Unpopular Opinions

[Nungali]

18 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

... teaching ...

 

https://www.sefaria.org/Klein_Dictionary%2C_תּוֹרָה.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

 

 

kinda...  

 

it would be emunah ( faith ) + betach ( to trust ).  Generally this is an idea ( there is no religion ) put forward by, ummm, a somewhat radical group of rationalists.  It first arrived on the scene in around 1200 CE ish, and there was quite a bit of push back from the mystical community.  Naturally, I'm not a huge fan of that movement.  But, there's a lot of different people in the world, and it's good that these rational approaches exist along side with the more imaginative approaches.

 

 

I am referring to something different though , not that there is 'no religion' but actually that religion is 'all pervasive' to the point that it is not 'separated out'  from society.  ( Geeze, did I  fail that badly in my explanations and efforts to dig up old references  ?  ) . The whole western mind set changing from a 3 part reality to a two part  ideal / real reality . It started around 16 -1700 and was a crucial element in scientific rationalism and the development of 'materialism' .  And thats when the idea of secular and religious  separation in society stemmed from .

 

see 'The origins of Modern Science ' by Herbert Butterfield , the first few chapters describe the philosophical transition of the western mind . There is free pdf on line .

 

[ Author  :    ' Sir Herbert Butterfield was an English historian and philosopher of history, who was Regius Professor of Modern History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He is remembered chiefly for a short volume early in his career entitled The Whig Interpretation of History and for his Origins of Modern Science. ' ]

[Nungali]

14 hours ago, old3bob said:

Christianity is and has been very heavily co-opted by worldly forces for power and control over people since about  it's first day, including centuries of "Manifest destiny" resulting in genocide against many native peoples in its name ...but that does not mean the co-opting that has been done is the truth about it.  Same thing happens in many religions.  (which should surprise no one at this late date)

 

 

Ummmm .... that actually is 'the truth about it '.  Things happened ... they where true .... that was the 'truth about it ' .

 

Christianity definitely has some underlying essential harmful issues .  So does Islam , but a different variety  .

[Nungali]

9 hours ago, Apech said:

 

Nungali suffers shock after disagreeing with himself:

 

 

 

If you allow some relation between Shiva and Shakti then they cannot be ultimately divided.

[Nungali]

6 hours ago, oak said:

Unpopular opinion:

There are no humans, there are only hominoid machines.

 

 

 

I wonder why hominid machines need a good set of teeth like that ? 

 

[Nungali]

6 hours ago, old3bob said:

well it does have nice humanoid teeth...

 

 

Should have been a big grease nipple .... oh wait , those would be on its chest   

[old3bob]

6 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

Ummmm .... that actually is 'the truth about it '.  Things happened ... they where true .... that was the 'truth about it ' .

 

Christianity definitely has some underlying essential harmful issues .  So does Islam , but a different variety  .

 

nope, although you could say that was the truth about the co-opters, not the Christ soul of Jesus.

[Nungali]

4 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

So.

 

Within a few seconds of declaring my independence, zzzzzzap.  The power goes out.  Lol.

 

Like immediately.  The battery backups start beeping.  I go to the window and look.  The power company is outside with their trucks.  

 

I head out to have a chat, friendly, I promise, with the crew-supervisor, feeling a bit like an American version of Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

 

The divine comedy continues...

 

 

... and when you admit to be our mindless slave .... we will turn your power back on .

 

[Nungali]

4 minutes ago, old3bob said:

 

nope, although you could say that was the truth about the co-opters, not the Christ soul of Jesus.

 

Yep.  Because  we where talking about Christianity , not 'the Christ soul of Jesus ' .

[oak]

10 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

 

I wonder why hominid machines need a good set of teeth like that ? 

 

 

That's a particular model, the SHHM:

Superstar Hollywood Hominid Machine.

 

[Nungali]

3 minutes ago, oak said:

 

That's a particular model, the SHHM:

Superstar Hollywood Hominid Machine.

 

 

I've met a few of those ... some look nearly real ! 

 

( I would cite Pamela Anderson ..... but  , she is actually a really nice , unpretentious  sweetie . . .  dont judge a book by its ..... plastic dust cover .  ) 

[oak]

2 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

 

 

 I would cite Pamela Anderson ..... but  , she is actually a really nice , unpretentious  sweetie . . . 

 

That would be an unpopular opinion...

[Nungali]

5 minutes ago, oak said:

 

That would be an unpopular opinion...

