XPost: alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.zen
From: invalid@invalid.invalid
Ummmmmmm wrote:
I'm still uncertain as to whether when replying to Ummmm I'm replying to
tony or Bill. They were both absent for a while, then both returned at the
same time. And I'm just not that freaking bright. But since I tend to
reply to what is written rather than who writes it, there's probably no big
deal, just a little mystery, which is not a bad thing.
> On 11/09/2016 3:37 PM, liaM wrote:
>> On 9/11/2016 4:50 AM, Ummmmmmm wrote:
>>>
>>> Really, really, wanting something - and knowing that it's possible -
>>> means you don't give up until you've found it.
>>> If we have only one life - surely we have to aim for the highest?
>>> Otherwise we let ourselves down.
>>
>>
>> Aim for the highest may not be so simple.. Do you mean "Enlightenment"?
>> That, in fact, imo, is the simplest to achieve, if one is of age to
>> understand the 4 Noble Truths and follow the way to achieve liberation.
>> No hocus pocus is needed. One or a few kind teachers, maybe.
>
> If it's so simple, why don't more people achieve it?
> Could it be that over three thousand years of muddled transmission &
> mis-translation the original message has been warped beyond recognition?
> The recipes don't work anymore?
>
I hold the opinion-de-jour that the recipes have been shaped by everyone
who transmitted them, due to the simple fact that their conceptual network
was non-identical to that of the person who originally wrote the recipes.
When water flows through a pipe filled with krud, it isn't as pure on the
other side. Maybe it turns blue on the other side of the different place,
but unless the admixture leaves it totally changed, it still acts like
water. Water with more of this, less of that, but water nonetheless. So
the few who can see the water in the old recipes may be able to cook up a
better result when using them, while others, basing their work on the color
of water (that has been turned blue over the years), might not fare as
well.
> In the same way as Jesus's teaching that "the Kingdom of Heaven is
> within you" has been completely forgotten by modern Christianity.
Organized religion may be called non-profit but somebody is paying the
upkeep on the churches and preachers and whatever, which gives organized
religion its own motivations, disconnected from, in some cases
diametrically opposed to, the message its founder tried to impart.
With regard to what Jesus is said to have said, consider the idea that what
"kingdom" means to the common man, basically another description for a
geographical area within which certain characteristics adhere, what
"kingdom" means to its King is not the same.
Likewise what "Heaven" means is something an individual might profit from
considering. Most of the crap I was told about "Heaven" by
organized-christianity leaves me ready to hurl, with all that "goodness",
and all that "Love", embodied in the very form of "Heaven", it seems like
Hell is where I'd be more likely to encounter those few truly real and
earthy people I've encountered during life; anything has to be better than
listening to a choir of Angels playing bad harp music and singing praises
to some made-up-being that is supposedly almighty but still needs the
praise of the doll-toys it claims to have made out of mud. Frankly, the
Heaven described by Organized Christianity is nothing I'd care to be
involved in, and it's the last placed I'd expect to find Jesus, unless he
developed a taste for harp music at the very end, you know, after hanging
out with a bunch of drunks and prostitutes, and getting crucified by the
establishment, while his disciples looked on powerless, proof of-itself
that they were, none of them, able to move any fucking mountains to save
flealess leader. They were, bluntly put, the mark of his failure.
>>
>> For me "the highest"is a life well led through its seven or so stages.
>> A Japanese guru years back asserted that each stage has its flowering,
>> he was referring to actors' lives in his troupe, from the youngest to
>> the oldest.. And the last flowering, of the oldest actor.. perhaps one
>> who plays a maiden in the Kabuki, is the best.
>>
>> But I prefer Gurdgieff's view, that humans are endowed with
>> potentialities that not everyone has the chance and the will to
>> realise to their fullest. To have known creativity, to have experienced
>> fusion with one's contemporaries, to have worked hard and succeeded
>> (or failed) in Love, Sex, Music, Children, Kindness, Gourmet cooking,
>> Zen or Buddhist Enlightenment, to have considered God - or not,
>> to have found out who one's parents are or were, etc. etc. is part of
>> "the best"
>
> All the paths in this bucket list lead to happiness of one kind or
> another. (if they don't make you happy, why pursue them?)
Sometimes we think we need to disclaim all desire, rather than just
attachment to desire, and in those places it might be quite sufficient to
suffer-less as a long-term-prelude to enjoying-more. Freedom from desire
doesn't mean you don't desire, it just means you've learned to listen
instead of just talk.
> But they all lead you out, away from your essential self, not in towards it.
> There may be a path that leads inwards, towards your true being.
If there was no true path, nobody would have been able to find it.
Occasionally some at least seem to have found it. From that one might
conclude that it exists.
> And it may be that the experience of who you really are is more
> enchanting and engrossing - more fun, in other words, - than all the
> other paths put together.
I find that it isn't so much about what I really am, as about what that
which I really am gets to do, in partnership with what I am not. When we
are so busily involved with what we are not, that we forget what we are,
there's an edge there, between self and other, and when one stands there on
that edge, seeing both sides at once, cool shit is the order of the day.
> To put it another way - instead of following a whole lot of pursuits in
> the outer world, in order to find happiness, why not first find
> happiness in the inner world?
Ask Stephen Hawking, if he's still alive. He's the genius in the
wheelchair. Apparently more interested in thinking deep thoughts than
figuring out why his body is kicking its own ass. Or maybe he has it all
figured out and is just about ready to wave the wand and say "shazaam!"
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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