On Jun 24, 2005, at 12:03 AM, Dave Land wrote:
On Jun 23, 2005, at 10:13 PM, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
Language is, like the Buddha, two and a half pounds of flax.
Ha. It's three pounds, you know. :-)
He's on a diet.
You seem well-read on the topic.
It's interesting to me. As an atheist, I'm interested in
quasi-religions that support nontheistic ideas, but seem to work, For
2500 years Buddhism has been pretty clear on gods (those they use are
symbols, not literals), or more particularly the *lack* of them. That's
interesting to me.
The same master also said, “Language doesn’t help matters; speech
doesn’t bring forth the truth. Those burdened by language are lost;
those held up by words are deluded."
Yeah, but they are what we have.
For expression, yes. The point is that the "satori" moment is personal.
You can't get it from reading others' words. It has to be something
that happens to you, and you alone, and it's really a satori when you
can't explain it to anyone else at all without sounding like a damned
fool.
Words are fingers pointing at the moon; the realization is seeing the
moon instead of the pointing fingers.
Further, the Dalai Lama has said that to the extent science disproves
*any* Buddhist teaching, it is Buddhism, not science, which will have
to
change to fit newer human understandings. If we discover that rebirth
is
completely, totally impossible, the Buddhist idea of rebirth will have
to go. (Fortunately that's all right. Buddhism works just fine without
the idea.)
That's an area where Spong really gets fundamentalists in a lather. He
feels that the virgin birth narrative doesn't speak to us today. He
denies its literal reality, but upholds its value as a tool that the
first-century gospel writers used to set Jesus apart.
That always seemed weird to me too. The idea of evolution doesn't
unthrone a deity. It better explains, if one is a believer, how a deity
made things happen -- and shows a subtlety that is quite stunning. Much
more "infinite" in imagination than a paltry human mind. That seems to
me a glorification, not sacrilege. How hard is it to start from monoma
to progress to plants to ambhibiae to reptilia to mammalia ... that
takes a damned well-baked cake, doesn't it? Much harder than six days
to a rib and behold, man and woman.
And all built on quantum effects. Really quite astonishing. To me the
whole of physics, biology, geology and paleontology, if one believes in
a deity, shows a delight in chance, interbeing and intricacy that is
much more like Job's whirlwind than the Mosaic hard-willed ideal.
--
Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books
http://books.nightwares.com/
Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror"
http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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