Lets talk about Faith

[caamora]

Pitch, I also tried to read that book and could not get into it. It wasn't written very well, IMHO.

Foul, your own religion, Simplifinity, seems to me, strangely, to be what many people today believe. They have lost faith in their religions, for whatever reasons, but they do not wholly subscribe to what you and other athiests believe either. So, they live in between beliefs. Maybe they feel that, that way, they can be safe on both sides and have the best of both worlds!

[Worm of Despite]

I'm gonna write a poem about Simplifinity! Hehe!

Anyway, I love the way this discussion is going. Especially what you said, pitchwife!

When you get to the point in your life where you've made it, got married, got a house, had kids, have a good job, then you start asking yourself, what for? why am I doing all this? and what now? It's kind of a feeling of emptiness and restlessness.

I haven't made it there, yet, but I understand! I find the answer to your questions are marriage and kids. Those are the things that should give you a filler-up. If it doesn't, then there's something inside you that you need to come to terms with our assess or fix--cause, according to everyone I've ever met, a family is 90% their greatest picker-up and all.

Life's the most precious thing there is--and love the most precious form of life. Sharing it with others only magnifies it! See--Simplifinity! When you feel down, think not of yourself, and stop looking in the mirror and complicating and asking all those questions. Meditate or something--clear yourself. Break that inner strife down--and do it by yourself. You don't need something like a 2,000-year-old manuscript to hand-walk you through inner-peace. If you're old enough to provide for yourself and love another, you're old enough to find yourself on your own.

Also, a good form of "meditation" is simply spending time with the kids or the wife in a totally unselfish manner. See, that's also a form of letting everything go--letting life flow outward to others (danlo taught me a lot last night about letting things "flow", by the way).

If you're trying to grasp the meaning and purpose and all that, then obviously you've spent your whole life trying to grasp OTHER things, too--material things (whether it be through educating yourself for a future job or something as simple as going out to party). I'm getting close to saying some kind of point or message, but I can't grope for it just yet--or I forgot it. Anyway, I don't know what I'm saying, but I hope it's some kind of hopeful message.

[[Syl]]

Foul, read everything you can find on Zen

and then forget about it for a while.

[Fist and Faith]

But anyway, I know a lot of my stuff sounds bile-filled and all that, cause I can leave the Watch for a couple days, come back, and see what I said came off as sort of bitter and somewhat narrow-minded.

Ya think?

As Sylvanus says, read some Zen. I was just gonna say that you're a bit of a Taoist. Same thing. (Hmm, I wonder if Syl read The Tao of Zen yet.)

Regarding your last post, here's a quote from Hesse's Glass Bead Game. The main character is telling the Music Master that he doesn't want to teach the Game any more, because he's realized the Game's true meaning, but doesn't think he can communicate it very well. The Music Master replies:

To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the “meaning” of music; if there is one, it does not need my explanations. On the other I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the “meaning,” but do not imagine that it can be taught.

You said the important thing: play with the kids, spend time with your spouse. Don't worry about trying to teach why we should do these things."The sage goes about doing nothing, teaching without talking." If we do them, the why will become obvious.



IMO, science isn't supposed to answer the "why"s. It should answer things like, "Now how did that happen?" and "I wonder if I can make X happen." I think that trying to use it to prove or disprove any religious beliefs is a little silly. It is not possible to scientifically disprove the notion that God set up the entire system that science studies. (And, for my part, I can't imagine why anyone needs to prove or disprove such a thing. Anyone's belief in it won't change the knowledge or advances of any scientific field. They want to believe, let them believe.)

The other side of the coin is that I don't think religion should be trying to answer some of the questions that it does. Science can't tell us how to live together peacefully, but some religions can. Science can't tell me how to accept various aspects of life, but some religions can.

Fortunately for me, there are non-religious answers to these questions also. "Spiritual without religion" is often defined as something along the lines of praying at home, rather than going to church. But I like to define it as answering these questions without any religious beliefs at all.

[Worm of Despite]

Ya think?

Great, another wise guy! What school of thought teaches that? Smart-arseism?

[Fist and Faith]

[Worm of Despite]

See, this is why I need Zen. Oh yeah--what's Hare Krishna? Do they have a deity? I recall George Harrison being big on Krishna. Something like "A mantra a day keeps the MAYA' away." Not sure what that means . . .

[Fist and Faith]

George was a Hindu. The three highest Hindu gods, the three highest manifestations of Brahman, are Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma. Krishna is one of Vishnu's avatars. (Another famous one is Rama.)

Maya is the physical world. I never heard that quote, but the idea would seem to be to remind us that the physical world is not what it seems. Here's a couple of quotes by Eknath Easwaran that I think address your quote:

What does it mean to say that nothing is separate and God alone is real? Certainly not that the everyday world is an illusion. The illusion is simply that we appear separate; the underlying reality is that all of life is one.

Later philosophers explained maya in surprisingly contemporary terms. The mind, they said, observes the so-called outside world and sees its own structure. It reports that the world consists of a multiplicity of separate objects in a framework of time, space, and causality because these are the conditions of perception. In a word, the mind looks at unity and sees diversity; it looks at what is timeless and reports transience. And in fact the percepts of its experience are diverse and transient; on this level of experience, separateness is real. Our mistake is in taking this for ultimate reality, like the dreamer thinking that nothing is real except his dream.

