What counts as Idolatry to you?

[doc benway]

1 hour ago, JustARandomPanda said:

There's some interesting stuff but the Orthodox stuff I've watched doesn't seem to delve in the Kaballah at all. Perhaps most Rabbinic Orthodox consider the Kaballah heretical? In any case Kaballah is never discussed in the many channels I've been watching. I've never been upset by what I'd found though until the other day's Tenak Talk session.

Kabbalah is not taught publicly or freely and is considered very holy and potentially dangerous, not at all heretical. Students need first to demonstrate a deep knowledge and understanding of Torah and Talmud. After that a study of Kabbalah may be offered in small group or private sessions. It’s similar to how tantra and dzogchen used to be treated.

[dwai]

2 hours ago, steve said:

Kabbalah is not taught publicly or freely and is considered very holy and potentially dangerous, not at all heretical. Students need first to demonstrate a deep knowledge and understanding of Torah and Talmud. After that a study of Kabbalah may be offered in small group or private sessions. It’s similar to how tantra and dzogchen used to be treated.

I have it from a very reliable source that Chabad lubavitch school/sect of Judaism is very open to the mystical side, as well as is the only Jewish sect that acknowledges reincarnation etc.  

Edited February 12, 2020 by dwai

[doc benway]

12 minutes ago, dwai said:

I have it from a very reliable source that Chabad lubavitch school/sect of Judaism is very open to the mystical side, as well as is the only Jewish sect that acknowledges reincarnation etc.  

I think that’s accurate.

 

[SirPalomides]

I can understand a certain ritual caution toward sacred names, objects, etc. if it helps to cultivate genuine reverence or awe toward the right things, and doesn't entangle us in OCD and scrupulosity (or a misogynistic "purity"). But when the ritual "eats people" (as Lu Xun described the state of Confucianism in late Qing China) then the point has been lost.

 

And yeah, to say Westerners get a sanitized picture of Tibetan society would be an understatement. Of course no one should be surprised that Tibetans are human beings but it can be disconcerting if you have been told that such-and-such tulku is supposed to be an infallible emanation of Amitabha or Chenrezig. I remember asking someone about the factional infighting in the Karma Kagyu lineage (which thankfully seems to be healing) and I was told, "the lamas only appear to be fighting to our deluded minds" or "they're testing us" or something like that.

[silent thunder]

Great timely reminder for me, this thread.

 

Of the abiding potency of release and the undeniable generative force of cultivated doubt.

The center is indeed no where and everywhere... what needs to be worshipped above any other?

 

This has perhaps most strikingly and unexpectedly manifested in my mind, with the startling dissolution of vast swathes of moral conceptual thinking that I long held concrete and unshakable landscapes of 'what is, must be and should be', into.. vaporous projectionism.

[doc benway]

I just came across a poem that made me think of our discussion here...

It says what I was thinking and so much more!

(PS - I fixed all the errors where he accidentally wrote He/Him rather than She/Her)

 

The Living God

 

She who is in you and outside you,

Who works through all hands,

Who walks on all feet,

Whose body are all ye,

Her worship, and break all other idols!

 

She who is at once the high and low,

The sinner and the saint,

Both God and worm,

Her worship - visible, knowable, real, omnipresent,

Break all other idols!

 

In whom is neither past life

Nor future birth nor death,

In whom we always have been

And always shall be one,

Her worship. Break all other idols!

 

Ye fools! who neglect the living God,

And Her Infinite reflections with which the world is full.

While ye run after imaginary shadows,

That lead alone to fights and quarrels,

Her worship, the only visible!

Break all other idols!

   

          ~ Vivekananda

 

Spoiler

 

Edited February 16, 2020 by steve

[thelerner]

I like to keep things simple, most old school Kabbalah gets sophisticated very fast, though much of the modern 'pop' stuff is on the new agey side of things.  Not necessarily good or bad.  Thus the Kabbalah I do is Abulafiah, a form of chanting, thus it wouldn't be considered Kabbalah at all, rather sacred sounds.  Not dissimilar to the kotodama of Shinto, with concentrations on long vowels.

 

My shower practice is Rawn Clarks YHVH canticle, which is Hermetic, done in Hebrew and has a mantra of the famous Rabbi Nachman Ribbonno Shel Olam (Master of the Universe), within.  Talk about a hybrid. 

