Attempts At Profundity

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

2007-04-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Imperfection

2006-10-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Hate

2006-09-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

There's a couple of different memes going around on the topic of hate. Lists of things and people you hate and so forth. I won't embarrass participants by linking to any, but I'm sure you know the kind of thing I'm talking about.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I couldn't complete those memes. In fact, I was quite repelled by them. I have, it seems, almost completely lost the ability to hate.

Oh, I'm no saint. I have plenty of pet peeves, plenty of things that annoy and aggravate me. But it is very rare that I ever feel the temptation to use the word "hate" to describe such feelings.

My personal path to not-hating was not especially inspirational at first. In my previous work in politics, I viewed hate as a strategic disadvantage. I reasoned that, if you hated an opponent, it would limit your ability to see things from his perspective which would in turn limit your ability to out-wit and defeat him. (Sadly, this is a bit of political strategy that is widely forgotten in these times when partisan hatreds seem to have reached a fever pitch.)

Later, as I tried to become more serious about Buddhism, I started to make a more deliberate effort to eliminate hateful thoughts for spiritual reasons. I've gone so far as to make great efforts to avoid killing insects (although I make exceptions for aggressive insects and those which might pose a health hazard.)

No matter what the path, the results have been positive. I've come to view hatred as a corrosive, addictive pursuit, like smoking. Losing hatred brings a tremendous feeling of freedom.

This is when spirituality works best: when it delivers palpable benefits to one's day to day life, rather than clouding the issue with fantasies of a supernatural afterlife.

(I may not feel hatred, but as you can see I am still an inveterate shit disturber ;-)

C.S. Loser

2006-09-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

Alpha Courses run by various Christian churches have done a great service to North American society by fostering popular, informal spiritual discussion. I've often been tempted to sign up for one, but I'm afraid I would end up being too much of a bull in a china shop.

I'm told that a common lesson taught in the classes is the famous C.S. Lewis Trilemma. Lewis first stated it in the book Mere Christianity:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

The Trilemma was later restated as a sort of logical equation in which we have three and only three choices:

Jesus was telling falsehoods and knew it, and so he was a liar.
Jesus was telling falsehoods but believed he was telling the truth, and so he was insane.
Jesus was telling the truth, and so he was divine.

More succinctly, the Trilemma maintains that Jesus must be either Lord, Lunatic or Liar.

The whole notion of the Trilemma is, in my opinion, an embarrassment to honest spiritual discussion. I can't believe they are still teaching this nonsense.

Obviously, there are a great many choices beyond the ones Lewis offers:

4. Jesus believed many things, was right about some of them and wrong about others, and so he was a human being.

5. Jesus attracted a group of devout hero-worshippers and so what he said may have been exaggerated.

6. The New Testament was constructed and heavily edited by the Council of Nicea four hundred years after the death of Jesus. There was a lot of politics in the Council. Even at that time, a substantial chunk of Christianity believed Jesus was only a great human teacher. Through a political battle, these Christians were kicked out of the Council and therefore their views were not reflected in the final edit.

7. The single most important passage regarding Christ's divinity was when Caiaphas point-blank asked Him whether He thought He was divine. The four Gospels have Jesus giving four radically different answers, ranging from "Yes" to "It's you that say I am."

Perhaps Jesus intended the answer to be vague. It is certainly not as definitive as Lewis suggests. In fact, quite contrary to what Lewis states, Jesus seems quite plainly to have left us the option of seeing him as a purely human teacher.

What is more, Lewis's logic sets the stage for broad-ranging religious intolerance. Mohammud said he had spoken to God. Buddha said that he had acquired perfect knowledge of the nature of the universe, that he was beyond life and death and that he represented the path to true enlightenment. If we hold to Lewis's logic, then faithful Christians can only believe that those men were insane or liars, worthy only to be spit at and suppressed.

Personally, I feel the entire notion of Christ as a demi-god weakens his teachings. In theory, the main thing we should gain from Christianity is that universal love and forgiveness are good ideas. This idea has spiritual integrity on its own. There is no reason why an atheist could not believe that universal love and forgiveness was a good way to live. But Christianity implicitly teaches us that the concept of universal love and forgiveness does not have value on its own but only has value because an alleged demi-god said it.

I also think the frenetic worship of Jesus as a demi-god - the constant singing of "King of Kings, and Lord of Lords" - destroys the great message of the life of Jesus. In an age of kings and emperors, when even membership in the priesthood was based on one's hereditary class, a poor carpenter, possibly of illegitimate birth, the lowest of the lower classes, was inspired to speak some of the greatest spiritual truths of all time.

The life of Jesus shows us that spiritual truth can come from anywhere. The gap-toothed greasy mechanic or the middle-aged McDonald's fry-cook might be the next vessel of sublime knowledge. Instead, the Christian establishment, like C.S. Lewis, condition us to expect spiritual truth to come only from a halo-ringed figure clad in white flowing garments and floating down from the crowds.

The degree to which Christianity has been wrecked by the Christians is downright depressing sometimes.

Key = Chain

2006-09-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

Discuss