Does God require our recognition and worship in order to draw us toward him?
If we seek qualities and characteristics such as justice, compassion, love, peace, truth, we are seeking things that have an eternal quality and cannot be corrupted . While religion can be a vehicle for pursuing those qualities I think it has many problems and failures as well. People can pursue those qualities without religion or even God belief. Someone mentioned Buddhism. That’s a pretty good example.
When I was a kid living in the countryside, I destroyed a number of anthills. I’ve been living in fear since, and am unsure about how to properly atone for my crimes.
And the Bible says faith without works is dead. I take that to mean the absence of faith. People always act according totheir faith, or lack there of. The Buddhists have just a different way of looking at it.
Buddhists, at least of the Zen variety don’t have faith. Or if they do, they are seeking to lose it, not strengthen it. The idea, as I understand it, is to lose attachments to desires, of which faith is certainly one. Once that is accomplished, all that is left is an understanding of the real nature of things.
I try to interpret that as being interested in labels for people is counter-effective.
So once you are talking about god and his nature, you are already heading away from a Buddhist understanding of the universe.
I also find it quite closely related to the concept of Tao: That which is called the Tao is not the Tao.
So by even trying to put together Holy Books, let alone interpret them, it is about as far from Buddhist understanding as can be given the approach I am trying to describe by using words of necessity.
How is faith desire? There can be the desire to please God or serve God or to live eternally in heaven but those are a part of faith as a larger noun. Faith as in belief that God exists and that we can have a relationship with God is not desire IMO, unless you can explain it differently.
I have a great respect for Buddhism and it appears you understand it more than I do but I do wonder about the nature of attachment and desire. It seems to me if a Buddhist believes that he can achieve enlightenment by following Buddhist teaching then he or she has faith in that process and the desire to achieve enlightenment. Although Buddhists may not have scriptures per say they certainly have writings that are highly regarding for their instruction value. Interpretation is just trying to develop an understanding of the writing and put the instruction and teaching into action. How is that different?
OK, let me say upfront I am not an expert in Buddhism. Expert Buddhist strikes me as quite the oxymoron actually, so I don’t know if there is such a beast anywhere.
It is not that faith is desire, but I guess what I was getting at was faith is more related to “attachment” which you mentioned later. desire/attachment, all the same to me, and also very poor translations from the original language terms.
My own study of Japanese language is that terms like faith and God are very Western in nature, and by no means part of Japanese (or broader Asian culture probably). I mean this in the sense that we are influenced in fact and in vocabulary by ancient Greek words in science e.g., but there is no reason to expect the same influence on someplace as remote as Japan. Not only is there no influence, but they have their own influences that are unrelated and just as strong.
So any discussion of Buddhism in English is going to be hamstrung by that in addition to the general idea I mentioned earlier that it is going to be hamstrung by any discussion in any language.
When I am feeling in a Zen mood, I feel less like Judeo-Christian religions are rationally wrong, and more like “wow that is a cute set of words strung together but they don’t really mean anything because they are just words”.
I’d say that faith in belief of a god is a desire/attachment because it is a labeling of something and hence everything else is constrained by that label. I guess if we can get rid of all the labels then we get rid of the constraints if that makes sense.
> Although Buddhists may not have scriptures per say they certainly have writings that are highly regarding for their instruction value.
Well, my understanding is that there are 2 main branches, Northern and Southern. IIRC Zen would be in the Northern branch, but whichever it is it is more identified by lack of doctrine. YYMV in Thailand for instance.
Zen writings are more along the lines of “If you find a holy book, throw it away” or some such. Because they are just words, no need to get attached to them. If anything, they are tools designed to spark your mind towards recognizing artificial relationships and removing them from your conscience. But words are hardly the only such tools, so if the books were gone, no one would miss them.
> Interpretation is just trying to develop an understanding of the writing and put the instruction and teaching into action. How is that different?
It is different because the words are neither to be interpreted nor are they advice to be put into action. They are just words. One well known set of words is “If you meet the Buddha by the side of the road, kill him”. Probably no Christian equivalent. This is something much more then an admonition against worshiping false idols. It doesn’t involve worshiping at all really. Just something to ponder to help identify lingering attachments in one’s own mind.
I think the nature of Western religions are really tied up in the nature of the languages used and same for Buddhism. Same for all religions really. Concepts of languages are all we have to describe things, but if you are fortunate to be familiar with at least two really different sets, then you (or I did anyway) start to see limits in what you can actually express at all in one language compared to another, and then it is fair to ask one’s self is there another layer up the hierarchy above languages for understanding. Some might say Christian faith is in that category, I am not so sure, but I think Zen and Tao are truly language independent. By that I mean language is not necessary to understand them, and in fact destroys understanding, not that the understanding is the same regardless of language (which you often hear expressed for the Bible e.g.)
