The universe is nothing, if not a cosmic see saw. Water extinguishes fire. Fire heats our soul. Our soul is driven to be complete.
But what is missing? Some would argue that god is the completion, of the formula. But, what is God, but an abstract idea that is meaningless outside of the bounds of organized religion?
We are the puzzled. Looking for the corner pieces. We are the black searching for the white. We are the darkness in need of light. We are death, desperately seeking life.
We are all alone. None of us are complete, because we deny fulfillment. We extrapolate meaningless new age remedies for our situation. That each of us are god, incarnate. There’s nothing new about that hocus pocus. The Free Masons for centuries have believed they shall be as gods. The snake told Adam and Eve that they shall be as gods.
We strive so hard to find immortality, that we miss the basic premise of our mere mortality.
Gods are often – large, energy-based/spirit creatures. Energy is easier to work with then matter, so they can copy energy programs & increase their body side without much limit. Evolution doesn’t stop & old-age is different in the metaphysical realm.
^
That’s the literal gods, anyways.
Fulfillment?
This depends on the person & some are filfilled, glad to say.
No. Humans aren’t very powerful/evolved compared to what is out there in the universe.
Well, that’d take allot of time for a soul to evolve itself after death.
Isn't all this Eastern happy-crappy about learning to embrace things? So here- embrace the idea that since we grow and develop through our lives, have appetites that periodically need to be re-satisfied, and only live a little while, it is written into our very natures that we will always be [i]looking for something[/i].
So, you know, accept that and channel it. Realize that even if you found THE ANSWER, your instinct will be to devour it, get tired of it, and look around for something else. Satisfaction is a tremendously difficult skill to learn, especially for people living in a land of priviledge and plenty. Maybe you'll reach a point where the wise thing to do is accept the answer you've found, resist that instinct, and channel your searching (for you must search) into something else entirely.
Happy-crappy? HAPPY-CRAPPY?? You go to your room! - and no dinner!
Eastern thought isn’t about embracing things. Quite the opposite. It is about letting go of the things we’ve been taught to ‘embrace’. So put away all your dolls. Put away all the action toys. Put away all the accesories, the doll house, and the rest. Go outside and look around. You might see that heaven and earth are one. Too simple? probably. But most things important are simple.
You did. Far too many never find the present, contstantly seeking more, better, greater in some future that never arrives. That’s the great attraction of religion. The religious get to triumph over evil and their reward is a heaven where there is no seeking because it’s all there.
It dawns on very few that heaven is available any time, we just have to stop seeking and open our eyes.
Alls I wants to say is that there’s nothing necessarily enlightened or progressive about the whole “The journey is more important than the destination” attitude towards spirituality- that’s the attitude we take towards things like eating, sex, and other base needs. Eat today, hungry tomorrow. Learning to be satisfied is actually the more difficult, nobler skill. Fundamentalists actually have this down pat. But of course, they paid a price.
Tao was a scam invented by Hallmark to sell greeting cards, that’s what I say. Like Easter.
And Dan~, you’re right. Satisfaction is what you get when you’ve progressed all the way to your destination. Without a destination, there’s no way to measure progress.
If you aren’t satisfied, what makes you so sure that you are actually progressing?
Uccisore, at the same time, I think fundamentalists do miss alot, being content with where they are. There’s alot to be said for moderation. IE> Enjoying the journey, and then enjoying the destination.
For your food example, it’d be like catching a King Cod, gutting it and then deciding to throw it back, because you develop a sudden aversion to eating fish.
The fundamentalist is happy eating Top Ramen* everyday for their spiritual diet, and the new agist (eastern if you will) isn’t happy with anything on their plate. Then they’ll get a traditional noodle** plate and call it unacceptable, because it is traditional.
*A bland boring food, that leaves alot to be desired. Religion in it’s own ways is alot like this. Many people are fine with Top Ramen. I need more. It doesn’t satiate all of my spiritual desires.
**At the same time, I recognize the importance of tradition, and understand WHY it is tradition. It’s foolish to turn our nose up to something, just because it’s old
Like so much, I suppose, it comes down to aims. If our goal is just to be happy with our spiritual beliefs, I suppose the fundamentalist has an advantage over us. We can only criticize them if we take a position that there is some Truth, some stronger position, that they are refusing to look for. But then, if there is such a thing, it is our destination- and just as we need to be able to travel to get to it, we need to be able to know it when we see it.
If we are comfortable with our position/location/belief, then we have no need to search/travel. If we have no need to travel/search, we’ll never learn anything new. If we never learn anything new, we’ll never become uncomfortable with what we know, or where we are.
