Is "Hell" a part of Taoism?

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

I would like to end the derailment of this fascinating tread by posting something on topic...

 

There are times when you are between wake and sleep. When you feel more or maybe in a different way than usual. It is easy to discount those sensations as lunatic, or unfounded if you are in your right mind. But please do remember that no one remains in its right mind... after he is dead. Those are the times where you feel entities, demons and similar.

 

I don't think that we even have to go so far as to bring entities into the discussion.

 

Lets just talk about dreams for a moment. If something in your attitude or daily life is causing stress or pressure on you, this will often manifest in the form of nightmares or even night terrors. Your normal mental attitude has a direct effect on the images that your mind conjures up at night and forces you to struggle through. This category might even include dreams where you are having to do some unpleasant or repetitive or uncomfortable task. Again, you are creating this unpleasant or even torturous reality for yourself and making yourself live in when you just want to be resting peacefully. But because you have not cultivated a peaceful mind or body, you are incapable of producing that reality reliably in your dreams. This is truly a dilemma, since having nightmare filled dreams will inevitably lead to a more stressful and unpleasant daily life.

 

If you are happy, pleasant, carefree and positive throughout the day, you are then more likely to have sweet dreams that reflect that state.

 

And if your mind is quiet, clear, simple and still throughout the day, you can cultivate a situation where the dreamless sleep that Chuang Tzu spoke of is possible. Without all of the chatter and stress and worry and even ambition to occupy your mind at night, it too can become still, leading to more stillness and calm in your daily life.

 

So without even invoking an afterlife we can already see a heaven, hell, and nirvana manifesting themselves for you every night. You have almost no choice but to be lead along into these different worlds based on the karma that you created in your waking life and reinforced again and again in your dreams. Even if you do not believe in an afterlife, it is hard to deny hell.

 

And the experiences that many people gave of travel in the astral planes or entity attacks in the liminal states are just extensions of the above mechanism. They are subjective, so they may or may not have any ultimate reality, but they do testify to this basic principle of how we reap what we mentally sow.

[Marblehead]

I would like to end the derailment of this fascinating tread by posting something on topic...

 

Excellent post, IMO!

 

Peace & Love!

[Marblehead]

Hi Pietro,

 

Look: belief, observation and illusion are three different things. To be able to asses reality as it is you need to distinguish between the three. You practice Taoist arts, so I suppose you move, use and feel Qi. What would you answer to someone that tells you that it is all an illusion, and you should just stop believing in it.

 

Yes, those three are different concepts. Beliefs are the concepts we hold as truths; observations are what we percieve through our senses; illusions are things we make up (create) but they have no supportable substance.

 

If someone told me that Chi is an illusion I would disagree with them and I would give them at least one personal experience where I have proved to myself that it is real. (There really is one.) So I would tell them that they don't have to believe it if that is their choice but my choice is that I will continue believing in it.

 

That you don't believe in it. And that your observation does not come after belief, but belief come after observation.

 

My position is that belief came after application and observation.

 

 

It's the difference between the word belief as used by religious people, and the word belief as used by scientists.

In the second case it means: "I have looked at this from all possible angles. And given that my information is and will always be limited. Still I can try to propose an explanation for those phenomena."

 

The only absolute I will ever propose is that Tao is dynamic. That is, all is ever-changing. Everything else gets a probability of .999~ or less.

 

Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu taught that I should observe the processes in nature (the Manifest universe) try to understand those processes and live my life as close as possible to be consistent with those processes. If I observe any given process and it recurs repeatedly without fail I can say that it is a given that this is a given - a general truth (but not an absolute truth).

 

If I stop "believing" the phenomena would still happen. Because the phenomena predated the belief.

 

Exactly. However, is the phenomena 'real' or is it an 'illusion'? One must be very careful here. Our subconscious mind can play tricks on us.

 

When Lino described what he described I could recognize someone who had, in a deeper way, similar experiences to mine. And reached similar conclusions. I appreciate you remaining speechless when confronted with his admission. What can you say?