 

Perhaps , but it is one formed by experience .

[Daniel]

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

 

... and when you admit to be our mindless slave .... we will turn your power back on .

 

 

My leige, may I be your mindful slave instead?  *curtsy*  

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Daniel

[old3bob]

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

 

Yep.  Because  we where talking about Christianity , not 'the Christ soul of Jesus ' .

 

nope, because that is too much totally lumping together which does not apply in all cases besides the case of Jesus.

[Mark Foote]

On 8/1/2023 at 4:13 PM, Nungali said:

 

Not unless your 'karma'  can be instantly resolved in accepting Jesus as the one true and only God .

 

 

One way that folks have described the relationship to me is to say that they have to accept that they are helpless to do right, that only by taking Jesus within and giving their action over to Jesus can right be done, in the moment.

Sometimes zazen gets up and walks around, sometimes it does the thing that is right with the past, right in the present, and that will be right in the future, even though that can't be known in the moment.  Or maybe Jesus does it.  I guess the trick is to suspend judgement, as Jesus advised his followers to do?

[Mark Foote]

On 8/1/2023 at 4:39 PM, old3bob said:

 

yea but who is the gal?  If it's Apech's wife shouldn't she be helping the hubby?  (since Mark has the advantage of breath control thus can't be choked)

 

 

Apech's significant other, posing with the woman in the photo:

 

 

 

I almost made first brown--half point on a sweep, and a full point on a choke.  Choked the guy right out, he basically just laid there until the ref broke it up and they revived him. 

If my instructor had been there, I probably would have made first brown, but my instructor had gone to see his father in hospital.

Got no breath control.  The piece I quoted from ends:
 

Sitting allows for the total cessation of habitual activity in the movement of breath. The open secret of such experience has to do with suffering, as Kobun explained:

 

When we ask what it is which senses this suffering, we have to understand that the one who is breathing in and out, in and out, doesn’t suffer. But it does sense suffering.

 

(“Embracing Mind”, edited by Cosgrove & Hall, pg 48)

 

Kobun was right that no one is going to believe that “the one who is breathing in and out, in and out, doesn’t suffer” until they experience it for themselves, and that the meaning of zazen practice derives from such experience. Nevertheless, “The Case of the Suffocating Woman” sheds light on exactly where the difficulty is in having such experience, and that is in the relaxation of specific activity of the body that comes to mind right through the panic of sensing that the breath is cut off, so that the ability to feel throughout the body with no part left out remains present. The direction of mind can suddenly accede to the gravity of the self-location in the particular inhalation or exhalation, and the foreground of bodily activity and the background of autonomic respiration can change places in a kind of Gestalt.

 

To me, Kobun embodied “the one who …doesn’t suffer” in his actions.

 

Kobun died in Switzerland, when he went into a shallow landscape pool after his five-year-old daughter, Maya, who had somehow fallen in and was drowning. I spoke to the guy who owned the property with the pool, and he shook his head in disbelief that Kobun had actually drowned, because the pool was only about three feet deep.

 

Kobun once ended a talk by saying, “You know, sometimes zazen gets up and walks around.” It’s my belief that it was in fact zazen that went into the pool after Maya, and that it was the one who does not suffer (but nevertheless senses suffering) that remained under the surface by her side.

(Post: The Case of the Suffocating Woman)

 

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Mark Foote

[Mark Foote]

On 8/1/2023 at 5:00 PM, old3bob said:

agreed that careful preparation is important but there comes a point when only the benefit from a leap of faith (not blind faith) can overcome the beast of divisional doubt.  

 

Btw, the difference in my reply from your question is not to make the projection on others that one is dealing with in themselves

 

with you on the leap of faith, young ha'e penny.

[old3bob]

25 minutes ago, Mark Foote said:

 

One way that folks have described the relationship to me is to say that they have to accept that they are helpless to do right, that only by taking Jesus within and giving their action over to Jesus can right be done, in the moment.

Sometimes zazen gets up and walks around, sometimes it does the thing that is right with the past, right in the present, and that will be right in the future, even though that can't be known in the moment.  Or maybe Jesus does it.  I guess the trick is to suspend judgement, as Jesus advised his followers to do?

 

there are many "fundamentalists" that proclaim all sorts of things which imo may have little or nothing to do with what Jesus taught and demonstrated...and some of them might do me me harm for saying such things...Btw many past and modern day dictators (or the KKK as another example) that murder people claim to be some sort of "Christians", for example Putin and the Russian Orthodox church that support him and his slaughter of everyday non-combatant civilian people, thus them having any claim to what Jesus taught is a disgusting, criminal like lie.