Just to close on a humorous note, I think when Buddhists heard Clinton say “It depends in what the meaning of ‘is’ is”, it was not parsing, it was perfectly clear. Because in Japanese, the concept of “to be” is not really what it is in English or other Western languages. There are many kinds of “to be”.
If you believe in double predestination–the notion that God has, from the beginning of time, decided who will go to Heaven and who to Hell–as some persons do, then clearly any given person’s belief is irrelevant.
My bold. Well that’s kinda what I was expecting anyway!
Seriously though, your level of faith is pretty run of the mill, if you ask me. If you really want to show your extraordinary faith, sign off all your material possessions to me, Mojo Pin, effective Jan. 1, 2010.
Double predestination (I keep reading penetration heh) doesn’t mean your belief is irrelevant, just that your belief is ultimately out of your control. It’s still relevant, it just loses all meaning because God is making the decisions behind the scenes. You think you chose not to believe in God? Events that led up to your entire life were set in motion the moment God created the universe, and if you think you’re being a free thinker by believing what you will, just remember: God planned for you to be exactly like that. You’re playing right into His Plan, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
It certainly does and I appreciate the concept. I think it’s very important that we understand the limits of our language and that words are just useful tools for communication. They have no meaning other than what we give them. I have objections to a lot of terms used by Christianity because of the unnecessary constraints dogma seems to place on those words. When someone believes and teaches that only certain concepts are “the correct ones” it places constraints on us that are not conducive to learning and growth.
The thing I appreciate about the eastern religions in my limited understanding of them is that we are equally valued parts of a greater whole. The drops in the ocean concept. That concept exists in Christianity but has not come to the fore as it should. Instead the idea of us as separate undeserving beings apart from God is far to popular. So, yes, God , labeled as “the other out there somewhere” is a mental constraint I am not overly fond of.
Ahhhhh I see and again agree. I come from a Christian background but in studying and being able to drop labels and dogma to some extent I consider myself a Christian no longer. In talking to an old friend who still goes to my old denomination I told her no book should be considered the word of God. They may be useful teaching tools but everything can be used to teach if we are seeking to learn. No book contains any authority.
Here I’m a little lost. It seems to me we must interpret them within ourselves even while not granting them any authority. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” “The truth shall set you free” and many others may be treated as a koan. We question, how do we love our neighbor? Am I acting in a loving manner? What is truth? Something to ponder. I do see that western religion granting authority to scriptures or followers surrendering their own questioning to some preacher is a a problem.
Very interesting, Even though I don’t speak another language I appreciate the concept. I do think there is an understanding that is very hard to express within the confines of words.
I think I follow you but it seems we are forced to use language and that’s okay as long as we realize it’s limits and don’t form attachments to certain labels and terminology. In studying different religions I came to realize that the essence of many teachings were very similar. The problem is when practitioners form attachments to particular terminology and that becomes a barrier that separates us. It isn’t necessary or helpful.
Funny.
on a completely separate subject i just happened to think of something.
Are you familiar with anything in Buddhism or Asian philosophy that is something like
We are really three people
The person we think we are
The person others think we are
The person we really are.
A Pale Blue Dot From the edge of our solar system this is earth. Just a pale blue dot. That is so close in the vastness of space. Yet people think a creature made all of this and wants you to pray to it. We are a particle of dirt in the universe. The sense of importance that is required to believe in god that wants you to do things and needs your prayers and money just baffles me. Delusion.
Ha! Back in my Baltimore days I was peripherally involved with some folks who were (I think) well connected in the Church of the Subgenius. Good or bad, those were some weird times.
It is the constraints that get you. Not just Christianity, not just religion, but any label. If I am not_alice, then that forces forces constraints of my past on here on me (and you) - that is something like karma. Without the label, I wouldn’t have the past, and I wouldn’t have a karma problem either I suppose.
Hear hear.
well, I am not Christian but Jewish, same thing applies I think. I remember being in Hebrew school as a kid, and being taught the story of how Abraham came to know there was only one God. Being a precocious kid already, I thought “well, given the information present, only one is not the only viable option”. This has bugged me forever because it is the very basis for there being only one God to believe in.
Later in my mid 20s I asked about it to an orthodox and better educated guy I worked with. He said I remembered the story right but the source wrong, as the conclusion was not in Genesis so much as a fill in the details by the later Rabbis (or so I recall now, feel free to fight my ignorance).