 

It has never been, nor will it ever be, my intention to appear to be insulting anyone's belief. I don't play that game. I do, however, feel that I should express my understanding when a subject is being discussed and I feel I can present an alternate view for the purpose of helping someone with understanding the subject more fully.

 

I do not believe in the existence of a 'place' called heaven nor do I believe in a 'place' called hell. Heaven and hell are states or conditions of being. We create our own heaven and hell. We can choose to allow imaginary evil entities torment us or we can choose to be at peace with ourself. It is our choice.

 

I am not suggesting that you should change your life. But I am sharing something of mine just to instill the doubt that there might be more that is going on.

 

I'm glad. Hehehe. I have a wonderful life. I am contented and at peace with myself. Why would I want to change? Why would I want to create evil entities who would torment me? Why would anyone want to do that? That just doesn't sound logical. Why would anyone create anything that would interfer with their peace and contentment?

 

You said that there is no heaven and hell in your belief system. In this post I spoke about two different ways to believe. Which of the two meaning of the word "belief" were you using? Or do you find a third one?

 

Yep. That is exactly what I said. And I gave that thought up when I gave up my Christian belief system. Now, sure, for many years after that I did experience what one would call 'hell'. But that was my own making as a result of thing I did that I should not have done or things I didn't do that I should have. I had choices. I made some bad choices and I paid for them.

 

So, in answer to your final question I will say this. If I can change anything, be it physical or mental, then it is not a fixed reality. If I can believe that there is no heaven or hell then they really do not exist except in my delusioned mind. Therefore I can make them disappear because they really do not exist. If I try to make this chair I am sitting in disappear I will meet with failure.

 

Therefore we create our own reality to some degree. We cannot change the Manifest. We can change our understanding of the Manifest though.

 

Peace & Love!

[Pietro]

I would like to end the derailment of this fascinating tread by posting something on topic...

I don't know how Mal or the community feels about this. And I haven't really followed the derailment as half of the posts are missing in my version of TB :-P. But maybe we could solve also this problem by moving those derailments into its own thread. Wouldn't this solve the Buddhists vs Taoists problem?

 

Lets just talk about dreams for a moment. If something in your attitude or daily life is causing stress or pressure on you, this will often manifest in the form of nightmares or even night terrors. Your normal mental attitude has a direct effect on the images that your mind conjures up at night and forces you to struggle through. This category might even include dreams where you are having to do some unpleasant or repetitive or uncomfortable task. Again, you are creating this unpleasant or even torturous reality for yourself and making yourself live in when you just want to be resting peacefully. But because you have not cultivated a peaceful mind or body, you are incapable of producing that reality reliably in your dreams. This is truly a dilemma, since having nightmare filled dreams will inevitably lead to a more stressful and unpleasant daily life.

 

If you are happy, pleasant, carefree and positive throughout the day, you are then more likely to have sweet dreams that reflect that state.

 

And if your mind is quiet, clear, simple and still throughout the day, you can cultivate a situation where the dreamless sleep that Chuang Tzu spoke of is possible. Without all of the chatter and stress and worry and even ambition to occupy your mind at night, it too can become still, leading to more stillness and calm in your daily life.

 

So without even invoking an afterlife we can already see a heaven, hell, and nirvana manifesting themselves for you every night. You have almost no choice but to be lead along into these different worlds based on the karma that you created in your waking life and reinforced again and again in your dreams. Even if you do not believe in an afterlife, it is hard to deny hell.

 

And the experiences that many people gave of travel in the astral planes or entity attacks in the liminal states are just extensions of the above mechanism. They are subjective, so they may or may not have any ultimate reality, but they do testify to this basic principle of how we reap what we mentally sow.

Dear Zhuo Ming Dao,

thank you very much for your analysis.

(And thanks Yoda for your warm presence, I feel you very near).

Let me start by clarifying that this happened quite some time ago. This night, for example, I was in the perfect physical conditions where it would have happened, in the past... and it didn't. Sleeping with no energetic protection, and with not enough blankets.

 

Now I think that your analysis is spot on respect to what can happen.

