What actually is non-attachment?

Buddha says the root of suffering is attachment. What actually is this? And why is the monastic way of life relevant?

You don't need to be a monk to find non-attachment. Eckhart Tolle did, but its interesting that once he found it he initially did the same thing as Buddha: nothing. Buddha sat for 40 days under a tree and Tolle became homeless and slept on park benches. So naturally we think non-attachment is abandoning worldly interests and "dropping out."

Well maybe. Those who have found non-attachment often drop out. But most who droop-out have not found non-attachment: they are absolutely not the same thing. After dropping out both Buddha and Tolle went on to teach, live conventional-ish lives and Tolle even went on to have a relationship.

Non-attachment can't be measured by material things like this. Instead it is simply not seeing yourself anywhere in the world. Completely no where.

This means while you may have possessions they have nothing to do with you. If one breaks it makes no difference whether it is "yours" or someone else's: it's the same experience. It means even when you encounter a thought, memory or emotion you do not find yourself in it anywhere. It just is as it is, and whether it is yours or someone else's makes no difference, even no sense.

Its very hard to do. Almost all the time we grasp at things as "ours." Especially with mental phenomena we "let them immediately into the exclusive club of ME as VIP guests" we don't even stop them at the door they are already inside ME. If we arrest that process and ask how are they really in as difference space from anything else then we get back to non-attachment.

The problem with all these VIP guests in our club is that everything that happens to them happens to us! If we empty the club then nothing happens to "us", it just happens. And that is non-attachment and enlightenment.

All economics designed in US is a fraud

I've got an empirical theory that all economics deigned in America is to defraud people.

Check out the nonsense that is Laffer Curve. It claims that cutting taxes can lead to greater spending and so economic growth.

So I suppose the tax receipts just sit under the treasurer's bed? Quite the opposite! The most reliable spender is the Government.

If you cut taxes people are most likely to end up with surplus cash and put it under their bed. Plus the people who benefit most from tax cuts are the rich (the people who presumably promoted this nonsense from Laffer) and the rich are the ones least likely to spend, and most likely to save and invest.

So cutting taxes always leads to economic stagnation!

What evidence is there for evidence?

Classic SRH question.

Lets start with a simper one. What evidence is there for frogs?

Well there is a frog. Just noting this is a slightly disingenuous example, because why would there be a word for frogs if we didn't know what they are. Perhaps a better example:

What evidence is there for Unicorns?

 

However these became attributed to Narwhals. Anyway the solid evidence runs to nothing other than mention in ancient stories.

Now what is the Evidence for Evidence?

Well it appears we can just take the frog and the unicorn examples and show that the presence of frogs is an example of evidence.

However is this actually evidence of evidence?

The problem we are going to run into, like with frogs, is that we must already know what evidence is before we are presented with it!

If we don't already know what evidence is then how would we know evidence when we see it.

This is quite Kantian. Evidence must be a priori, in some way it must be hard wired into our brains in a way; this is not learned but something upon which we then construct our world.

Now is this evidence for SRH? That things cannot be their own foundations and where something is built upon itself e.g. looking for evidence of evidence then we know automatically it will fail.

Lets just check that. Is there a contradiction in looking for evidence of evidence?

The problem is that with contrary evidence we reject something. So to reject evidence we would need to find something that contradicts evidence. But the problem is that we have already accepted evidence as a thing before we even find evidence.

Suppose we found evidence that there is evidence that does not support truth. That is impossible, which then means that finding evidence for evidence is a tautology and meaningless. After all the whole point of evidence is to support belief. If evidence itself was not already a solid belief then what use would evidence be!

Looking at the previous post and Richard Dawkins his reliance on Science looks even more precarious! He looks like nothing more than a bigot with his own religion. For anyone who does not already think truth requires evidence, there is nothing Dawkins can do to convince them! Likewise it appears for anyone who thinks all truth must require evidence there is no amount of faith and belief that can sway Dawkins. Altho he is on the weaker ground here, since only he is denying the a priori, while everyone is relying on it!