About 5-7 years later, after I had been introduced to some Buddhist readings, I asked about the Bible story again of a Baptist friend. She shocked me by sayong that story is not in the Bible at all. I was floored.
To me, that story, wherever it is, is the source for Judeo/Islamo/Christian belief in only one God, and there doesn’t even seem to be agreement on that otherwise non controversial story. Yet everything that comes after follows from it and is constrained by it.
This bugs me to no end and I don’t see how it is not obvious to anyone that looks, nor do I see how many Christians miss it when they profess to look/study the Bible so much. Of course if it is conveniently no in there, then that is a constraint on what they can learn too.
Even if it is not in there, it is not clear to me how Christians justify one God as opposed to other possibilities? Seems like Catholics, for instance, speak of a New Covenant, which acknowledges there was an old one, and where did the old one come from if not from Abraham recognizing there was one God, and then how did that happen exactly? How did this mortal man come to realize in a way that God delivered a covenant and created a chosen people?
Seems like so many words and artificial constraints on belief that it boggles my mind to think how being so constrained is of any value at all. Just like we try to legislate our way out of legislative messages, it seems to me that Western religions pile more rules in a (mostly) sequential Bible in order to explain more, but just as new laws by their very existence define new criminals, the new rules in the Bible only constrain options rather then enlighten.
Not picking on New Testament religions here, true for Old Testament and Koranic systems as well it seems to me.
Much more enlightening it turns out to work to remove the constraints and see what is possible as they are removed. Maybe each time one is removed, a person can be part of life the way it was before that constraint was known to him and somewhat before it was known to broader society too.
When the last one is gone, what is left but what life is truly like?
To me, that is Zen, and it is all in the mind, comes from sitting quietly learning to not think anymore using the constraints we all have (Not just religious ones).
Or so I have heard.
But Zen is also physical too - mindful repetition of anything can lead to Beginner’s Mind, and this is the basis of many martial arts. The -do in arts like Aikido, Karate-do, Judo, that is the same character as the Chinese “Tao”, meaning “the way of…” sort of.
One thing most Westerners don’t realize about Martial Arts - black belt is not an expert level. In Japanese, it is Shodan (yes, I think of this each time I see a certain someone here) and it means beginning level. You study and rise through the ranks to be called a beginner. That just doesn’t happen in the West. I have known some very experienced teachers when I practiced Aikido, and they were always happy to practice the most elemental moves, even with the rankest beginners who maybe were at their first class that day. When asked why, they will say because they haven’t learned everything yet, maybe not anything yet, from even all the repetition they have done over decades. They are still constrained somehow in their own minds and they want it to get to a point that the constraints are gone and then with no constraints the motions will be pure somehow.
Any teacher that doesn’t feel that way I have not felt comfortable with, but it is a good lesson for life. I could even buy the repeated Bible study if the purpose was enlightenment rather then justification for what you were already told. what is the difference? If the goal is for everyone to learn a set of rules and seek to end up the same way as each other, then it is not enlightenment.
If the repetition is to expose a greater truth that may not be the same for everyone, and we can’t tell because we can’t express it in words anyway if we get there, then that seems like a path to enlightenment to me. Even mundane tasks like picking weeds, or fun things like hiking take on new meanings for me each time if I can think like this.
Yeah, I’d agree with that in the sense of “authority to explain the true nature of the world, and the afterlife if that is part of it”.
I have not asked extensively, but I have asked Christians of one sort or another occasionally, if I think they will understand the question: Do they mind the constraints their faith puts on them?
The answer comes back sometimes no, by being constrained, there is a sense of freedom.
My rational self - with some background in social psychology - sees something profound to explain there.
My non-rational Buddhist self though sees something equally profound yet different. If important aspects of your life are taken care of for you, are you more free to seek enlightenment then you would be otherwise? I dunno.
I think Zen would say that all language is attachment. How much some of us have to peel away might be more then others though
That seems zennish to me. The first two being false because they are attachments, and the last because it is free from attachments. But how do you meet that 3rd one? He never seems to be around!
Kanicbird: If God knows ahead of time that our souls would be lost and we would suffer for all eternity,why on earth would He create us?
A good parent would not have a child to worship him, he would have a child so he could extend his love. I would not have a child so it could love me, but so I could love it and seek to do what is best for that child, If I knew my child would end up suffering for all eternity I sure wouldn’t concieve it in the first place. You make it sound to me that your idea of God is very narcisstic.
Polycarp and some of the other Christians tell of a loving father,much different than yours.