The way in which worries during the day can lead to a troubled sleep. I am absolutely aware of that. I also had faced disembodied entities in my waking life. Both controlling a friend of mine who was having a mental problem. And just as being present in an area. So my experience on the topic is unfortunately deeper than I wished it was.

 

One of the interesting thing some time after I had those experiences (the entities, not the nightmares), was the absolute belief that I must have imagined everything... until it happened again.

Then you realise how real it is.

 

So please forgive me if I have the arrogance to claim that I know better about what was going on around me, basing myself on the little detail that I was actually living it through.

[Pietro]

Exactly. However, is the phenomena 'real' or is it an 'illusion'? One must be very careful here. Our subconscious mind can play tricks on us.

Indeed, it can. But assuming that when the experience of others do not match our own they must be under an illusion is itself limitating.

 

I do not believe in the existence of a 'place' called heaven nor do I believe in a 'place' called hell.

Oh, absolutely.

Heaven and hell are states or conditions of being.

Agreed.

We create our own heaven and hell.

This also I agree, but I think I interpret this phrase in a way that is slightly different than yours.

 

We can choose to allow imaginary evil entities torment us or we can choose to be at peace with ourself. It is our choice.

We both agree that is our choice to be in heaven or in hell (at least for us, not sure about people who are schizophrenics). But my understanding is that this choise is deeper than just chosing to believe that some entities are there or not. If you are tormented by those entites, and you don't believe in them... you still are going to be one miserable puppy. Just either denying your misery (which can then explode in ways that we too often see around). Or interpreting your misery in other ways.

[宁]

I would like to end the derailment

 

so in a nutshell you'd say 99% of these experiences are mere subjective projections, woudn't you

i'm not so sure about that

i'm not ready to admit, or cling on the idea that most of the cosmos is just 'in my head'

that is an anthropo-centric view, more palatable to buddhists than daoists

i don't think you can crush the mistery of this world with psychollogical explanations

 

to me your post could mean one of two things

- either you want to discourage people to investigate something you consider not worth investigating

- either that was only an introduction and you mean to continue by adding something interesting about occurences that DO happen outside the frame you described above

 

waiting for a response

 

L1

[Marblehead]

Hi Pietro,

 

Well, It seems we have a fair amount of agreement.

 

Indeed, it can. But assuming that when the experience of others do not match our own they must be under an illusion is itself limitating.

 

Yep. There is always the possibility that I will place limits but really, I place them only on myself and then describe my position and understanding. I would never intentionally try to place limits on others.

 

Oh, absolutely.

Agreed.

This also I agree, but I think I interpret this phrase in a way that is slightly different than yours.

 

Yea!!!!! Yes, we need be careful with the words we choose to use so that we do not cause a misunderstanding.

 

We both agree that is our choice to be in heaven or in hell (at least for us, not sure about people who are schizophrenics). But my understanding is that this choise is deeper than just chosing to believe that some entities are there or not. If you are tormented by those entites, and you don't believe in them... you still are going to be one miserable puppy. Just either denying your misery (which can then explode in ways that we too often see around). Or interpreting your misery in other ways.

 

I agree that denying one's misery (suffering) (hell) is not the way to go. Understanding the cause is the first step to resolution. And yes, understanding the cause is, IMO, the first and most important step toward gaining inner peace.

 

True, we cannot include a discussion of schizophrenics regarding this subject.

 

I never said it would be easy, Pietro. Some never find the answers because they were asking the wrong questions. The questions are more important than the answers.

 

I cannot see into another person's mind so I am unable to make any suggestions even to what questions to ask. Even if a person wrote me a 500 page essay I would still feel incapable of making any comments because likely the root of the problem lies in the subconscious and the information was overlooked and therefore not included in the essay.

 

No more words at the moment.

 

Peace & Love!

Edited October 11, 2009 by Marblehead

[goldisheavy]

My position is that belief came after application and observation.

 

That's a very bad position! I hope you re-evaluate it. In order to observe anything at all you must have a cognitive context. And cognitive context is nothing other than a web of interdependent beliefs. To see even one photon anywhere you must have a belief of some kind. To feel even the slightest tickle you must believe something.