 

Nachman was wonderfully practical mystic.  A practice he had and recommended to others was talk to God.  Daily.  Establish a relationship with him, personal in your own tonque.  Tell him your problems, your successes, pour out your heart to him.  Not an easy thing to do.  Easier to blog 

[dwai]

3 hours ago, thelerner said:

I like to keep things simple, most old school Kabbalah gets sophisticated very fast, though much of the modern 'pop' stuff is on the new agey side of things.  Not necessarily good or bad.  Thus the Kabbalah I do is Abulafiah, a form of chanting, thus it wouldn't be considered Kabbalah at all, rather sacred sounds.  Not dissimilar to the kotodama of Shinto, with concentrations on long vowels.

 

My shower practice is Rawn Clarks YHVH canticle, which is Hermetic, done in Hebrew and has a mantra of the famous Rabbi Nachman Ribbonno Shel Olam (Master of the Universe), within.  Talk about a hybrid. 

 

Nachman was wonderfully practical mystic.  A practice he had and recommended to others was talk to God.  Daily.  Establish a relationship with him, personal in your own tonque.  Tell him your problems, your successes, pour out your heart to him.  Not an easy thing to do.  Easier to blog 

Do you find a need to reconcile your Daoist practice with your Jewish one? Or do they more or less blend into one another?

[thelerner]

4 hours ago, dwai said:

Do you find a need to reconcile your Daoist practice with your Jewish one? Or do they more or less blend into one another?

hmnn, I'm not much of a Daoist, other then admire the philosophy (as I see it), ie seeking harmony with ebb and flow of nature.  Which I don't do a great job on.  I'm not much of a Jew, other then admire the philosophy of trying to see the sacred in the ordinary.  Where the most frequent prayer isn't the Shema calling out Gods unity, rather its the brachas.  Baruch atta..  which states (to me) The spirit (breath/ruach) of God is everywhere, his mystery infuses everything, Wow- Noun(person place thing event)

[doc benway]

On 2/10/2020 at 3:03 PM, JustARandomPanda said:

But I'm beginning to (sadly) come to the conclusion a lot of current Orthodox Judaism (or at least the ones on Youtube) doesn't have many even partially realized teachers anymore.

 

Partly due to this thread, I've started reading a book called Gate to the Heart by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.

I've barely scratched the surface but so far I'm touched by the authenticity and depth of the author's insight.

If you remain interested in the potential inherent in Jewish scripture and prayer, this may be a useful resource:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UETC50K/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

[liminal_luke]

21 hours ago, thelerner said:

 

My shower practice is Rawn Clarks YHVH canticle, which is Hermetic, done in Hebrew and has a mantra of the famous Rabbi Nachman Ribbonno Shel Olam (Master of the Universe), within.  Talk about a hybrid. 

 

Nachman was wonderfully practical mystic.  A practice he had and recommended to others was talk to God.  Daily.  Establish a relationship with him, personal in your own tonque.  Tell him your problems, your successes, pour out your heart to him.  Not an easy thing to do.  Easier to blog 

 

I used to fantasize about becoming a Breslover Chassid.  That was thirty years ago and today I can´t help but ask myself -- what was the young adult version of myself thinking?  There´s a million reasons why that culture would never work for me. Still, for all their insularity, I believe Rabbi Nachman´s followers are heir to a very special vein of spiritual wisdom. 

 

 

There is Truth, the truth of the Truth and there is Peace.  The truth is "the boy stole an apple", the truth of the Truth is "the boy was hungry" and Peace is "nobody stole anything, now, give the boy an apple."

 

 -Nachman of Breslov

Edited February 17, 2020 by liminal_luke

[Rara]

On 10/02/2020 at 10:47 PM, dwai said:

The problem with non-dharmic traditions is that they don't do their homework and build strawman arguments to prove the 'greatness' of their tradition to themselves. It is not only intellectually dishonest, but also intellectually deficient. Dharmic traditions don't blindly follow any book -- ours is a lived, and experiential tradition.

 

Exactly. It is very hard for Abrahamic religions to understand because they only know one way of "worship"

 

It took me a long time to understand what was going on in China, but with some cup-emptying, it was a lot easier to grasp.

 

While paying huge respects to great historical figures is massively embedded in culture; with statues, fantastical tales and temples, it is easy to call this idolatry. This is complex because, as my parents would see it as Christians, they look like gods and are therefore false idols. This will send you to hell, right?

 

Well this is the trouble. Is it worship? To them, yes...to Daoists...sort of. By my translation is more like paying very big respect to ancestors. That in itself is no crime, right?

 

In Huddersfield where I live, we have a statue of a former Prime Minister from the town, Harold Wilson. We don't burn incense or leave fruit by him, mind. But at what point do we start seeing things as idolarity?

 

Is it my Dad's extensive collection of Elvis Presley CDs and vinyl with framed pictures on the wall?