Richard Dawkins, Existence of God, Evolution.

Now Richard Dawkins made a name for himself while Chair for the Public Understanding of Science taking on Creationists and also the wider religious community to argue that it was all nonsense and there are entirely rational reasons for the existence of the universe.

Youtube is full of Creationists making fools of themselves and for many Richard Dawkins stands as the beacon of light in a world of mediaeval superstition and ignorance.

However there is a problem. In order to attack Creationism and Religion as in "The God Delusion" amongst others, there needs to be an actual doctrine to attack. But find any two religious people who have the same idea. The goal posts are not as well defined as Dawkins would like to make out. This argument here is a variant of the Straw Man fallacy, but fundamentally different from the usual one which suggests that in order to defeat an opponent you make a simplified version of their argument that you can defeat.

The more fundamental problem for Dawkins is that not only is there no fixed Religious doctrine, but that people change their ideas all the time. The religious path is actually a path of evolution itself. And so is the scientific path. Science did not land on the table fully formed. It has developed and evolved over the centuries from for example a clock-work static world to the dynamic world of change that we believe in today that seems with every generation to become less certain as we had recently with the development of Chaos and Quantum theory and Gödel in Logic. This is not to say scientists and logicians are not sure, but that their theories have had to incorporate uncertainty.

What Dawkins appears not to grasp is that even his ideas have changed. He is famous for promoting the idea of the gene as the unit or atom of evolution. Obviously to get a name for this, it was not the prevailing wisdom before and perhaps in the future it will be superseded by other ideas. We are right now facing the possibility that the Big Bang theory is not correct. And who knows how much of what we believe will be over turned in the future.

Now scientists think they have a special advantage over the religious community because of evidence. You can do an experiment a hundred times and get the same result. You can demonstrate an indisputable, universal fact. Say for example the Newtonian separation of light into wavelength with a prism. But where science is on shaky ground is how we explain that. These explanations are in flux and will change forever! That is part of SRH. To suggest that there are theories that are unchanging is a contradiction. And obvious proof of that an unchanging theory must be with us now! To count as absolute Truth is must have been True at the start of Humanity. So lets scan those Hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs cos anything not there can't be unchangingly true! But if it can change then how do we know it won't change again? Indeed the knowledge of whether something is Absolutely True is what causes contradictions. If we can start making Truth statements about statements its a short step to "I am false."

Now some religious fundamentalists think that religion does not change. But how can this be true? We may start as a child thinking that God is a man who sits on a cloud like many Greeks used to think of Zeus. Then perhaps we develop to think God sits in a special realm called Heaven that is separate from the real world. And then perhaps we develop to think that God is not a physical human at all, but more a presence or personality. There are as many theories about God as there are people. How can anyone say that there is a single doctrine? Some religions like Hinduism and Christianity incorporate this by having many faces to God. Others like Judaism and Islam try out a Single God but have to be incredibly careful then not to make that God a definite. See even Humans collectively have different ideas about how to handle the expression of God. 

And if there is no single doctrine then how can you argue with it. Perhaps you might want to argue with the whole thing like Dawkins and say "There is no God" but that falls foul of the same problem of creating a single doctrine and then challenging it. Its one thing to ask a person of Religious faith what God means to them, but what does it mean to Dawkins is just as interesting. What is he riling against? Why is it so dangerous to him? 

The truth is that things change. For some the Resurrection of Jesus is too hard to believe in. But they accept other parts of Christianity. But perhaps in the future they will come to believe in it.

Dawkins is rather saying that there must be One Fixed Truth that everyone believes in unison, which actually rather deviates from his own Theory of Evolution with its emphasis on variation and change!

The implication of Evolution theory is that things change, and this must ultimately mean that Evolution Theory must change.

To be Religious is to walk a path, and be present on a journey. Where we are at any moment is not to be seen as an achievement in itself but must be seen as part of the journey. And when Dawkins rails against this he is rather missing the whole point of truth and God.