[Marblehead]

That's a very bad position! I hope you re-evaluate it. In order to observe anything at all you must have a cognitive context. And cognitive context is nothing other than a web of interdependent beliefs. To see even one photon anywhere you must have a belief of some kind. To feel even the slightest tickle you must believe something.

 

But that is your opinion and you know what they say about opinions.

 

Well, of course we must be mentally conscious in order to observe anything (except for our dreams).

 

Cognitive thought does not require beliefs. Cognitive thought happens as a result of chemical transmission in the brain, sometimes even when we are trying consciously to prevent them.

 

I can't see photons.

 

I believe a lot of things. I just don't believe things that I think are unbelievable.

 

No. The Tooth Fairy does not exist. But if I had a young child I would pretend that one exists and I would take the child's tooth and replace it with a gold dollar. But that still doesn't make the Tooth Fairy real.

 

I believe that one of my fish died yeaterday because it wasn't breathing and it was belly-up. So I planted it so it would become a part of the rose bush I planted it near. I don't think the fish is going to swim away from where I planted it.

 

And once again, you cannot prove that hell exists other than in your mind and I cannot prove it doesn't exist as it doesn't exist so how could I prove anything?

 

But you can prove that you believe in hell and all I can say is, "Oh well."

 

I think I have a very healthy outlook on life. I am happy, contented, and at peace with myself. I try to show others with my thoughts and actions that they too can enjoy what I enjoy. We all have choices to make in life. We will make choices according to how we percieve life.

 

If one needs crutches one can always create as many as they need. If one wishes to live free one will throw all the crutches away and learn to walk on their own. We each must walk our own path. Noone can walk it for us.

 

Peace & Love!

[Pietro]

That's a very bad position! I hope you re-evaluate it. In order to observe anything at all you must have a cognitive context. And cognitive context is nothing other than a web of interdependent beliefs. To see even one photon anywhere you must have a belief of some kind. To feel even the slightest tickle you must believe something.

You claim that in order to observe a person must have a cognitive context. Newborns are easily drawn toward their mother tits. They find them and suck on them. What belief does a newborn have to know how to suck milk?

Isn't the fact that they find their mother tit enough of a proof that they observe or perceive it in some ways?

So you have someone who perceives and does not yet have believes.

 

Animals, even the simplest, have perceptions about the world. Even the simplest microbes will follows the gradient of a molecule that is released. What belief does such microbe need to have about the world? When we can actually dissect the bacteria and see mechanically how that microbe will follow the concentration of the molecule.

 

Take a Braitenber vehicle. That is a small toy car with 4 wheels. The two on the back are connected with light sensors on the front of the vehicle. They are connected in a crossed wire way (the left wheel to the right sensor, and viceversa). The more a sensor receives light the more the wheel that is connceted to will work. The result is a vehicle that follows light. If the light is on the right it will move the left wheel stronger, if the light is on the left it will move the right wheel stronger. Of course if the light cannot be reached (is above) it will pass through the area with the highest light, and then continue, just to turn in a circle and pass again. SO here we have an object that perceives light. What belief system does this object have? And where is it?

[Prince...]

I think the thread has been derailed, but I wanted to set something straight...

 

I am a Christian.

 

I am in Seminary working on becoming a minister (not a priest! I'm not Catholic!!) [i've been asked this a few times]

 

I don't believe in Hell as in a place of eternal hellfire and damnation the way most Christians talk about it.

 

I am not aware of the ancient Israelite religious practices/scriptures saying anything about Hell. I may see a Rabbi concerning the existence of Hell in the Hebrew Bible, but to my knowledge, as of now, it only mentions Sheol, a place where the dead reside. To me, with limited understanding of energy, this is like a place with no Yang energy present.

 

If you share this with a Christian and you say,"this guy I know of that is becoming a minister says there is no hell," and they say "Jesus talks about Hell and the fire!" Jesus talks about Gehenna. This is where the Christian idea of Hell comes form. Gehenna is real. It was a big furnace where people would go to sacrifice their children to God.

