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An Atheistic Stance or One-Way-Only Religionist's
Nirvana
aka BUBBA ` ` South Carolina, USA Veteran
A ninety year old man in a nursing home has a picture of his mother as a young woman on his dresser. It is a shrine of sorts for him.
A young woman named Tina comes in and in his presence wants to know about the woman depicted in the portrait. When she learns that the woman is long since dead, Tina takes the portrait and smashes it on the floor, saying "She's not real. She doesn't even exist. You're not doing yourself any good trying to hold onto that image. Let's do away with it once and for all."
Is Tina acting on anyone's behalf other than her own here?
I know this is extreme, but it's something that conveys to me how evil it is really to show contempt for the beliefs of others. Is this something some Atheists do? Or something that exclusivist Theists excel in?
Your thoughts?
EDIT: See Post #3 below if you wanna see what I'm trying to get at here, merely an analogy of sorts.
A young woman named Tina comes in and in his presence wants to know about the woman depicted in the portrait. When she learns that the woman is long since dead, Tina takes the portrait and smashes it on the floor, saying "She's not real. She doesn't even exist. You're not doing yourself any good trying to hold onto that image. Let's do away with it once and for all."
Is Tina acting on anyone's behalf other than her own here?
I know this is extreme, but it's something that conveys to me how evil it is really to show contempt for the beliefs of others. Is this something some Atheists do? Or something that exclusivist Theists excel in?
Your thoughts?
EDIT: See Post #3 below if you wanna see what I'm trying to get at here, merely an analogy of sorts.
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Comments
No, Matt, I'm not addressing stereotypes here. Mainly I'm just throwing this story out to see if it conveys anything to anybody else. If so, what other thoughts they might have to help me flesh my ideas out a little bit more. Needless to say, I myself am a very visual person and seem to need some icons.
ZenMonk used to say that all such "snapshots" or "memories" get in the way of radically experiencing reality, and I know Krishnamurti would say that too, in his own way. Of course, we know that Buddha taught letting all that go. On the other hand, many of us just cannot throw all that out and would be lying if we said we could or would.
But, more to the point, if other people have an image that helps them cope better with the pains and burdens of this life, is it wrong to recklessly and without much circumspection impugn their beliefs/icons? Could such maligning ever help anyone?
I don't have a clue how acidic atheists or arrogant religionists would compare in intolerance or uncompromisingness, but I think it would probably vary from case to case.
What, however, are the salient points that Buddhist thought and practice bears in this matter? The Lord Jesus taught that it was better for a millstone and chain to be put on a person and dropped into a lake rather than he should break the faith of any of the little ones. The Lord Buddha said what? Remind me.
Tina would be the one in a nursing home if that was a picture of my mother.
Of course it's wrong. Do you have an image which helps you?
A picture of one's deceased mother in itself is not "belief", more of an emotional attachment to person who was dear to another.
I haven't seen any Atheist do that. After all, the "person" in the photo was alive and very real at some point. So. No. I don't know of any Atheist who goes around destroying old photos.
Tina is just an a-hole that will soon get fired for scaring away the company's clients and probably get her license revoked.
Some of the people I know who call themselves atheists are the kindest and most humanitarian people in the world and some of the "believers" are, as so elequently put, a*holes.
The use of images will always be a contentious one - do you have a Buddha statue? What purpose does it serve? Does it cause you attachment? Is it attachment to keep the memory of a dear one alive in one's heart?
But where does the use of images cross over into the Protestant concept of idolatry? And is it better to adopt the Muslim idea of forbidding all depictions of the human form, to avoid this happening?
If any object helps to keep one mindful, kind and compassionate, I can't see the harm - even if it is "my dear old mum wouldn't want me to do that". I'm slightly less easy with the making of "shrines" to human beings - the present cult of "celebrity" comes to mind.
This is one that I have wrestled with off and on for years, and I have yet to really come to grips with it.
I especially like the way you posed the problem. In your scenario, one's sympathy is immediately drawn to the old man, about to die, and forced to witness the destruction of the altar of his dreams.
For some reason, an analogous image popped into my head: that of a young child laughing and playing with a balloon when a callous adult walks up and with a loud smack! bursts the balloon. “Hey, kid, it's impermanence! A fact of life! Get it?” No. Crying is the only thing that follows.
I'm quite fascinated with the character of the nurse. She is supposed to be compassionate; a care-giver. It's easy to contemptuously—and abruptly—dismiss her with the self-righteous thought that, “Well, that's certainly not something that I would ever do!” and then go on to read the sports pages or something.
But, in fact, in some circles good number of perfectly legitimate Buddhists perform sādhanas to such nurses every day—when the nurses take the form of Tantric wrathful deities whose function is to destroy illusion with “ruthless compassion,” to borrow a term from Geoffrey Samuel.* I find the figure of Tina to be rather compelling—when one thinks of a buddha, this is not exactly the image that first comes to mind, but the character of Tina does, indeed, have a long history in Asia. A Song Dynasty Chan master would be another example.
Perhaps my analogy is unfair. After all, the old man is [apparently] neither a Buddhist nor a student of Buddhism. One rather gets the impression that he wants to do nothing more than pass the remainder of his days peacefully. Don't we all want the same thing?
Nonetheless, we are not—and cannot—be like the old man in the story. I have yet to hear of a spiritual teacher who ever recommended that we stay in a place where we are comfortable. Those of us who have chosen this path have chosen work over comfort. If I were that man, I would say, “Thank you.”
And if I could give advice to Tina, and if I knew that the old man was a Buddhist, I would say, “With as much compassion as possible, remind him that it's our job to awaken from dreams.” Ultimately, we must take down the alter ourselves.
