The religious path is like an onion. We begin thinking as a young child that everything is me. Then we see inanimate as different from animate of which I am animate. Then we divide animate into Humans and other creatures of which I am Human. Then Me and My Family and friend are different from other Humans. Then My Body is seen as different from other bodies. Then my Thoughts and Feelings are seen to exist within the body: the Descartes stage "I think therefore I am". I can lose my arms and legs and still be Me on the inside. Then My Consciousness becomes the deeper stage on which thoughts, experiences and feelings happen so I become different even from what happens in my head. Then I consider death and realise my consciousness does not go with me, so I separate my soul from even my consciousness. At each stage we shrink the Self and let bits go, and this process continues until there is no "my" or "me" on the inside at all. That is what in India is called Moksha or freedom, and when that "me" shrinks to a vanishing point the Buddhists call it Nirvana or "blowing out." You can see it is nothing at any stage, but if you are stubborn then just shrink it till it becomes so small that it is absurd you still hold it as relevant: just put it down and pick up the overwhelming wealth of stuff you have discarded as "not me" on the journey.
A search for happiness in poverty. Happiness with personal loss, and a challenge to the wisdom of economic growth and environmental exploitation.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"The Jewish Fallacy" OR "The Inauthenticity of the West"
I initially thought to start up a discussion to formalise what I was going to name the "Jewish Fallacy" and I'm sure there is ...
-
The classic antimony is between : (1) action that is chosen freely and (2) action that comes about through physical causation. To date no ...
-
Well that was quite interesting ChatGPT can't really "think" of anything to detract from the argument that Jews have no clai...
-
There are few people in England I meet these days who do not think we are being ruled by an non-democratic elite. The question is just who t...
No comments:
Post a Comment