Forgiven Yet II - Religion & Truth
This post was originally a comment in response to a really good discussion thread going on in the first Forgiven Yet? post, but it got too long and lent itself naturally to being the follow-up to that post that I intended to write at some point anyway. Because my commenters are freaking awesome, that’s why. ;)
Hoo Daniel, it’s ask-and-ye-shall-receive when it comes to questioning Sabbath!
S., you spin a great line, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out exactly what you’re preaching (no snark intended) yet. But you made me realize a central part of what bothers me about hypotheses like yours: They rely on the past, often the innumerably distant past, in order to make sense of the present.
If knowing about things like "God did not make humankind in the state it is now" (and moreover, that God made us for certain reasons, in certain ways) — which would have happened a bazillion years ago from our point of view — are necessary for knowing who we are now and what we should be doing, then by definition, God did not intend for us to know what our purpose and goal are. Arguments that he, say, wrote a specific book on the subject, and trusted that crazy evangelicals forming a fraction of the world’s population would eventually beat the rest of everyone into reading it and understanding it, are so freaking ad hoc it’s not funny. If you have to know about Creation and Angels and all that hoohah in order to be enlightened — to know God directly, if you like — in the present, then God never intended it to happen, at least not for most people.
This goes neatly into why I really liked Zen Buddhism’s core philosophy. Zen is focused on "finding God", not in books or histories or rituals, but in ourselves, specifically in our unique experience of the present moment, which my HMC mind wants to say is "God’s only and greatest gift to us". Zen seeks the end of suffering through the cessation of desire and the complete acceptance of this moment, as it is — for to resist what is, is insane, and the source of all suffering in our lives. Now that, that makes sense. I can get behind that, logically, plus it rings true, which is important if we’re talking about discovering something that’s part of who we are — such a thing should "feel true".
One could say, God gives you this moment, comedy to tragedy, sweet to sour, for you to experience. (One could say that the Now is the Word, which God never stopped speaking.) But it is us, in our freewillyness, who takes this moment and creates love, understanding, hope…sorrow, resentment, anger, fear…According to Zen, there is no proper reaction to this moment other than to accept it for exactly what it is, without judgement. To recognize that each moment is the inevitable, eternal gift of God, exactly as it should be — must be, say some — a slice of the Universe itself (which arguably *is* God).
(Of course, Sav, metaphysically speaking this means the picture IS done, on a level we can’t comprehend with our time-bound minds. Moreover, we "are" not our time-bound personalities and thoughts, in the sense of our identity; if we learn to let go of past and future, we can find the part of us that truly "is" the piece of Universe and experience life from there. <–This is the thing that many Buddhists have solemnly told me is only possible with a) the right genes and/or b) a good fifty years of study on a mountain. But again, that goes back to the Universe never intending that we know it, or ourselves, and homie’s not down with that.)
My problem with Zen is the intrusion of unhelpful terminology, which turned out to be the final straw that made me scrape off religion entirely. To be blunt, I’m not interested in studying the history of the Ultimate Truth. I’m interested in tracking down if there is one, what it is, and how to go about realizing it myself (in the sense of knowing it or seeing it, rather than knowing about it intellectually). The Zen community talks like that is their goal much of the time, but in the end, they wanted to tell me stories about it, too, rather than show me someone who could experience it, and show me how. They seemed to think that the best anybody could hope for was to scratch enough wisdom out of the texts and teachings, say enough prayers, do enough rituals, and be badass enough (at meditating, usually, but sometimes at something else, like detachment) to eventually put two and two together. But people have put two and two together (I tend to say more heatedly than I probably should), so why can’t we just talk about it already? Why am I reading fiftth-century poetry? I’m not a fifth-century person, and I’m not a fricking serf, either — I can think for myself. Why can’t I be taught something useful about this subject, instead of how to grow and maintain a lifelong habit of praying and attending churches??
