Alex Jacob wrote:Shah, David did not really ask a question of me, he made a statement about his interspretations and his values. His 'question' was not meant to be 'answered', and anyway he already has the answer, which is his point. Instead of playing that game, I described what I consider higher and more relevant than the values he professes. Did you get any of that?
That is a very dishonest view of the situation.
The question was clearly aimed at your interpretation and values - more specifically, at how they conflict with the great spiritual thinkers of the past.
Shah is right in saying that you offered a non-answer. The closest you came to offering an answer was as follows:
So, 'were they too restrictive out of lack of spiritual understanding?' I guess it is a good question. There are, apparently, different levels to understanding. Different 'gates' that one passes though. For an adolescent who fundamentally misses the point, how could they ever see the point they have missed? You don't get to that until you've passed that 'gate' and then, I guess, it comes as a humbling 'ah-ha'.
This is, of course, in direct conflict with what Jesus and Buddha said.
If Jesus and Buddha had intended to speak about "different gates" and "different levels of understanding", they would have done so. Jesus would have said something like, "There's no need to make much of an effort to go through that narrow gate as there are many other gates around, enough for everybody."
But he didn't. He specifically made reference to one special gate, a lofty gate that is difficult to go through and few find. The same with Ramakrishna. He didn't prattle on about different kinds of God-realization. He affirmed only the one -
the ultimate realization of God found through samadhi.
Now you have, in your inestimable wisdom, deemed this to be lowly, ignorant thinking, and that your broad all-inclusive outlook is "higher" and "more relevant" than that of Jesus, Ramakrishna and the Buddha. Not content with ticking me off for placing myself on the same platform as Jesus and Buddha, you go one step further and place yourself above them!
So I ask you again, why do you place yourself in complete conflict with the major spiritual thinkers in history and deem them to be ignorant and small-minded?
Elizabeth wrote;
"This distorted the facts of the matter as we define facts today, but communicated a message to the ancient people who thought more in abstraction than we today think in literal truth."
Yes, that makes sense of course. The 'meaning' and the 'message' of the Gospels is always reconsidered and reexpressed in every generation. What is impressive in the documents is something that is behind them, something that gives them life and energy but is not ever revealed. I think this is what makes Christianity so dynamic, so capable of turning on a dime, making itself relevant in the moment.
Yet it conflicts with everything that Jesus taught.
Amusing, no?
A man who is spent his life attempting to reveal a very specific message has been appropriated by millions of timid people who do everything possible to block their ears from hearing it - all in the guise of being his followers.
A more comical situation surely cannot be had.
If a person chooses to remain as an ignorant child, then yes, everything remains mysterious and relevant in a vague, inarticulated manner. Everything remains a potential source of influence, even the mish-mash of conflicting sentiments which comprises the bible. But this is worlds away from the kind of clear-sighted wisdom that Jesus spoke about.
If Jesus's message had been heard and understood by the human race, Christianity would never have arisen.
That to me is to express, in some way, enlightened values or an enlightened stance, to 'show up' for someone else. Oscar Wilde was (by his own admission) a flaming pervert and he made the mistake of battling a society that was equipped to destroy him. That society set out to destroy him, and did destroy him. But in the period of time when he was 'dying', though some considered this his Christ-pose, he seemed to have become a Christian, insofar as he understood something very profound about suffering, the same sort of suffering that I suppose the Buddhists talk about, or the Vaishnavas. In his absolute darkest moment, when he had been crushed, he was paraded in front of a crowd who, of course, jeered at him, mocked his fall. But a friend of his showed up unconcerend about what others would think of him, and this friend offered Wilde a small gesture, a wave or a salute I don't remember what, that deeply touched Wilde. Wilde wrote (in de Profundis) that such a small thing as that (showing up) might have 'opened the door to Heaven' to such a man with the strength or the understanding to have made the gesture to another human being. And there are precious few human beings who have the understanding or the strength to show up for others, and so they never do. Very few seem to hear that message, I guess. It might be a 'they that have ears let them hear' sort of thing. What do you think?
What do I think? I think they are the ramblings of an old man who has gone soft in the head. A more pitiful read I haven't come across in a long time.
More specifically, I think you are displaying your never-ending desire to keep everything within the intuitive realm, away from the full glare of consciousness. As long as everything is indirect, flayed, aimless, random, spontaneous, inarticulated, etc, you are happy. The very idea of consciously reaching into the heart of reality and understanding it explicitly fills you with such loathing that you instinctively speak against it at every opportunity.
The way you describe such an endeavour as "adolescent" is an example of this. It's sad, really. To regard oneself as being too mature to reach out and consciously understand God, to portray the idea that such a thing is childish, is a terrible tragedy to happen to a man.
You or anyone else can get up on a box and quack quack quack about all sorts of grand values, all the remote and impossible accomplishment of forest sages in now forgotten eras, of some experience of 'enlightenment' (and blah blah blah) but if it is not accompanied by certain attitudes that reveal a real and profound understanding of life---in this sense what might be called a Christian understanding since you brought up the Life of Jesus and quoted him---I more or less shut my ears to it, it goes out with all the rest of the trash: It really has little value to me anymore, and is just the chatter of adolescents.
Really, I think you should just go off and die somewhere and be done with it. Mentally, you're just about there.
Here is another question for you: Isn't this "Christian understanding" that you speak of the very thing that Nietzcshe railed against, describing it as "a resentment towards of life"?
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