Best Of
Re: Respecting one’s elders
I think in this case respect denotes making an effort to understand another person, where they are coming from, how they got that way, and making allowances for that in how you regard and relate to them. It does not mean admiring or looking up to them.
Fosdick
Re: Clinging to reason and science
To me its about how you hold it. I'd say that the scientific process (which is more than any individual study or science news) is the best way we've come up with to accurately understand the world. There's a lot of stuff we don't know, and many things we think we know are wrong, or more likely, incomplete.
So the dogmatic attitude along the line that some hardcore Athiests might take that if science says something then that IS the truth, and anything that science hasn't come to a consensus on is false doesn't seem an appropriate attitude. Likewise, seeing how science makes errors or changes its stance therefore throwing your hands in the air and saying its all just make believe anyway so any source is as good as any other isn't the way either.
I think the zen attitude of don't know mind, or an attitude of epistemic humility is healthy. An open yet skeptical attitude, one that allows possibilities in but requires some kind of scrutiny so the mind doesn't become a pool of flat earth nonsense.
person
Re: Clinging to reason and science
Yeah… change is the certainty… but science is the closest we have gotten to finding and communicating truth. Thats why I find it hard to let go of.
Jeroen
Living in surrender
One thing I wanted to discuss was something from the sutras, and that is this phrase:
I go to the Blessed One for refuge, to the Dhamma, and to the Sangha of monks. May the Blessed One remember me as a lay follower who has gone to him for refuge, from this day forward, for life.
It is from the end of ‘To Prince Abhaya’ (MN 58), one of my favorite sutra’s, but it is representative of many other such phrases at the end of sutra’s. What it tells me is that there is a special relationship between the Buddha, the Blessed One, and his followers.
It is something Osho also talked about, the question of living in surrender. By deciding to follow someone else you lay your burdens down, you give him your concerns and worries, and for a while at least you are made lighter and more joyful. It seems to me it is a rare experience these days.
Jeroen
Clinging to reason and science
Another thing I sometimes struggle with is clinging to reason and science. In my university days I studied mechanical engineering, quite a hardcore subject about efficiency, and before that I was schooled in mathematics and physics. It made me quite a sciencey guy for many years, and lately I have noticed that it is something I often base my views on.
And so in the interest of not clinging to views, I have been taking on board more of a “perhaps” kind of attitude for things which are outside the realms of scientific endeavour. For example, the other day my mother sent me an article about Osho’s dentist Devageet, who has been talking about how our teeth are linked to the collective subconscious and carry memories from the Akashic records. Usually the scientist in me would immediately say “Never!” But nowadays the mystic in me prompts me to say more “well, maybe.”
The thing is, I was always very forthright in expressing pro-science opinions, my scientific opinions were very strongly formed. I feel it is a deficiency to carry these kinds of views and not to take in a wider view of Existence.
Jeroen
Re: Funny Stuff
I just wanted to share this, a friend said it to me this morning…
Jeroen, many spiritual people are not sceptics, they are septics. Existence has been playing with them by giving them brain rot. One of the symptoms of this debilitating disease is that it often prompts its victims to speak in tired spiritual cliches that actually mean very little. The sad thing about it is that the brain rot victim is in such a sorry state they are fooled into believing they are speaking highly original words of wisdom.
You know, like “Existence is working on you”. “Existence is playing with you” is similar. It is all recycled bunkum and strictly for the dummies.
I laughed-out-loud, really, it hit my funny bone.
Jeroen
Re: Our personal quotes
-pushing mountains is like faith, wait till they come to you
-clever is not clearer
-quote a quarter of goat
lobster