I can’t believe that rituals are necessary conditions for knowing the truth — again, the need for any specific ritual undermines the God/Universe’s desire to have us know what the hell is going on. And if no specific ritual, then why a ritual at all? Why pray to things that people essentially made up (yes over very long periods of time, and yes that are often good metaphors for things that are hard to understand, but still), instead of just sitting down and trying to figure out what’s going on, or teaching people what the people who know it, know? If people have ever known it — if, as most people presume, someone living right now knows it — then there has to be a better way to educate the rest of us about it than stomping around mumbling like cavepeople!
…Hm, that’s enough ranting from me, and sorry if I irritated anyone. I have one last thing to say that’s important: Yes, I did give up on organized religions. I do find it interesting that you two, as well as my husband and, now that I think on it, almost every theologically-inclined person I know, thinks that my experieneces with various religions have been–to fling a four-star pun–holy crap. While that may be true, however, I don’t think it undermines my conclusions, which I’ve given a lot of serious thought (I think). But the important thing is, while I did conclude that religions were basically useless, if not harmful, at least to people of my particular goals and temperament, I did not decide that there was nothing out there. I’m emphatically not an atheist, or rather not a nihilist, which is what many atheists mean by the term (obviously I’m not a theist either). (Among other reasons, atheism violates my prohibition against gigantic unsupported assumptions and needing to know the past just as badly as Christianity does.)
I just decided that religion was not the best way for me to find what was out there. Most religions, I truly believe, did start as the teachings of someone who really got it, or came damn close. I believe that the term "Jesus", just like the term "Buddha" and others, does refer to a real person who really got hold of it, the thing of ultimate philosophical and psychological value: The truth, the knowledge, the realization of what we’re seeing or doing wrong here that’s got us cut off from Sacredness, all of us, to some degree. (Except perhaps children. I wonder if children, with their almost perfect attention to the present moment, don’t have more of it than we do, but as the mind develops, it overshadows it — "Past and future veil God from our sight" as Rumi says.) Would I have studied under Jesus or Buddha? Shit yes. I’ve worked very hard in my life to avoid false teachers, too — and that includes people who are no closer to seeing God than I am, but who insist that I should join "their" group or movement.
But anyway. I do think truth is out there, for certain, rather fervently at times. I try to avoid looking for it in books or churches now, with very few exceptions, because I’m 90% certain that the Zen people are right: It’s inside me somewhere, what I’m looking for; the error and the correction can’t come from anywhere but my own capacity to be as perfectly conscious (whatever that means) as I possibly can. Nobody can give that to me, though someone who truly had it could show me what it looked like, and maybe even explain it, if they could and would, to some degree (and without religious trappings, since they would know it directly).
Last thing: I do believe that, about five years ago, I found someone who knows it. His explanations have been very helpful in showing me what to focus on and how. But part of the reason I believe they’re true is that they keep telling me, over and over again, to quit seeking outside. In the exact opposite way from a religious teaching, which strives to suck you in deeper and deeper, and encourages you to read and reread and practice and get as much of your life involved as you can (::cough::cult::cough::), his writings constantly urge the reader not to get too attached to them or to any words, and not to use teachings as a substitute for learning to know, oneself. Further, all external conditions are seen as helpful or not helpful when it comes to knowing; none of them are necessary, any could be sufficient. What’s important is a person’s state of being. "How" over "what", in other words. I think that’s very, very important and dead-on, and I think a lot of religions don’t get it.
But this is quite long enough, so I’ll get into those things in Part III to this post, which I can now see there must be. ;)
Thanks hugely to both my commenters who made this little site sparkle with such an awesome discussion!
5 comments
I think I can sum you up in the following: 1) you believe there is in fact something out there and you are looking for it, 2) organized religions have lost their way 3) You so far give the Zen the best argument, but dropped it in the end as well.