 

Why did people do this? Hell if I know...there are a lot of fucked up things that people will do believing they are pleasing God. It doesn't mean it was good and later the act was called an abomination before God so that the practice might stop.

 

Unfortunately child sacrifice seems to run rampant throughout the Bible.

[Zenshiite]

I think the thread has been derailed, but I wanted to set something straight...

 

I am a Christian.

 

I am in Seminary working on becoming a minister (not a priest! I'm not Catholic!!) [i've been asked this a few times]

 

I don't believe in Hell as in a place of eternal hellfire and damnation the way most Christians talk about it.

 

I am not aware of the ancient Israelite religious practices/scriptures saying anything about Hell. I may see a Rabbi concerning the existence of Hell in the Hebrew Bible, but to my knowledge, as of now, it only mentions Sheol, a place where the dead reside. To me, with limited understanding of energy, this is like a place with no Yang energy present.

 

If you share this with a Christian and you say,"this guy I know of that is becoming a minister says there is no hell," and they say "Jesus talks about Hell and the fire!" Jesus talks about Gehenna. This is where the Christian idea of Hell comes form. Gehenna is real. It was a big furnace where people would go to sacrifice their children to God.

 

Why did people do this? Hell if I know...there are a lot of fucked up things that people will do believing they are pleasing God. It doesn't mean it was good and later the act was called an abomination before God so that the practice might stop.

 

Unfortunately child sacrifice seems to run rampant throughout the Bible.

 

 

I'm going to postulate that by the era of Jesus Gehenna had morphed from being a literal place where people were burned in sacrifice to Moloch or Ba'al to being a metaphysical place of punishment for such crimes. Gehenna was the most horrific place they could think of, PLUS it was very similar to what the Persia Zoroastrians talked about in their eschatology and cosmology and the Jews no doubt picked up on this at some point and integrated it. Just as the angelology of Judaism and Christianity is very similar to Zoroastrianism. Islam is in this same family.

 

However, as a Muslim believer, from the start the Qur'an uses the Gehenna equivalent Jahannam to refer to a metaphysical Hell/infernal realm/state. I'm of the opinion that the early scribes of the Tanakh likely glossed over this aspect as they did a number of things. I'm inclined to accept Zoroaster as a prophet of God prior to many of, if not all, the Hebrew prophets and therefore in the long chain of prophets that Islam validates even when they go unnamed. Many Muslims, for instance, accept Confuscius and Lao Tzu as prophets.

 

But I digress, it seems religious systems across the world have infernal states. Even "Underworlds" that are more like places all people go after death tend to be described in terms of infernal states rather than paradisal states. So, for instance, Greek mythology's Hades is chock full of people engaged in some kind of hardship or suffering as a kind of penance for things they did in life. The same is true of everything I've read about the Chinese Diyu. Have yet to come across a paradisal state, which seems to be limited to those who attain immortality. Very much like the Greeks' mythology where only very special people are granted immortality by the Olympians.

 

Sheol is actually very similar to what I previously mentioned regarding the Barzakh in Islamic eschatology. It's the realm of the grave where one awaits the Day of Resurrection and Judgement, and could experience paradisal or infernal states there-in. This is especially true of Sheol's description in the Book of Enoch.

[Marblehead]

 

I am a Christian.

 

 

Hi Prince,

 

That statement didn't surprise me in the least. Hehehe. Best wishes with your goal.

 

It is my understanding that Jesus never once spoke of a place called hell. Of course, I don't read the bible any more but my good friend reads it daily and he agrees with me.

 

 

Hi Zen,

 

... PLUS it was very similar to what the Persia Zoroastrians talked about in their eschatology and cosmology ...

 

It is my understanding that Zoroastrianism, as established by Zarathustra, did not have a devil or a hell. It was only after his death that the followers added these concepts. They needed someont to blame their evil acts on and thereby created the devil and hell as his living quarters.

 

I will agree that nearly all religions have some form of hell in their doctrines. A way to try and keep the honest people honest.

 

Peace & Love!

