Tuesday, April 10, 2007
And Now A Word From Our Sponsor
I don't exist. Neither do you. A confluence of events has conspired to create sets of actions, like a wave.
This makes our lives both more empty and more full. More empty because we are stripped of ego. More full because what we do has been in the works for thousands of years and won't be fulfilled for many thousand more.
No, it's simpler than that:
More empty because we are stripped of separateness. More full because we are stripped of separateness.
You know all of this already, but you have fooled yourself into thinking you'll feel better if you pretend to forget it. You won't.
posted by The Propagandist @ 11:01 AM,
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Imperfection
When you get right down to it, the problem that hobbles every single religion or spiritual philosophy on earth is accounting for the existence of imperfection.
This is odd, considering that we humans are such experts at imperfection. Every day every human engages in a million imperfections. Yet, it seems we cannot even perfect imperfection, because explaining imperfection eludes us.
But then maybe to be perfectly imperfect, one has to achieve even imperfection imperfectly, so perhaps it all makes sense after all.
With me so far? After this it gets both more simplistic and more ludicrously complex.
Here's the problem. Many of the Earth's religions recognize a supreme monotheistic God. He is presumed to be all-knowing, all-powerful and timeless.
That last part - timeless - is essential and often overlooked. By timeless, I don't mean immortal, because even hypothetical immortal beings are controlled by time insofaras they can only move forward in time. A truly all powerful being could not logically be controlled by time or anything else and so would be able to move backwards and forwards through time.
Ancient Greek myths often convey a primitive intuition on such complexities. In the rather elaborate Greek creation myth, the supreme god, Zeus, was not the original god. He was the son of Chronus, the god of time. Zeus killed Chronus - God killed Time - to become the supreme ruler of the universe. Neat old story, huh?
Judaeo-Christian-Islamic traditions on the other hand have a much harder time with this concept. Perhaps the oldest and simplest moral challenge going is: If God exists, why does evil exist?
Now, the simple answer to this is that evil exists because God intends it to, but people from the Judaic tradition don't much care for that answer. Instead they invoke a myth about the angel Satan rebelling and causing evil.
But, if God is all-knowing, all-powerful and can go backwards and forwards in time, why didn't He know Satan would rebel? Failing that, if He is all-powerful and timeless, why can't He just will things to go back to the way they were before Satan rebelled?
Well, because of free will, they say. God has given us free will in order to prove our love to Him. Having given us free will, He cannot interfere with our choices.
This free will bit has never made any sense to me. If God is all-knowing (and logically he must be to truly be God) then he knows the outcome of all events before they happen, free will or not.
Here's a very simple illustration of what I mean. Suppose I have a hungry dog on a leash. Then I throw a big juicy steak in the middle of the floor. Then I give the dog "free will" by releasing him from the leash. Well, I wonder what is going to happen? Zut alors! The dog eats the steak. You can argue "free will" until you're blue in the face, but all I know is that when the missus comes home she's going to be mad at me and not the dog about the wasted steak because I should have known better.
So why are we supposed to feel guilty when we allegedly defy God's will? Didn't He know that was going to happen? If He is all-knowing, did He not in fact know in detail every single thing that was going to happen from the very moment he created the universe?
Therein lies the great spiritual conundrum. If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, then he must be responsible for the imperfections, the bad things in our lives, and has no intention of changing them (or he would have done so already), so what is the point of worshipping him? If God is not responsible for imperfection, then He is not all-knowing and all-powerful and therefore is not God, so there is no point in worshipping him as such.
There's the conundrum as expressed in theistic terms, but it is just as bad if you look at it from the perspective of a non-theistic religion like Buddhism.
The party line in the world's One True Religion runs something like this: the universe is in fact a harmonious whole lacking any sort of division or distinction. Distinctions of time do not exist. Even distinctions as basic as existence and non-existence do not exist. This is the original nature of the universe and it is its ultimate nature.
OK, then, where did division and distinction come from? From desire and attachment, says Buddha. Our own petty cravings have created a world of illusion that blinds us from the true unified nature of reality.
So, where did desire come from? If the universe was truly whole and harmonious, then nothing should have been outside of it that could have ruined this state of perfection.
Further, if perfection exists outside of time, then it already exists, so what is the point of those of us who exist within time from trying to achieve it? It is said that when Buddha achieved Enlightenment, he came to understand the entire universe and every detail of the past, present and future...like God, you might say. If he did, then he already knows how long it's going to take for my personality path to achieve enlightenment and no effort I make is going to make the time come any faster or slower.
No matter how you look at it, the concepts of all-knowing and timelessness inevitably lead to a sense of futility. Yet, fundamental to the spiritual urge in humans is the assumption that spiritual efforts will benefit both ourselves and others, either in this life or another.
How do we resolve this problem of explaining imperfection? In Christianity, they seem to strive to put up new arguments to try to logic their way out of it. So far they don't seem to have managed it.
The Buddhist approach is more waterproof but no more satisfying: The ultimate nature of the universe, nirvana and enlightenment can only be understood by the enlightened mind. They cannot be explained or expressed in any way to the unenlightened.
In other words, don't worry your pretty little head about it. Just keep on with the deep breathing and it will all work out in the end.
But, unless someone reading this has a better idea, that seems to be the best explanation we are likely to get.
posted by The Propagandist @ 12:07 PM,
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