Number 2 can be expanded thus: a) studying history does not bring you any closer to what you are looking for in number 1, b) we should be able to find what we are looking for on our own, by following what “feels right”, c) since ritual is not a part of a sense for what feels right, it is discarded, d) anything that comes from people is “tainted” and will not lead you to number 1, e) If anyone has got “it, or if God wanted us to have “it”, then it should be more accessible, but it is not, f) you have given organized religions a fair chance but they have not given “it” to you either. Number 3 can be expanded: a) you give Zen higher marks because it detaches you from what is outside and leaves you to focus in yourself alone, b) Zen at least does not put obstacles in front of anything that “feels right”, c) Zen is at least useful because it supports your general focus on social good by eliminating individual suffering.
I do not agree with 2 or 3.
Number 2): First, using what feels right as an indicator of what one should do would be fine if our indicators worked. Human nature is broken, just look at the confusion of the thoughts that go through our heads every day, or the confusion of emotions, or our hesitation before any new moral problem. You are not going to make any sense out of that. This inner confusion is caused by a constant storm of needs inside ourselves. We run around trying to satisfy them all, and we just wear out. Next, we do know who we are, what our purpose is, since we were told by revelation. You have made up this criteria, that anything the comes from people is misleading, wrong, “tainted”. God revealed what he wanted to specific chosen people, who in turn passed it on to others, who then passed it on again, and so on. You want to circumvent this conveyor and get straight to the source. That in itself can be an honorable desire, but direct apprehension of God requires becoming one with him, sharing in him, theosis is not something anyone can go and “take” by their own volition. You can not force God by any means to enter into an intimate union with yourself. God requires us to prepare ourselves properly first. All the doctrine and ritual of the (authentic) Christian Church is for that purpose. Proper Christian doctrine is not some sterile intellectual adventure with no relation to our personal reality, but it expresses exactly that fact of reality. This is why “heresy” was such a big issue in the early church.
Having said that, you have also fallen under the influence of Protestant thought that denies grace in material. Grace, healing from sin, union with God, has always been conveyed with a material sign in the authentic Christian Church. Absolutely no one received the gift of the Holy Spirit without the physical touch and contact of an apostle or one of his successors. This would cause serious problems for someone trying to circumvent the people involved and “take” the Holy Spirit on their own. There has always been a hierarchy in God’s creation, a specific order in nature. The higher levels pass on what they receive to the lower levels. Not every one is capable of holding the same fullness of theosis. Theosis can be very scary and damaging for someone who is not prepared. God spoke to the whole Jewish nation from Mount Sinai and they all freaked out and sent Moses to talk with God alone. God is fire, energy, not chocolate and marshmellows. This is why “it” is not just laying around waiting for someone to pick it up.
As you can see, in light of the above, our purpose is not in the “now”. We are not living the life we are intended for. What we do here in this life has no value whatsoever unless we can carry it with us after we die. A passing experience is only valuable if it leads to theosis here, and theosis is attained by synergy with God’s energy. Pain and suffering is valuable for the same reason, but there is no pain and suffering in theosis. I give social virtues no value whatsoever unless they prepare us for theosis. I would sooner be in a cave somewhere living in “stillness” (hesychia) long before I would be wasting time in a soup kitchen. You need to discern between “religious trappings” and conditioning for theosis, and you are not going to have access to that conditioning outside of Christ’s mystical body. God and creation are united in Jesus Christ.
Number 3: Zen brings the soul to a state of calm, but this is still not theosis. Knowing oneself is still not theosis (you are not God). Nirvana is not an intimate union with God, Buddha himself never allowed “god” to be part of the equation. Theosis is not some euphoric state of mind. You can not share the life of something if it does not exist, or if it is not a person (or else you would have to become impersonal too). Zen does not offer immortal life because you will not share the life of an immortal being. I do not value Zen because it is not a path to theosis.
In conclusion, I disagree with 2 and 3 because they do not take into consideration theosis, or a least a mature idea of theosis. Theosis requires a god that is a person, and for the human to be prepared. You can not on your own make yourself god.
Religion /= Organized Religion (substitue != by or /= or =/= or whatever inequality operator makes your coding bone tickle).
