XPost: alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.zen   
   From: tanghuyen@gmail.com   
      
   On 8/20/2016 12:01 PM, djinn wrote:   
      
   > and also, once you find how to live on dew drops and   
   > fresh air, can it for sale and you'll be an overnight   
   > billionaire.   
      
   Set up a franchise to automate the trick on   
   a mass scale?   
      
   Cynicism aside, all spiritual movements   
   suffer from the unavoidable contortion of   
   trying to make a wished-for state, be it   
   freedom or salvation of any kind, available   
   to more than their originators, who   
   supposedly experience it in person. It is   
   already severe when it is still within   
   words -- In the beginning was the Word --   
   but it is exponentially explosive when it is   
   claimed to be outside of words.   
      
   How to transmit and propagate something   
   that is accessible to a few elects, however   
   defined? The message has to be   
   prostituted to attract the support for the   
   supposed elects from the masses, who   
   can often only hope to enjoy the fruits   
   vicariously, if at all. And how to preserve   
   the message from corruption through   
   different times, spaces, languages,   
   customs?   
      
   Jesus intentionally taught in parables to   
   exclude the unwashed masses within   
   earshot from understanding him, who was   
   the only path to salvation. Those people   
   who were not for him were against him.   
   Let the dead bury the dead, etc.   
      
   The redeeming factor can be, not anything   
   supernatural, but something natural: the   
   human mind and its capacity to reintuit   
   and recompose the supposed original   
   message from bits and pieces from it that   
   might well survive and float around like   
   dust in the air.   
      
   And what works, regardless of   
   circumstances, can well be, not the   
   content of the message per se, but the   
   capacity of the human mind to bring itself   
   together by means of whatever religious   
   or non-religious methods of ... pulling   
   itself together and making itself cohere,   
   though some religious traditions have   
   some modicum of expertise on them.   
   Such methods (Dharma-s) can well work   
   by helping the human mind pull itself   
   together, and the  religious externalities   
   can cooperate in the endeavour, by   
   lending gravitas (including the social   
   solemnity) to the whole show, but such   
   methods can well work by virtue   
   of ... themselves alone, though in   
   confluence with the human mind. All   
   else can well be frills.   
      
   Tang Huyen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)