."

Sounds good, you're certainly making some sense there. I wasn't aware of the category 'Religious Writers'. A big sort out is needed of all the categories under ' 'People known in connection with religion or philosophy' - who's volunteering? It's quite a job to get it all organised. Not sure about your last sentence - NPOV - I don't think so! but don't take that as criticism. I agree that they are seperate categories. Currently 'Spiritual writers' includes everyman and his dog. 212.32.75.25 19:31, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

NPOV -- well, as others have noted, Talk pages don't have to be NPOV, just the actual encyclopedia page. I think it's better to be direct about how we feel in Talk than pretend not to have feelings. Nonetheless, aside from the word "first" and a certain assuredness, I stand by my comment. Put more diplomatically, you simply can't take the word of a religious person whether they are a teacher or have followers, because many who obviously have followers -- e.g. Rajneesh/Osho -- deny it, or even blame the followers for "not getting it" even as they accept their gifts.

As for the big sort out, don't build into too much of a task. Let's all chip away at it where we find action most compelling. I tagged the "religious writers" page for merge and added a whole slew of people who obviously belonged there to the spiritual writers category (St. Augustine, Wumen, Chuang Tzu, Thomas Merton, Omar Khayyam, Aleister Crowley, etc.) I'm sure you can think of some others. And so can anyone else likely to read this.

I like the new Spiritual teachers category. It solves many problems. However, I think Spritual writers should be a seperate category. Not all teachers are writers, not all writers are teachers. They are not the same thing at all! Ekajati 15:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, Religious writers should not be merged, but simply made a subcategory. I shall do so. Ekajati 16:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I accept Spiritual Teachers vs. Spiritual writers, but I don't really see the distinction or Religious Writers vs. Spiritual Writers. Would Chuang Tzu be a religious writer? Osho? Thomas Merton? Who would be spiritual but not religious (or vice versa)?

Many spiritual writers are not particularly religious, for example, occult writers. Some are specifically religious, say Roman Catholic theologians, commentators on religious texts, religious scholars writing about the history or sociology of religion and any of a number of specifically religious topics. Compare that to say Carlos Castaneda or Aleister Crowley - would you call them "religious writers"? But their writings cover topics related to spirituality... Ekajati (yakity-yak) 14:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Here are the problems I see with that. Most importantly, all religious writers are spritual writers. It's just a subset so should not be a separate category. Secondly, there will be some disputes. The people who initiate the ideas that later become religions often do not aim for or want that (Lao Tzu, for example), and others claim not to want a religion even though they clearly do. I forsee endless fights with followers of, say, Barry Long and Osho about whether they are "religious" or not.

Here's my proposal: for the big category, put them all into Spiritual Writers. Forget Religious Writers as an overarching category, but create categories for SPECIFIC religions -- Catholic Writers, Scientological Writers, whatever as needed.

But Category:Religious writers is already a subcategory of Category:Spiritual writers and it already has articles and subcategories. You'd have to start a formal process to change this. I say leave it. Ekajati (yakity-yak) 15:15, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes I think it works better to have two categories; writers & teachers, some people will be in both.212.32.90.5 18:15, 22 September 2006 (UTC)