===

Now what of that basic question "Does God Exist?" What is written above is extremely unsatisfying for a person of knowledge who wants to know the answer so they can answer a pub quiz correctly (UK culture - that's a quiz performed by teams at tables while drinking). Well its actually doesn't matter, God is not like that. Try out both. Decide that God doesn't exist if you like and see where it takes you. Alternatively try and believe he does and see where that takes you. "God" is so vast that actually both attitudes and searches are within the dominion of God. Any anything that vast is clearly not easily handled.

The point here in its simplest form is that we as individuals are not done growing yet. We will change and improve with time like a wine. Now the issue of God is just where is that path heading? It's not something we can answer now, we just have some faith that we will develop in a positive way. Life will throw many things at us, and struggle as we might to ignore them and stay the same, life will change us, and always for the best in the long term. Some people may appear to become broken by what life has thrown then, they have lost all spiritual will to live, there is no joy and they have no direction. This is because what they were doing no matter how wonderful before, become no longer beneficial in the long term and they needed to grow. How can we understand the greater picture this if we just go from day to day?

Subtle point here. Some will say well its all just dice throws and you end up making sense of them with a narrative you add afterwards to try and make sense of what is senseless. Well this is 1/2 true. We do no live in a pre written story and our lives are not guided by a benevolent God like that. But at the same time we can just say it is random dice throws. The process of it happening, and of us making a story of it go hand in hand. Making the story and meaning is part of what happens, they are inseparable. I am always reminded of Kierkegaard asking the reader to separate the dancer from the dance. When the story teller collides with the random we get a life.

So yes its wrong to think God holds our hand the whole way and conducts from Heaven, but its wrong to say we are a just leaf being washed down a river.

So does God exist? Its the very fact we don't even know what that means which gives God his potency. For people of faith, they stop expecting an answer and just run with this the question to find out where it takes them.

===

Few things to say on that. So the greatest fear for the Religious person is what if it all turns out to be a lie and I have wasted my life. Well the thing I see most profoundly is we all waste our lives. That is the beauty of life. It was given to us for nothing, and we spend our lives completely wasting it. Is that a sad thing to say? Well that depends on your Ego.

The gnawing resistance at the heart of this fear all comes from the Ego. Spend Aug last year to this year discussing Ego in depth. The thing at the centre of our lives that won't budge and seems like a Russian doll inside the whole of our life, or a personal Sun around which everything orbits, this is the thing that also doesn't like talk of Death or even talk of God.

Controversial interpretation of Christianity coming. But what did Jesus do on the Cross? He forgave everyone and died a sinners death without demanding justice or even trying to escape and save himself. How different from the average person who will try everything to stay alive - even if they are guilty. The two robbers would have fled had they been given the chance, but Jesus (we believe) had the power to escape and didn't. Now he was either mad, was suicidal or had nothing to protect. And his desire to forgive suggests this one. Sad and Mad people don't go to any lengths to make peace. So Jesus had no Ego at this time, and there was nothing to defend. Yet he was certainly very human the previous night where the fear of dying was a great for him as any mortal.

Now for those who struggle with the Resurrection, it could be seen as metaphorical that without an Ego there is nothing to lose, and so death "loses its sting" already no need for anything else. But this doesn't explains the reports by hundreds of people of actually seeing Jesus. We know He looked different, so different that Magdalen didn't recognise him. But for those who doubt we even have Thomas becoming convinced when he sees Jesus. So its a mystery whether believers are the expect fully body resurrection: something the Church seems to have abandoned as Cremations has been legal in the UK now for over a century. So ideas change and the path is a forever changing.