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

so in a nutshell you'd say 99% of these experiences are mere subjective projections, woudn't you

i'm not so sure about that

i'm not ready to admit, or cling on the idea that most of the cosmos is just 'in my head'

that is an anthropo-centric view, more palatable to buddhists than daoists

i don't think you can crush the mistery of this world with psychollogical explanations

 

to me your post could mean one of two things

- either you want to discourage people to investigate something you consider not worth investigating

- either that was only an introduction and you mean to continue by adding something interesting about occurrences that DO happen outside the frame you described above

 

waiting for a response

 

L1

 

I am sorry for moving the conversation back a step, but I just wanted to make my position a little more clear.

 

I do not know the truth, and I never claimed in my post or in any other post to know the truth about what is "real" and what is illusory. I do not even have enough evidence to convince me beyond any doubt about the objective existence of waking reality (at least as I currently perceive it). I think that exploring the boarders between states of consciousness is a fascinating study that everyone would benefit from exploring.

 

I will follow up on my previous post somewhat:

 

I regularly do astral projection/OBEs and lucid dreams and in my explorations I have traveled to many heavenly realms. I have never experienced a hell like realm before, but then I have never actively perused such an experience. A very good friend of mine previously did a good deal of astral projection as well, but he recently stopped after he found that every time he left his body he would be in a hellish place filled with fighting, where he would constantly be chased by monstrous creatures. At the time, he had been spending a lot of time in the hospital battling sickle-cell. In this case, I think that is is obvious that his mental state was directly influencing the material that he experienced when astral projecting. You could say that his mind was generating these images in the same way that it generates dreams or you could say that he was experiencing some aspect of the collective unconscious, or you could just say that he was flying around outside of his body in another dimension. I do not know the answer personally, but I think that it is very important to explore and to see these relationships between mental state and what is experienced.

 

In the case of entities, I have woken to robed praying mantis men waving their hands over my body and many other strange experiences, both waking and asleep. I am not denying these experiences at all. But I also think that even with these, your unconscious mental state plays a role in what you experience, how you interpret those experiences, and maybe even in what is drawn to you (if you think that the entities are discretely separate, independent beings). Even a negative entity that is attacking a child, I suspect is drawn in and empowered by the mental conditions in the child's surroundings. I do not say this to blame the parents for not being so highly enlightened as to purge the sounding area of any possible negative atmospheres, as that would be a totally ridiculous expectation.

 

I hope that this helps to somewhat clear up my rather unclear position on the matter. In the end of the day, I think that I believe in the existence of such things, but that I think that ones subjective experience influences their surroundings so profoundly that there are few experiences of this nature that we could agree are purely objective.

[宁]

are the abilities of astral travel and lucid dream a result of your practice or are they innate?

i came by an idea that seems to resonate with what you say:

- there is definately something going on out there

- the human nature influences perception

given these facts, we can say with pretty much certainty that we have to work with both our perception and our interpretation of it

most of it, it seems, it's outside the boundaries of human understanding. the brain is approximating approximations, so to speak

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

are the abilities of astral travel and lucid dream a result of your practice or are they innate?

 

My abilities to astral project and lucid dream are the direct result of energy work and practice with Robert Bruce's techniques. The friend that I was referring to gained the ability to naturally astral project after a near death experience that he had when he was ten years old. His heart stopped for almost three minutes and he was declared dead, during which time he went done the tunnel to the light and saw Jesus and several angels and a bunch of happy loved ones in a beautiful white place. I highly suspect that he would have seen someone other than Jesus had he been raised in a different culture, but that the general feelings of love and comfort and support would all still have been there.

 

 

i came by an idea that seems to resonate with what you say:

- there is definately something going on out there

- the human nature influences perception

given these facts, we can say with pretty much certainty that we have to work with both our perception and our interpretation of it

most of it, it seems, it's outside the boundaries of human understanding. the brain is approximating approximations, so to speak

 

This is a good summation of my thoughts so far, though I am a little hesitant to use the phrase "out there," just because it tends to move the locus of the phenomena away from the observer and I do not know if I am confident enough to do that yet. But there is defiantly something going on.