 

What if we have a favourite teacher that has showed us the way more than "God" himself? Is this bad because we haven't prayed enough and have gone somewhere more practical?

 

Maybe I have a favourite actor that appears to be a good role model.

 

Anyway, my point is, I've never been into the whole preacher thing....for those that know, do not speak.

[Rara]

On 11/02/2020 at 3:27 PM, thelerner said:

These days the rabbis who label things like yoga or bowing during karate as idolatrous are really 'fundamentalists' trying to protect the youth from corrupting influence.

 

Said fundamentalists would have a ball in Thailand where everybody bows to each other.

[Rara]

On 11/02/2020 at 6:04 PM, SirPalomides said:

To be fair, the form of Christianity popular in the US is a deeply deformed variety by any classic Christian standard. I know many Christians who regard it as straight-up Satanic.

 

You mean the ones who pass judgement on virtually everything? Yeah, that one's a head-scratcher....

[Rara]

On 11/02/2020 at 6:07 PM, steve said:

 

One of the reasons I didn't use the word Christian.

Christianity in American politics is the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus.

The God of the majority of American Christianity is green and made of paper...

 

Some atheists share the same God. In fact, so do many other people from other religions...

 

Wait, there IS one true God after all! Haha

[SirPalomides]

20 minutes ago, Rara said:

 

You mean the ones who pass judgement on virtually everything?

 

No, not those.

[Wu Ming Jen]

A bird only needs one branch to land on and a mouse only needs a bellyful of water from the lake.

 

Wanting to posses the whole lake and all the branches one soon loses sight of the emptiness or yin aspects that the branches and lakes depend on to exist.

 

Religions can be yang forms, hard and unyielding, all fighting and striving to be on top, the ultimate control freaks that no one wants to be around.

 

letting go we enter tranquility, the Yin appears. The mysterious female opens the gate and the unnecessary is no longer useful.

 

Some need a small waste basket and others need 10 dumpsters to get rid of their waste. Otherwise we are caring garbage around with us and collecting more as we go.

 

[dwai]

There is something to be said about ritualistic cleansing etc. Many orthodox Hindus don’t eat outside their homes — only eat home cooked meals and so on. There are reasons for that — mainly around picking up karmic baggage from those that serve them/cook the food etc. Most people don’t have the ability to look into the causal plane — so rules get formulated that ‘no one should break this rule, for fear of “spiritual contamination”’. 
 

Rituals usually get solidified like that.
 

On a lighter note — 

 

Someone shared a story with me recently. At a border town in India, there was a military ritual of two guards standing watch near a bench in a specific area. No one seemed to know what the purpose was.

 

One day someone decided to figure out when this ‘ritual’ started. It seems it did in 1971, when the then CO of the base established the rule. That CO then went on the become a brigadier general in the army and finally retire. So at the ripe age of 90, when approached by the army officer asking specifically  about that ritual, he scratched his head and after thinking it over for a while, he exclaimed, “What! The paint on that bench has still not dried!?!” 
😂

[Rara]

40 minutes ago, Wu Ming Jen said:

Some need a small waste basket and others need 10 dumpsters to get rid of their waste. Otherwise we are caring garbage around with us and collecting more as we go.

 

I definitely need 10 dumpsters. This has reduced from 15, though, so that's cool

[Wu Ming Jen]

Some people like bondage and I am not a judge. Binding ourselves so there is no room to move with religions views that we can become a slave to is an opportunity to set ourselves free and roam the boundless.

 

We need to eat really bad food so we can enjoy an incredible meal.

 

I encourage everyone to eat as much religion as they can so they have the ability, when the time comes, to know what taste amazing.This is something felt without words to be confirmed or denied.

 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Wu Ming Jen

[JustARandomPanda]

On 2/11/2020 at 12:04 PM, SirPalomides said:

To be fair, the form of Christianity popular in the US is a deeply deformed variety by any classic Christian standard. I know many Christians who regard it as straight-up Satanic.

 

 

Seems to me this is true. John Michael Greer wrote a bit about this last month. How the OTHER, non-hierarchical Protestantism that flourished alongside the Puritanical Hellfire and Brimstone Magisterial version has been systematically erased from U.S. history books and the general populace's mind.

 

Apparently the non-hierarchical version of Protestant Baptism arrived on U.S. shores even prior to the Mayflower (which was filled with the hierarchical Magisterial obedience style believers).