But returning to the importance of Ego. The idea of "Life being Meaningful" is 100% the need of the Ego. It needs proof that it exists, and proof that it existed. So we look at achievements and memories and hold them as proof we existed. And then we weigh them up and start wondering if ours was a good life. Most probably the things that makes us doubt will be regrets or desires we never fulfilled. Perhaps we never married that person we felt we were destined to, or we never got famous, or never achieved the goals we set our self. Well its all good stories. but it doesn't have any meaning at all. Without an Ego there is no one to be great or a failure. Things just what they are. A failure of a life is the same as life of enormous achievement. Obviously not everyone can be Einstein.. but then do we need to be? And why would we need to be? Perhaps that makes us think well why did I bother then. If a life sitting in front the TV is as good as climbing Mount Everest then why bother? Well each person knows the answer to that! If you are the sort of person who has it in them to Climb Everest then do it. If you are not then don't. Its actually very simple. But don't do it just to be famous or prove yourself. That is the bit that is ultimately built on bad foundations. But perhaps this is what you need to grow, so even the pointless stuff done from a belief in Ego has a part to play in the greater picture.

Also said that the Ego hates God. Well obviously: the Ego IS God. Last thing the Ego wants is to have to accept that it is subordinate to a greater being, that is so vast that the Ego can't even start to grasp it. So the Ego creates huge resistance to belief and acceptance of God, and also resists all change and growth cos the Ego already is so what is there to do?

The world has a great way of punishing the Ego to encourage us to grow. But we always take that the wrong way and decide its unfair and we want justice. We do make the path much larder than it needs to be! 

Work and Emergent Properties, Growth and Nature & Harry Potter.

The Modern World is very much based on some fundamental features of the world.

Isn't it interesting that the key idea that came about through the Farming Revolution was the idea of "growth on investments." You plough a field, plant and seed and sit back and watch the profit come in.

Nothing has changed in 4000 years. Except now those with assets plant them in the stock market, buy the political class to ensure they always promote economic growth (even at the expense of the working population and the planet), and then sit back and reap the harvest. Except where once it was plants growing the fields, since the dawn of Capitalism it is people working who generate the growth. And thereby started the exploitation of people which is the essence of the modern world.

Another fundamental thing is Emergent Properties. Mankind really is fascinated by this illusion and spend all their time making and buying things to enjoy the illusion. Much as modern humans love watching media be that books or films or youtube. They know it isn't real but they love the illusion.

But working is at least as old and is the illusion at the heart of materialism. We go to the cake shop, see previous post, and get all excited about what the baker has been working on. Somehow the baker takes that flour, eggs, butter and sugar and puts them in an oven to create this wonderful new things.

It's the same down the electronics shop. People take metals and silicon and conjure up these amazing electronics like phones and computers which are unlike anything the world has ever seen. And yet the raw materials like the cake are all that are really there. But the illusion is so captivating that humans are prepared to spend their whole waking lives working to make new illusory things and their free time consuming these illusions.

After all these millennia we are as hooked as ever. We even named one of our ancestors Homo habilis because the most notable thing about this hominid is that it made tools and could make things. The beginnings of the world of illusions had started, and we jump at the chance to recognise that.

Now there is nothing "wrong" with illusions. They happen. But we should never take them to be "real." they are the emerging properties of certain arrangements, of causes and conditions so Buddhism describes it, and what come from nothing will return to nothing because it is nothing.

But its interesting in our thinking that what comes from a certain seed remains that seed even when it is no longer a seed and is a tree. We think dismissively oh that grew from an acorn, it is an oak. And somehow those 3 letters are supposed to replace this extraordinary organism that may live for 1000 years. Likewise we actually miss the deep illusion of cake in many ways. We know there is no magic. We know there are recipe books, and we know bakers can do this trick. Its like seeing the Magician at a fair. We know there is no real magic, they just hide how they do it. Likewise at a restaurant of amazing foods we know there is no magic, we believe we could watch the chef and learn how to do the trick to create this wonderful food. But actually we are happy to pay our money and be a bit dazzled by the illusion so created. But never so dazzled as to see how completely extraordinary making something is. In fact even the chef does not really know how they do it. They have just studied certain combinations and with experience and practice they can do it again and again. But ask them how and its like riding a bike. I have no idea, it just happens. Perhaps a Chemist may study the chemical and explain why certain things create certain flavours. Like heating ginger to 120oC creates a lot of tasty zingerone a taste we really like. But however we rationalise it we cannot explain away the fact that a qualitative change occurs and the new quality comes from no where. Zingerone is qualitatively different from Gingerol and heat. A cake is qualitatively different from its ingredients and heat. If they were the same we would ignore the baker and just eat the raw ingredients. But you could never guess what a cake was like if you saw the raw materials. It must actually be made for us to know what cake is, no recipe is enough by itself. This fundamental magic of emergent property is a magic that mankind is still, perhaps more than ever, enthralled by. No need for Harry Potter the true magic of the world is as vivid and enthralling as ever before.

