It’s nice to come back from vacation to a
mutual admiration society!
I wrote this while on vacation and I’m going to
write this up as I wrote it that night.
As I write this on day 5 of a much needed vacation,
I’m in Reno Nevada in one of the nicer hotels/casinos
there… And while on vacation I’ve just turned my
mind off and have just experienced…
Making no judgements on what I’ve seen these
last few days. My wife is in her happy place, a spa!
And I’m by myself. I head toward this created
little spot on the casino floor away from the ruckus
and noise on the casino floor. I have a book
with me, “An introduction to Buddhism” by
Peter Harvey.
As I read I see some connections with problems
and issues I have been grappling with over these
last years.
The Kantian/Kropotkin questions “What am I to do?” “What can I hope for?” “What values should I
hold?” and similar questions…
And I see the Budda struggle with the same exact
questions and one can see his response, although
his answers are different then my answers. And here
I’m not going to wrestle with the Buddha or with
Buddhism, that may be a post for another day.
For the Buddha, the existential questions that
haunted him, still haunt us. For the Buddha,
life is suffering and the question becomes,
how does one escape this ongoing suffering?
Now we can agree that the question of suffering
certainly haunts us, see the book of Job, if you
have any doubts, and we can see in religions the
myriad ways we have attempted to solve this
question of suffering. This spiritual side of us
includes the Christians answer to this question
of suffering whereas if we hold to a belief in God
we can be saved which is an means of
escape from suffering. The Christian “answer”
is certainly one possible escape from suffering
but it’s not the only one and we have countless
ism’s and ideologies that connect to each
other by a approach to the existential questions
that we face simply by being born… What am I
to do? This Buddhist and Christian approach is considered to be spiritual. Personally, I stay away
from “spiritual” questions or answers for that
matter. For the simple reason, that life for me anyway, isn’t about spiritual answers but about the
questions we ask. From a dictionary,
“Spiritual” 1. Relating to or affecting the human
spirit or soul as opposed to the material or physical
things" and I learned that, that as I have addressed
the soul or spirit and not the material/ physical, I
have always engaged in spiritual matters. The
question “What values should I/we have” is a spiritual
question, not a material or a physical question.
I am being summoned. Back shortly.
Kropotkin