Let me rephrase it: Religion /= Organized Religion.
Or in other words: Religion /= Organized Religion.
You don’t need to go to a church, temple, whatever to practice your religion. Some of the most important zen masters in history where hermits and lived practicing on their own. Hell, even Bodhidharma is said to have spent nine years gazing at a wall because he found no true buddhists anywhere.
Now on your problems with zen (and its practicioners, as a friend of my wife said: I have no problems with Christ, but his followers piss me off). You said:
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My problem with Zen is the intrusion of unhelpful terminology, which turned out to be the final straw that made me scrape off religion entirely. To be blunt, I’m not interested in studying the history of the Ultimate Truth. I’m interested in tracking down if there is one, what it is, and how to go about realizing it myself (in the sense of knowing it or seeing it, rather than knowing about it intellectually). The Zen community talks like that is their goal much of the time, but in the end, they wanted to tell me stories about it, too, rather than show me someone who could experience it, and show me how.
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But earlier you also said:
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Zen seeks the end of suffering through the cessation of desire and the complete acceptance of this moment, as it is…
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A couple of things: it’s impossible to talk about things that aren’t usually subject of discussion without introducing terminology, but you don’t need to talk about it: most of Zen transmission of knowledge isn’t based on thinking, rationalizing or talking since Huineng. Of course there are crackpots everywhere but they already told (and showed) you the truth: cease to desire and live now. That’s it, there’s nothing else to know, other than twenty thousand tales of people that were told this by their masters and poems about frogs and flies: read them if you like, want or have nothing better to do, otherwise *meditate*, and in Zen meditation is what you do anywhere, anytime, not just when you sit in the magical position. Any good Zen master can tell you that. If you try to cease desiring and live the moment you’re practicing Zen, it’s that simple: no head shaving or funny clothing are required.
I don’t go to Zen temples to meditate or discuss about Zen because there’s none near my house and I don’t like organized religion (actually I don’t like organized anything). From time to time I miss some religious discussion and interaction, which is why Buddha Gautama said that a Sangha is a good thing to have, but I still need to find one that fits. I say it because I see problems with all religious organizations and with almost all religions, but buddhism, while failing with its organizations, don’t have problems (IMO) in their premises: no magical bearded man in the sky is required. You can’t be a christian without accepting a large bunch of mojo.
Now I have a peeve on your atheism description: what gigantic unsupported assumption there’s with atheism? I know of no theistic description of the universe that is simpler than atheistic descriptions. Most atheists simply don’t believe in any magical beings with what we recognize as intelligence ruling the universe ignoring the laws of physics. Not believing in something that has no evidence whatsoever isn’t a gigantic assumption, actually it’s the most probable truth. And how are you not theistic, you keep talking over and over about god/universe as if it was an antropomorphic creature with desires and intent: what god wanted us to do, what it didn’t want us to do, what gifts does he gave. You may not believe in the bearded monkey on the sky but, IMO, you never grew out your christian roots and still require a cosmic plan to explain everything. In Zen you live the moment not because it’s a special gift from whatever but because this moment is what exist, the other moments don’t exist. The moment exist and explanations aren’t necessary. Actually explanations are useless: you may not believe in any explanations and the moment will still exist. There’s no reason to live the moment, no why, no nothing: it is there and you’ll live it wheter you like it or not. We have to accept as it is not because there’s a purpose in it, or a lesson from the eight immortals: we have to accept it because it’s what it is, doesn’t matter or reaction it still is the same moment. Not accepting reality as it is won’t make reality change, that’s the core lesson about reality from buddhism. The path to enlightenment is simple not because god/universe has any desire to be understood, it is simple, end of the history. Trying to figure out why it’s simple is a waste of time, you need to use this time to walk the path, not argue about it. You can yell that you’re not theistic until you’re blue in the face but until you stop wasting time assigning human attributes to the universe you’re still believing in a kind of god.