==

Altho I add one thing. Bhutan launched its first TV station BBS in 1999. The first broadcast was an address by the King reminding the people of Bhutan that the images this machine made were just impermanent illusion and that they must be careful not to confuse them with reality and worse to become attached to them. I understand that within a year the crops were failing cos the farmers were too busy catching up with a Russian soap opera that had taken the country by storm.

This ability to capture reality in shadowy images says a huge amount about how the brain works and how reality is constructed. But the fact that we get trapped by the illusions also says a lot about how little we understand about the nature of reality.  

Body, Sex and the Disgusting

 The body is disgusting. If someone spits at you it is nasty. If someone urinates on you, or you get faeces on your hands it is nasty. You shake hands with someone who uses their right hand in the loo and doesn't wash it properly it is yucky. A chef sneezes on your food. Someone has a nose bleed and you get some on you. On a busy train someone hasn't washed in a while, and you have the odour. Or their greasy hair rubs on your face in the crush. Someone lets off a smelly fart in the cinema. A spot explodes releasing all the puss. Someone has an accident and their belly is split so their guts begin to show. Or a compound fracture pushes the bone through the skin.

Yup the body is disgusting.

But I noticed something as a child. When you are sexually aroused it seems to turn off disgust. This must be an evolutionary necessity. Disgust is good. It keeps us away from close contact, disease and danger. But if we never had physical contact with people then how could we breed. So it seems a switch exists as part of sexual arousal to turn off disgust. This then enables us to do lots of disgusting things with our partner, that normally we wouldn't even think of. It's disgusting for a stranger to drink from our glass, or to find the cutlery isn't washed properly and we are putting things in our mouth that have been in other people's mouths. But we never stop to think when we are kissing or sucking in sex.

Now disgust is a critical part of religious practice. In order to diminish attachment to mortal worldly pursuits and concerns, a lot of time is taken getting clear on the exact nature of the body. Yes it is disgusting. There are no two ways about it. There is in fact nothing attractive about it. This is a part of a human body:

Now its a slightly flawed argument because we don't get people to think about the egg, flour and butter as separate parts that go into a cake. A cake is attractive, the separate parts by themselves not so much (else why bother baking, just eat the raw ingredients). So we say that the delicious nature of the cake is an illusion, or an emergent property because it is added on top of the ingredients. And so in a way this is true of the body. The attractive nature of the body is most definitely added on top of all the parts. She definitely looks very different from just skin and bone added together. 

And yet at the same time we do know that a cake is nothing more than the ingredients. We can watch them all go together and transform in the heat of the oven. Nothing comes out of the oven that didn't go in. And likewise the beauty of a face is literally nothing other than the skin and bones.

And so we have a dilemma. We can view the human body as disgusting, or the cake as disgusting. Or we can be seduced by the illusion.

This was put into the Matrix as the blue and red pills.

Its a critical part of the religious experience. To get beyond the seductions of the skin deep, superficial illusions we need to see the reality dispassionately and see the disgusting.

And writing that, there is the coolness that comes from the dissipating of ego. It would seem that the illusions are very much liked by the ego. The ego prefers illusion, perhaps because at root so is it.

Anyway something else to consider.

Madness, Freedom and God's Path

 It occurred to me right at the outset that God was asking us to commit our whole lives to Him, just as a partner demands this of us in marriage. Nothing is to be left out, we must commit all.

Never is this put for directly than in Luke 14:26:

“If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple."