Nowhere has this "mysterious Eastern notion" been formulated more succinctly than in the epigram of Ruysbroeck: "We behold what we are, and we are what we behold." When we look at unity through the instruments of the mind, we see diversity; when the mind is transcended, we enter a higher mode of knowing - turiya, the fourth state of consciousness - in which duality disappears. This does not mean, however, that the phenomenal world is an illusion or unreal. The illusion is the sense of separateness.

[birdandbear]

Bump, cause I want to reread this and it's way too late right now.

[Ryzel]

Heh, it is a good thread but I lost track of it somewhere in the Taoism I think.

[Fist and Faith]

Ryzel, you're breakin' m' heart! Losing it at the very point where you should be picking it up!

Simian,
You said some great stuff a few posts back. One thing, though, got me to thinking:

You don't need something like a 2,000-year-old manuscript to hand-walk you through inner-peace. If you're old enough to provide for yourself and love another, you're old enough to find yourself on your own.

I don't remember where, but some of us were discussing something that I see tying in with this. Here's Chris, from Northern Exposure. He was building a catapult-type of thing, with the intention of flinging a cow. Another character told him how cool that would be, just like Monty Python. Well, when Chris learned about that, he was all depressed. "Repetition is the death of art" or something like that. Anyway, he finally got his head together. When they were all gathered to watch him fling a piano, he gave this speech:

I've been out here now for some days, groping my way along, trying to realize my vision here. I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight. I've come to find out that it's not the vision. It's not the vision at all. It's the groping. It's the groping, it's the yearning, it's the moving forward. I was so fixated on that flying cow that, when Ed told me Monty Python already painted that picture, thought I was through. I had to let go of that cow so that I could see all the other possibilities....... I think Kierkegard said it oh so well: “The self is only that which it’s in the process of becoming.” Art? Same thing. James Joyce had something to say about it too: “Welcome oh life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience, and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscious of my race.” We’re here today to fling something that bubbled up from the collective unconsciousness of our community.........

The thing I learned folks, this is absolutely key: It’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself.

There's all kinds of wisdom in there, but the part I'm interested in right now is the part about groping, yearing, moving forward. To put it more succinctly, here's Jung:

The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly.

I think that some religions give people something to reach for. Humans need to be reaching, exploring. In some religions, nobody can BE God. But they always strive for it, by worshiping, trying to emulate, trying to be what their God wants them to be.

[Hellfire]

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains,
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
-Indigo Girls

I was raised in the bible belt as well and as soon as I was old enough to think for myself I began to see the evils of religion and shunned it entirely. Now I have faith in myself, faith in mankind and that is all. Everyone who believe in the bible has to believe that all who dismiss it will go to hell and if you don't fear God you will go to hell. Therefore they create a fence that says "I'm going to heaven along with all my fellow followers and you are not." That is why I have no religious faith. I believe in a higher power(tho I see no purpose in exposing it) and I even believe most of the morals the bible preaches. I can not entirely hate any religion that was founded on love. But overall, the world would be a better place if we put it aside and concentrated on what is right in front of our eyes. The "now" is more more important than the "why".

[Fist and Faith]

Rites of Passage is, imo, one of the best albums ever!!

Everyone who believe in the bible has to believe that all who dismiss it will go to hell and if you don't fear God you will go to hell.

There are almost as many interpretations of the Bible as there are people. Maybe people who believe in the Bibe do not believe that way. But it seems that the loudest believers do. Go figure.

I can not entirely hate any religion that was founded on love.

I am loathe to do it, but I guess I'll post a short story of mine in the Hall of Gifts.

But overall, the world would be a better place if we put it aside and concentrated on what is right in front of our eyes. The "now" is more more important than the "why".

Amen

[birdandbear]

OMG Fist! Your sig is from that movie! One of the greatest kung fu with blue lightening movies ever! But what was it called?

[Fist and Faith]

The Last Dragon



Nice job b&b!!

[birdandbear]

Yeah! The Last Dragon! I must've watched that movie a dozen times when I was a kid. It was like The Karate Kid starring Michael Jackson. I loved it!

[Fist and Faith]

LOL Yeah, it's certainly a different kind of kung fu flick!
Direct-a your feets-a to Papa Green's pizza.

[Ryzel]

Fist:

4. Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from
Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is
its being what it is.

It just doesn't make sense, man.

[Fist and Faith]

Ryzel,
I don't know where that's from. Translations can be VERY different from one another, but after reading a few, you sort of get the point, and can recognize a new translation. But that doesn't sound like the 4th verse of the Tao Te Ching to me. What is it?

As for what it says...
It all comes down to wu-wei. Attempts to translate it with just a couple words come out as things like "non-action" and "non-ado." But it doesn't mean nothing is done, it means that what is done is not planned, contrived, thought out. It's all natural, everything behaving according to its nature. Here's a good passage from The Tao of Zen:

When non-doing appears as inaction it is peaceful, silent, and still; when it appears as action it is thoughtless, reflexive, and intuitive.

Does that make more sense?

[[Syl]]

I never had a clue about what the Heaven (seen it translated as Dragon, also), Earth, etc. of Taoism was about until I studied the I Ching. After examining it for a while, the concepts make sense (though Confuscious confusces the heck out of me with the "wings of the I Ching"). I'm a little bit rusty, but after taking care of some other pressing concerns, I'll try to post a little more on the subject.