[宁]

it's interesting what you say about Robert Bruce

people use various methods of breaking 'the seal' of the worlds

as a practicioner, do you think you can sum up a list of 'friendly suggestions' for people that try a simmilar feat?

 

for the rest, i'm glad we can partly agree

[Zenshiite]

Hi Prince,

 

That statement didn't surprise me in the least. Hehehe. Best wishes with your goal.

 

It is my understanding that Jesus never once spoke of a place called hell. Of course, I don't read the bible any more but my good friend reads it daily and he agrees with me.

Hi Zen,

 

... PLUS it was very similar to what the Persia Zoroastrians talked about in their eschatology and cosmology ...

 

It is my understanding that Zoroastrianism, as established by Zarathustra, did not have a devil or a hell. It was only after his death that the followers added these concepts. They needed someont to blame their evil acts on and thereby created the devil and hell as his living quarters.

 

I will agree that nearly all religions have some form of hell in their doctrines. A way to try and keep the honest people honest.

 

Peace & Love!

 

Nope, Angra Mainyu/Ahriman is present in the Avesta. Zoroaster/Zarathustra taught that aspect.

[Marblehead]

Nope, Angra Mainyu/Ahriman is present in the Avesta. Zoroaster/Zarathustra taught that aspect.

 

 

Devil / Ahriman

 

Based on the previous principle, we are the causes of all the good and all the evil that happens in our moral universe. Or simply stated, according to Zarathushtra, there is no Devil. However, some of the Post-Zarathushtra scripture introduced the concept of the Devil, or Ahriman, which was effectively a personification of Angra Mainyu.

 

The above is from this site:

 

http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/article/overview.htm

 

Peace & Love!

 

ADD:

 

Also note:

 

Heaven and Hell

 

According to Zarathushtra after we leave this life, our essence leaves the body, and depending on the choices that it has made, either it will go to the House of Songs or Realm of light (if he has made good choices) or to the Realm of Darkness and Separation (if evil choices).

 

Heaven and Hell are not physical places, but are described as timeless states of consciousness: either state of oneness with or separation from Ahura Mazda.

 

Post-Zarathushtra Zoroastrianism mythologized these timeless states of consciousness into everlasting physical locations and descriptive places. This later concept permeated into Judeo-Christian religions.

 

Peace & Love!

Edited October 11, 2009 by Marblehead

[Zenshiite]

The website you quoted doesn't make clear the author's spiritual pedigree... meanwhile, Avesta.org is run by Parsis still living and practicing the Zoroastrian traditions in India. Which is where I've gleaned most of my knowledge of Zoroastrianism from.

[Vajrahridaya]

 

And if your mind is quiet, clear, simple and still throughout the day, you can cultivate a situation where the dreamless sleep that Chuang Tzu spoke of is possible. Without all of the chatter and stress and worry and even ambition to occupy your mind at night, it too can become still, leading to more stillness and calm in your daily life.

 

 

 

For a person who's mind is under his or her control, hell can be heaven and for a person who is not, heaven can be hell.

[Marblehead]

The website you quoted doesn't make clear the author's spiritual pedigree... meanwhile, Avesta.org is run by Parsis still living and practicing the Zoroastrian traditions in India. Which is where I've gleaned most of my knowledge of Zoroastrianism from.

 

Hi Zenshiite,

 

I don't want to get into an arguement concerning the reliability of the sources.

 

Peace & Love!

[Zenshiite]

Hi Zenshiite,

 

I don't want to get into an arguement concerning the reliability of the sources.

 

Peace & Love!

 

Neither do, just saying that particular website didn't offer anything to me that clarified the author's pedigree while avesta.org is much more informative and authoritative IMO.

[nac]

While everyone's posting their personal opinions: The belief in metaphysical evil is my biggest problem with religious Taoism. It's a shame it isn't non-dual like philosophical Taoism.

[Marblehead]

While everyone's posting their personal opinions: The belief in metaphysical evil is my biggest problem with religious Taoism. It's a shame it isn't non-dual like philosophical Taoism.

 

I couldn't have said that better myself. And look! That came from someone who thinks he is still a Buddhist. Hehehe.

 

Peace & Love!