The word for hatred is μισέω. But Luke uses it relatively to mean that God comes first even to the point of hating the most precious people in our life. Or to put it another way no Earthly love can match the love we have for God if we are going to succeed as a disciple. So we do not diminish our worldly loves, but we must find an even greater love for God that is not compromised by any worldly interests. The list is backwards, cos the greatest love we probably have is for ourselves, unless we have children for which there are many who would sacrifice themselves for. But even compared to children we should be prepared to sacrifice all for God. Which brings us right back to the beginning and Abraham. This is how total and undivided our focus on God must be if we are to be worthy.

Now one thing that Christianity does well is really hammer home how deep our commitment needs to be. I have been told by Buddhist monks I need to amplify my focus and intensity of practice. But if you are weak at all, its good to know this is a marathon. As Buddha himself says to the sitar player: if the string is too right it will snap, if too loose it will not sound. Middle way is Buddha's great insight. You get to the end by missing the extremes and passing through the middle untouched.

And yet while we need a middle path in our efforts, a right effort Buddha says, we must never-the-less give ourselves 100% to the path. Any worldly distraction will draw us from God.

Now given all this its commitment, tempting not to enter the door in the first place. The path is too hard and the commitment is too great. Interestingly while knowing this I did initially give myself 100% and resolved to do my absolute best every moment of every day. Not to shy from what I should do, and step into all challenges with full commitment. It went well. Within a few months of simple prayer and commitment to daily life I achieved a jhana. But then I crashed. Too much too soon. And this is always the risk, like Icarus we fly too close to the sun and its a long way down again. I have seen other people make remarkable progress in meditation only to reach a point where the draw of worldly loves becomes too great and they crash back to Earth. Achieving the right escape velocity is actually a very tricky and skilful thing to do. A little caution is worth while.

But with all that said the only way to be a disciple is with 100%. If we take the dial back to 99% and leave 1% around for an easy time, to explore the world, and rest up then we will not make it. Welcome to the next 40 years of my own life.

And then there is craziness. Perhaps we know that "lets go crazy feeling", where we get drunk and just max out on a good time with no rules. The Bacchanalia of old. It's interesting in this very rational society we have in the West that there is no official room for Bacchus. The nearest thing we have is a late night drunken party or drug fuelled clubbing till the early hours. Reading Festival being near the end of the festival season ran into the usual mayhem and while its easy to criticise, do people not understand? Ever since the dawn of mankind there has been craziness, especially in the youth seeking to blow apart the walls of that chrysalis of "childhood" that still appears to hold them back.

But craziness has consequences that we turn a blind eye to at the time. Perhaps at Reading Festival someone gets burned in the fires and in the morning when we find out we have to live with that regret. Indeed I live with the regret of damaging tents once, some I discovered were presents from parents. I always wondered at the Mysteries that surrounded Bacchus festivals how many children were born the following year. Was there regret at the liberated events of the evening's revelry. Although one feels that ancient Greek society had built in mechanisms for dealing with that type of thing. What did happen to the babies of Bacchus? I don't know.

Ultimately we start to realise that craziness never goes the right way, and if we survive it it is always through luck.

The only true way is actually the way of God. And fight as we might, gradually as we get wiser that 0% becomes 10% becomes 50% become 90% and onwards. The path of God only bears good fruits, unlike all other worldly paths which are very hit and miss. But to walk it takes great wisdom already.

But thankfully God is forgiving, and with repentance of our foolish unruly ways, we can even improve our standing and strength in the path.

Now this links with the blogs on Law and Custom and Esther. As we walk closer and closer with God we are going to come into conflict with the world. It will not be a path of peace, and we must be prepared to hate all those things we hold dear. And this may well bring us into conflict with the Worldly Law. Become an illegal in the name of God is a new type of craziness that many shy away from.