What's my alter? I need someone else to point it out to me. I'm too close to it to see it clearly myself.
My version of the story is slightly different—and far less dramatic.
Suppose you are climbing a mountain, and with great effort you reach the peak ... only to find out that it is not the peak, but that, in fact you have been following the wrong trail for some time, and the peak that you have reached is actually a false peak. The real peak, however, can now be seen clearly, high above. Wearily, you climb down from where you are begin to ascend the mountain again, but now you can look down below and see other people making the same mistake that you have made and are making their way to the false peak. You shout down to them that they are on the wrong path, but they either ignore you or tell you that you are the one who is on the wrong path. How much help should you give them? At what point should you just continue on alone?
Thank you for raising this excellent question. We need more questions like that.
*http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Yoga-Tantra-Religions-Thirteenth/dp/0521695341/
But what about if you're on the way to another false peak?
Remembering the dead has been seen, for most of human history, as a sacred duty. Certainly, I would be more concerned if a client appeared to have forgotten a lost loved-one than if they kept a few pictures.
The banning of images in most parts of the Muslim world (tho' by no means all of it) arose in conjunction with the Byzantine Iconoclastic movement and is closely related to the Jewish horror of 'idolatry', which dates back at least to the 7th century BCE. The Protestant Reformers were reacting to the over-decoration of Catholic churches and the survival of 'paganism'. They "stripped the altars". Early Buddhism eschewed images too.
It must, however, be noticed that the visual arts have been infused, from earliest times, with spiritual scenes.
As one non-Christian said, on his first visit to the National Gallery, reacting to all the paintings of the Nativity:
"Ain't that typical of Christians. Instead of getting a nice place to have a baby, they spend all their money on getting their picture painted."
When I examine those 'images' I choose to display or use as focus, they meet certain aesthetic criteria as much as 'spiritual' ones. And I recognise, too, the 'local'. recent and temporary nature of those preferences. I have, for example, a bronze statue of Kwan Yin which 'fits' for me. It doesn't mean that I ascribe anything more to a lump of worked metal.
To me, and to many of us I think, the whole Earth is 'sacred' but we specifically take off our shoes in a temple or mosque whilst retaining them in churches. It's as much a cultural thing as anything else and only becomes a problem when we sacralise the image, the place or the flag.
[I put in that last because any Martian, watching the Pledge of Allegiance in the US to a scap of cloth and the attempts to outlaw flag burning might be tempted to deduce idolatry.]
I like your take on it, Ragyaba. From a karmic point of view, would this have even happened to the old man if he hadn't created the karmic conditions for it to happen? Isn't the nurse just acting out the role of the guru in pulling the rug out from under our delusions and attachments? On the other hand, the old man is doubtlessly of diminished capacity, so shouldn't he be allowed to die with his delusions? Or is that compassionate? That's the bottom line here, what is truly compassionate? Is it better to let someone die with their delusions intact, or should some effort be made to puncture those before the person enters the bardo? Interesting question. Difficult to answer in view of the hypothetical nature of the question, but in a real life situation, it would be quite different as one could just respond without thinking about it too much.
Palzang
Hi Palzang,
That is a very difficult question to answer. I've been a Buddhist for half my life but there are people close to me who do not know it. My Gran died two years ago without me having told her. She was very old-fashioned and telling her a lot of odd Buddhist stuff before she passed away may have done more harm than good, as it could have created confusion and anxiety in her mind.
There are Buddhist friends of mine who I cannot tell everything about my practice to. At the end of the day most people are not remotely interested and would be unable to deal with this knowledge - it would be meaningless babble.
I like ragyaba's analogy of walking through the mountains. The further in you wander, the less people you meet. In the end you can walk months and if you are lucky perhaps find a footprint, perhaps not even that.
You can only be there for people, if they need it. The chances are, they don't.
Edge
The crucial sentence in this article is, meseems:
Is it enough to dismiss the serious endeavour to reconcile spirituality and science that "most Americans" don't recognise the theology? For one thing, truth is not a matter of majority acceptance; it is not a candidate in some sort of election. For another "most Americans" (an unsupported statement in any case) have some pretty strange notions about science itself - as do "most Indians" or "most Venezuelans", or "most any large group of people".
The truth is that the process of re-ordering our understanding of both science and the spiritual has been going on for ever. The fact that "[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] people have trouble accepting both at the same time," (end of same article) is not, as the writer suggests, because such reconciliation is not possible but rather because the debate is turned, by some like Dawkins or the "fundies", into a conflict.[/FONT]
Feel free to link to if you want to:
http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/scienceandreligion.html
Thankyou for the link Elohim. Highly interesting viewpoints.
What topic is that, Jason?
Now I'm even more lost than I was before. One man's garbage is another's treasure and another's snapshot seems to be another somebody's pebble.
Would somebody rephrase the question or explain it to me?
Or -maybe even change the subject?
I thought it was about a PRINCIPLE having to do with personal integrity and the longing for as much autonomy as possible in this world.
I thought it was about the sovereignty of the human heart and not about some PRINCIPLE about Principles.
I don't have a clue what anyone is talking about.
What Topic?
Just remember, Nirvy: if you lose your way and have let go of the guiding hand as you wander among the shelves and gondolas of the world-supermarket, stand still, wait: someone will come along, take your hand again, and you will no loonger be lost,
Fair Enough, Kind Sir.
How long do I wait for the man with the key or the men in white coats, though?
And how will I know the difference before they take hold of me?
If they lead you with and towards compassion, they are the right ones, whether they hold a key or wear white coats! If they lead away, refuse to go with them. This is called "discernment".