Edited August 3, 2023 by old3bob

[Mark Foote]

On 8/1/2023 at 8:13 PM, Bindi said:

I think the Indian parable of the 5 blind men each holding a different part of the elephant is spot on, I also find some truth in a variety of different systems. 

 

Fortunately, the blind men of the various religions pretty much attempted the whole elephant, so while their descriptions may still be wildly divergent at points, after awhile it all starts to sound familiar.  I think that's part of the appeal of Dao Bums.

[old3bob]

11 minutes ago, Mark Foote said:

 

with you on the leap of faith, young ha'e penny.

 

Mark, I didn't catch your meaning there?

[Mark Foote]

16 hours ago, Apech said:

 

... If original sin derives from the 'fall' i.e. Adam and Eve eating the prohibited apple and being thrown out of Eden - then I suppose you could argue that any baby born to a human after the fall has the mark of that act upon them and thus has this capacity to disobey God....

 

This time I'm going to pin Apech to the beautiful golden Portuguese earth and make him eat--fairy dust?

 

AUGUST 12, 2021 BY MARK FOOTE

The Tree of Knowledge

 

In the Old Testament, God instructs Adam:

 

Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

 

(NKJV Genesis 2:16-7)
 

 

Adam did eat, and he didn’t die, but he did find himself cast out of the garden.

 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says:

 

Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.

 

(NKJV John 8:51)

 

 

The Gospel of Thomas (a gnostic text uncovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945) opens as follows:

 

These are the secret words which the Living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote. And He said:

Whoever finds the explanation of these words will not taste death.

 

(The Gospel According to Thomas, coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, p. 3 log. 1, ©1959 E. J. Brill)
 

 

Gautama the Buddha spoke of “the Deathless”:
 

As (one) dwells in body contemplating body, ardent… that desire to do, that is in body, is abandoned. By the abandoning of desire to do, the Deathless is realized. So with feelings… mind… mental states… that desire to do, that is in mind-states, is abandoned. By the abandoning of the desire to do, the Deathless is realized.
 

(SN V 182, Pali Text Society V p 159)

 

And again:
 

(One) cultivates right concentration, which is based on detachment, on dispassion, on cessation, which ends in self-surrender, which plunges into the deathless, which has the deathless for its aim, which has the deathless for its end.
 

(SN V 54, Pali Text Society V p 44)

 

Gautama taught the cessation of action born of determinate thought. He taught that such action ceases gradually, first in speech, then in body, and finally in “perceiving and feeling” (action of the mind).
 

The cessation of action born of determinate thought must needs include the cessation of action on the basis of the knowledge of good and evil.
 

We are stardust, we are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden
 

(Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”; “Ladies of the Canyon”, April 1970)
 

 

And the moral, dear friends, is that we can have the apple (of knowledge of good and evil), we just can't eat of it (can't act on the basis of it).

 

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Mark Foote

[old3bob]

Mark, if we want to look something up may we visit your home library?  Is this it below?

 

 

 

[Mark Foote]

48 minutes ago, old3bob said:

 

Mark, I didn't catch your meaning there?
 

ha' penny (got the spelling wrong).

The leap of faith, that most often requires that the leaper be up against the wall, big time, before leaping.  Why is that.

The similarities between brain washing and religious conversion are well-documented in Sargant's "Battle for the Mind" (which I read at the tender age of 11).

 

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Mark Foote

[Mark Foote]

3 minutes ago, old3bob said:

Mark, if we want to look something up may we visit your home library?  Is this it below?

 

 

 

The librarian is in:


 

[Mark Foote]

36 minutes ago, old3bob said:

 

there are many "fundamentalists" that proclaim all sorts of things which imo may have little or nothing to do with what Jesus taught and demonstrated...and some of them might do me me harm for saying such things...Btw many past and modern day dictators (or the KKK as another example) that murder people claim to be some sort of "Christians", for example Putin and the Russian Orthodox church that support him and his slaughter of everyday non-combatant civilian people, thus them having any claim to what Jesus taught is a disgusting, criminal like lie.
 

I won't dispute any of that, but the notion of relinquishing volition in action of the body, whether through one-pointed concentration or through letting Jesus do it--I think these might be the same.  Different understandings, same experience.  I just happen to be less able to arrive at that experience through faith, so I appreciate Gautama's science.