And that links to criticisms of The Jew. In fact I understand A Jew is the a word for anyone who obeys the Law of Moses. But a robot can do that. What it really means is someone with their heart 100% on God. And anyone can do that. Which means that when the Nazis rounded up Jews they should have been looking for people who were committed to God. What they ended up rounding up were the fake Jews, who believe they have a special standing with God by virtue of inheritance or other worldly signs that God does not care for. Do people really think that cutting your child's penis before they even know what is going on will save that child from God's wrath and vengeance? well perhaps I don't understand God but its a rather poor deity who can be won over with a bit of body mutilation. Wouldn't it be interesting if when the Last Judgement comes that Jerusalem and Israel are razed to the ground and their inhabitants sent off for a final time for eternal slavery in Hell. Like a new Sodom and Gomorrah isn't this what all the prophets said would happen anyway to the corrupt and ever more hypocritical Jerusalem.

Being 100% committed to God really demands wisdom and is not to be taken lightly, with gestures and simple "proofs" of worthiness. But if we persevere step by step always trying to keep our mind on God as best we can we can make it.

And interestingly no religion on Earth would disagree with that. That first commandment "Have no gods before Me" really is the commandment. And the meaning is that we put nothing above God. And this can even mean not to put "Yahweh" above God. We are in SRH/reference territory here.

There are many arguments over the nature of God and the name of God. All we know is that there is God (can debate that in another post, but if there is not God what is there... you will find all answers equal God). The debate is only over the name of God. Is God = "Nature"? Is God = "Science"? Is God = "Yahweh"? Is God = "Om"? Is God = "Allah"? Well the category mistake is obvious. God is God. All the things in quotes are just names. Actually religions know this and do away with representing God. I believe some Jewish texts simply write - when they refer to God as He is beyond name. And when we get to the true Noumenon the thing behind all the names and phenomena we are so beyond worldly concerns like religions and forms of the Deity. To argue about "who" is God or what God is "like" is really missing the point. We set our hearts on the indefinable, but the staircase to that indefinable comes in the many cultural forms that different societies are familiar with. Its a long journey. In the West, as a child, we may start believing in a white bearded man sitting on a throne in the clouds. But as we walk the road that image keeps changing. How much use would a religion be if the form the religion took when we were a novice remained the same through the whole journey? What would the point be? We may as well not even start the journey. The day we die we can be sure the Indefinable that we believe in then will be entirely different from our first recollections. But all the while as we changed one thing was true: we had our heart set on God. This is why God forgives. We change continually, we let our old self go like a snake sloughing off its skin (and that is the good analogy of the snake to contrast with the serpent in Eden). We repent and get ever closer to God. So those who fight over the name or God really are the Hypocrites, who care only for outward form and worldly show. That first commandment tells us to not put these false idols before God.

Now I will trip myself up. So what of the Law of Moses and circumcision then? New Testament writers like Paul say exactly what is said above, that God does not care for worldly displays of affection and allegiance. We may circumcise, we may tattoo what God really cares. The risk is that these outwordly signs may become for us God itself. "I am circumcised" therefore I am Godly we may be tricked into thinking by the Devil.

“Someone who looks for me in form
or seeks me in sound
is on a mistaken path
and cannot see the Tathagata.”

Buddha makes that very clear in the Diamond Sutra. I wonder what the Jews themselves think, but is Israel a travesty of Law of Moses. And do people in Judaism hold to tightly to ritual and custom and miss the whole point.

I pick on the Jews because they set themselves up as First Among Nations and the People of God so naturally are the example, and the ones we look to for correctness and understanding. But obviously all religions fall short here.

But it is a path. Many people enter the Buddhist temple for the first time seeing the statues and the incense and meditation postures and this for a while becomes the path. But gradually things are revealed and the form of the religion changes. Eventually we learn arriving at the nothing where the religion is indistinguishable from their life, and the Buddha indistinguishable from themselves.

In Christianity that is less clear. Does the profound follower of Christ become indistinguishable from Christ in the end. He said follow Him. One wonders at the end of the road whether we are with God.

But actually that is speculation. We will know when we get there. For now the vector is all that is important. 100% Love of God without distraction.