Whew! You guys are like my own personal gauntlet. ;)
Daniel, I’m really not a theist, but I’m trying to have a conversation here with (at least) one of them. For my part, I perfectly agree with “not accepting reality won’t make it change” being the core lesson, and probably a descriptor of the core error as well, without the need for any God/Universe anthropomorphic bullshit. BUT, I don’t think the anthropomorphic bullshit is *wrong*, either; I think it’s just a metaphor, and the people following it aren’t getting anywhere for the same reason that the people hugging the sign that says “Happiness: 20 miles straight ahead” aren’t happy. So I do try to show how the non-theistic truths point in the same direction, at times, as the theistic ones, as a way to explain that. Plus, sometimes I’m just fighting Sav on his own turf — if he’s going to say that “God wants” xyz, then I’m going to show how that’s illogical because “God” must then “want” abc.
Assigning human attributes to the universe can be helpful as a metaphor; that’s all I mean by it. I agree with you that doing so habitually, and as a matter of metaphysics, is backwards and going nowhere. ;)
I don’t like atheists because they are, almost to a man, just as stubborn and bloody-minded and closed-minded as theists. They’ve made their decision (that there is no God nor anything like it) based on zero evidence (because we don’t have evidence FOR OR AGAINST the existence of some Creator type figure — we can’t gather any actual evidence; that’s the point!), and no matter what anybody says they’re not going to grant any possibility of any type of higher being or power, basically, essentially, on faith. The vast majority — though not all — atheists are just as determined not to actually think about the subject as the most fervent religiosos.
I’m for Wittgenstein: “Whereof one cannot know, thereof one must be silent.” What good does it do us anyway to ponder and scream about whether there’s a giant being out there somewhere who created us? Maybe there’s a giant freaking lollypop at the center of the Milky Way, but arguing about it isn’t getting us any closer to understanding ourselves. If there is a “god” or sentience of some sort, then it obviously either a) doesn’t care about us, b) doesn’t know about us, or c) doesn’t want to talk to us. Who the hell am I to argue with it? If it exists, it put me here on my own, with questions in my head and suffering in my heart (not to wax silly), and I’m sure it would be much happier if I concentrated on what was in front of me, rather than speculating my life away. That’s what I mean by the huge assumptions that drive me crazy: Assuming *anything* about a higher power only closes doors that may turn out to have been more valuable open, and it gains us nothing as far as our quest to learn the truth goes.
…And speaking of monster assumptions, Sabbath, we’ve hit our wall again: You know I can’t grant the actual, empirical, meaningful truth of something so far-fetched, unlikely, and unprovable as the Judeo-Christian revelations. And you’re not trying to prove them; you’re trying to get me to accept them *as a premise*, which is just CRAZY in my view. I’d be exactly as justified accepting the existence of Narnia as a real place, and arguing from there. Both are written down in books, and both have been talked about a lot by enthusiastic people; but that’s it, that’s where the support for their existence ends. Plus, all the people who don’t know about Narnia (or whatever) are simply cut out of the loop — don’t you think that’s ridiculous? What sense does it make to say that the truth was revealed a few millennia ago to a select few people, and the rest of us throughout all time only exist to discover and, against a staggering lack of evidence, believe it? What possible reason — politics and social manipulation aside — could there possibly be for restricting access to the truth to a handful of very-very-very-long-dead people?
I think the problem with all of that is a) it’s useless — see above, and b) the chances of it being wrong in some fundamental way are astronomical. Does it really make sense to risk being wrong about all of reality for the sake of believing what other people — who in vast majority have had no better lives than anyone else — think you should believe?
“Only certain people were given access to this truth…” sounds like a bad movie premise. So there couldn’t possibly have been an Enlightened person before the apostles, then? Oops for Buddha, who lived six hundred years before Christ, yet whose teachings inexplicably bear much of the same content. So I can be as learned and as pious and as whateverelse I want, but if I don’t happen to meet someone in a direct line from an untraceable lineage two thousand years old, then I’m just screwed?