 

Quote:

 

Quote

Broadly speaking, the new Christian denominations that came out of the Protestant Reformation went in one of two directions. On the one hand, you had churches and individuals that tried to establish the same kind of dogmatic uniformity that the Catholic church enforced, but with some other theology in place of Catholicism; historians call this end of the movement the Magisterial Reformation. On the other hand, you had churches and individuals that rejected the entire concept of officially established dogma and trusted instead in the personal quest for knowledge of God. Historians call this movement the Radical Reformation, and for good reason.

 

The Pilgrims we all heard about in school—the ones who sailed on the Mayflower, set up a repressive Puritan theocracy on Massachusetts Bay, and hanged witches at Salem—belonged to the Magisterial Reformation. Not all the colonists in those days were on their side of the line, though. Even in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a great many colonists were more interested in personal liberty and a better life for their families than in toeing the line of Congregational theology.  Meanwhile, other areas of the eastern seaboard—especially Pennsylvania on the one hand, and on the other the southern end of New England, from Cape Cod west through Rhode Island to the Connecticut River—became a haven for the sects of the Radical Reformation. Rhode Island in particular, which established absolute religious liberty earlier than any other English colony, was a powerful magnet for believers in strange doctrines and practitioners of curious arts.

 

These sects have been erased from most accounts of American history just as thoroughly as the rest of this country’s weird heritage.  I’ve seen people get very flustered on discovering that Roger Williams—the founder of the colony of Rhode Island, the fiery religious revolutionary who thundered “Forced worship stinks in the nostrils of God!”—was a Baptist. Of course they were thinking of today’s Southern Baptists, who have by and large swung most of the way over into the camp of the Magisterial Reformation, and not that long ago conducted a bona fide witch hunt against members of their denomination who happened to be Freemasons. Williams wasn’t that kind of Baptist; he was a General Six-Principle Baptist, and if you’ve heard of those, you’re a member of a small and well-informed minority.

 

The General Six-Principle Baptists believed that you shouldn’t be baptized until you were old enough to choose your religion for yourself. (That’s what’s behind the “Baptist” label, in case you didn’t know.) They held the six principles of Christian faith given in Hebrews 6:1-2, including conferring the priestly laying on of hands on every believer at baptism, and they taught that salvation was available to everyone, irrespective of creed—thus “General.” They held that faith in Christ is not the same thing as belief in a set of doctrines, focused on the former and didn’t worry very much about the latter, and made room for a great deal of diversity among their congregations.  Interestingly, they’re still around—like a lot of colorful American traditions, they had a near-death experience in the 20th century but came out the other side. You can find their website here.

 

It appears there was a power and public relations struggle between these various approaches to the Christian teachings in the 20th century and the Magisterial sects won.

 

I remember JMG talking about how he knew a saintly elderly lady who was a devout Christian and she told him, "The Word of God is Christ Himself. Anyone who can't see the difference between that and a book has a lot of learning to do"

Edited April 12, 2020 by JustARandomPanda

[C T]

What counts as idolatry? 

 

All dualistic views and beliefs are forms of idolatry. 

[dwai]

What's wrong with "idolatry" btw?  

Swami Vivekananda once was challenged by a westernized courtier of a South Indian King. This worthy was a new convert to the scientific temperament, and so reflexively hated everything Hindu and traditional in the Indian context. He haughtily asked Swami Vivekananda,  "Hey Swami...why do you hindus worship idols? Isn't it the height of ignorance to bow before and respect something made of clay or stone?"

 

Swamiji turned to him and said, yeah of course...there's nothing to these idols. Lets do an experiment. Can you pull down the portrait of your King that is hanging on the wall of his study and bring it to me?

 

The courtier was puzzled but humored the Swami, him being a honored guest of the King and all. When the portrait was brought in the Swami's presence, he asked the courtier, "Now please spit on the portrait!"

 

The courtier went red in the face and shouted, "How I can I? It is the portrait of his Highness, the Maharaja himself!!"

 

Swami replied with a smile, "You show so much respect to an image of a mere human. And yet you ask why we respect idols of God"?

 

[old3bob]

Just dropping in briefly: an astral or greater causal realm being (or god level deity) may use and thus temporarily inhabit (so to speak) a so called idol made for them to help link or connect into physical world to a certain degree....the 3 worlds are meant to have connections and exchanges between their Beings,  with this being one way for such to take place.

[Geof Nanto]

My comment is a little tangential to this excellent discussion, but is meant with total seriousness: 

 

In our contemporary society, few people actually believe in these religious idols and the gods they represent. Genuine awe in the presence of the numinous is a very much a minority experience. Instead, I would suggest that the idolisation of one’s own ego is now pervasive. This religion has a massive lay following and many prominent priests from all walks of public life. But the undisputed high priest is surely none other than your American president.