The only way to start a journey of any kind, even if you plan on enjoying that journey is to reject the status quo. Is that a bad thing to even partially reject it though?
Adam and Eve rejected immortality for mortality.
Moses rejected slavery for freedom.
Jesus rejected the pharisees and death for inclusive love and eternal life.
in order to accept something new, rejection of something old is necessary.
But, how can we know that we won’t miss that which we reject? The key lies in not burning your bridges. Just because you reject something, doesn’t mean you can’t re-visit once in awhile.
Ucc,
Not to harp on that old, tired subject that I do, but I’d recommend you check out the Eastern Religion and Ecology series by Harvard Press. I’m partial to the first one (Confucianism and Ecology, The interrelations of Heaven, Earth, and Humans editied by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Berthrong. Who knew I’d like it? A fair amount of Van Norden and Weiming. Good stuff.).
I think you’d like Confucianism (The Jesuits and other Jesus-loving folk tend to) because the messages are fairly similar. The issue of Harmony, however, is somewhat more stressed. Rather than being custodians of the Earth, we exist in harmony with Heaven and Earth (as opposed to the Daoist idea of Heaven and Earth existing in harmony with each other and humans are trying to crash the party like a bunch of drunken, noisy idiots). It’s about limiting our wants so that they match what the tri-part harmony can provide.
There is a richness to Eastern Philosophy, particularly in the moral department, that is absolutely not present in Western Philosophy. It’s sushi to boiled cod, if you will.
As for syth’s major premise, finding joy in the company of others, well, that’s most certainly the basis for my philosophy. It plays an important role in classical Confucianism as well. Though, I do think it’s worth mentioning that the neo-Confucians did take something worthwhile from the Daoists/Buddhists: the joy in being by one’s self.
As ragingly obvious as it sounds, a balance needs to be struck between the two. Most people don’t care about immortality, they are just striving to satisfy one, or both, of those drives. Sometimes attempted immortality is the means, but it is rarely an end.
I am not drunken, noisy only on occasion, and the jury is still out on the idiot part - unless you ask my wife.
Taoism may not be quite the way you have characterized it in that man is seen as an integral part of of a processual universe. It is only when man abstracts himself away from process do we find drunken, noisy idiots.
Scyth,
This need to search, is what I find disturbing. Not searching isn’t a taking of the position of comfort, nor is not searching mean we learn nothing new. Not searching means stop looking past what you are experiencing right now. If you fail to learn from your immediate experience, you are asleep or unconscious.
One does not have to reject the staus quo, one only need to understand it and make changes to increase the efficacy of what is involved. It isn’t about comfort or not learning.
Yeah, not to beat that horse, but my point in coming onto this thread wasn’t really to be recruited into Rastafarianism or whatever you were talking about, Xunzian. Maybe another time- I’m not as adverse to all that as I present myself to be. As long as we’re making reccomendations, though, have you ever given the Baptists a shot? I could recommend some reading…PM in the works.
For now, I’m really just interested in this notion of life as some endless, depressing struggle where we can’t really achieve anything- especially as it applies to knowledge. Oh, and I do have something to add on that note, before I forget.
Scythekain
The flip side of that is that if we are afraid of coming to conclusions, and remain 'open-minded' perpetually, then we'll never know if we've come across anything better, and we'll actually be more likely to reject it if we do.
The only way to break that cycle is with some sort of objectivity breaking in from the outside- what I mean is, the truth needs to be special enough that we can on one hand tell when we aren't there yet, but see it for what it is when we get there. Are humans even capable of that?
Well, you know what they say about positions, and the evidence they require for support. I would say that rejecting the status quo requires the same amount of sound reason and good evidence as adopting it- it is not inherently superior.
Also, I think there's a tendency in what you wrote to look at the world sociologically, and to apply those trends to themselves. I could say "The world will never find the Truth about spiritual matters, and will debate these things in a state of confusion for all time." That much is true- new people are born, wise people die, the same old questions need to be answered again and again, and different bodies of thought will always persist across the population. But just because The World operates that way, does not mean that[i] I[/i] have to. Individuals come to conclusions all the time- individuals are capable of being decisive about matters even when All Men cannot be, and an individual can be satisfied.
Actually you are closer to being correct than you are facetiously positing.
Embracing the void, is the entirety of what of “Eastern happy-crappy” is mostly about, at the esoteric levels of pervading experience.
The “happy-crappy” visualisation comes from not understanding how the poetry is intended to lead the mind towards understanding.