I’m not saying those conclusions aren’t POSSIBLE. I’m saying that, when the ultimate truth is on the line, to go about assuming things like that is nuts, and the surest way I can possibly imagine of failing miserably. Imagine a man seeking a needle in a haystack who begins his search by solemnly deciding that the needle must be in the north-east quadrant of the haystack, no more than two feet from the top, and it must be touching only yellow, not brown, pieces of hay. Those assumptions drive me nuts, because they do NOTHING to improve one’s chances of actually seeing the truth. If someone who’d actually known the truth — known God — was giving me hints, I’d listen; but that’s hardly the case when it comes to church dogma.
In fact, if anybody is giving me hints, it’s “God itself”, isn’t it? All the clues that I could possibly encounter have been laid in my path by whatever made my path and set me on it. Wouldn’t I be an idiot to look elsewhere??
A note about “feeling right” — you greatly oversimplify what I mean. Of course truth can hurt, can feel terrible, can blind us so that we’ll do anything to avoid looking at it — and in fact, since discovering the truth is often the death of our former selves (at least situationally or psychologically), it makes sense that it wouldn’t be pretty and desirable from the state of not-knowing. I wasn’t talking about “feeling nice” or “feeling emotionally good”. Even the most unbearable truth FEELS TRUE to someone with even a little capacity for listening to their gut. And this makes logical sense: If there is truth, then it IS part of who we truly are, so of course it has a certain familiarity about it. The ability to feel truth is something every person has, or at least every person I’ve known has it to some degree — I wouldn’t say that it’s not possible to not have it. (Come to think of it, this is probably what the “loss of reality-checking” experienced by severely psychotic people is — the loss of their ability to feel what’s real and true.) I may not have the Ubercompass that’ll let me navigate my way single-mindedly straight to the ultimate truth: Too much of my innate knowledge of truth is obscured by mind and world, I’m sure. But I do know that nothing that rings false in my gut is going to turn out true, and I’ve been listening to my gut to help me ferret out truth for a long time (it’s a necessary skill in philosophy, though not one that all philosophers have).
Again, thank you both. I’m going to start putting on body armor before I read your comments! ;)
I have given evidence previously for divine revelation, but you never respond to it. It has repeatability and it is definitely empirical. I have satisfied the requirements for scientific evidence. If you think this is make-believe, please say so, and I can expand on it. Again, go buy a DVD of Garabandal and tell me these kids are faking their ecstasy. Get a plane ticket to Jerusalem for the pan-Christian miracle of the Holy Fire at Christ’s tomb and tell me that was faked (has been so faked annually for no less than 1600 years). There have been all sorts of clear acts of God that produce witnesses, historical records, archeological evidence. This is not like some African tribe freaking out because of a solar eclipse, or something weird that just happened and people are looking for explanations. Crosses do not just appear over the sky all the time. Special people have always been associated with miracles. Monks are battered by spirits all the time on the Mountain of Silence. Only God can make something come from nothing.
All sorts of very spiritual things have happened around me, and still happen. But they do not happen when I expect them, let alone when I want them. There is no doubt in my mind that the reality of the cosmos described in the Judeo-Christian tradition is true. I make these conclusions rationally and scientifically.
It is not like I am interpreting texts from Homer about legends. These things are happening today. These things have happened through history. It is clearly there. You say I do not have evidence, I do not have parlor tricks or something you can perform in a laboratory or your basement. That I do not have. But God is still working wonders today like he did since the beginning, I do not have to go far to find examples. Just because you were not there does not mean that it did not happen.
If you can say that Judeo-Christian revelations are unprovable while they clearly are there, and they exist, then the method you are using is sorely deficient.
Western Christianity is devastated spiritually. It has completely lost contact with its roots. Men and women use to be able to take a tour of deified monks throughout the desert. Where is that now in the West?
There’s a good argument about atheism vs. agnosticism here. The primary distinction we have to make is between proof and evidence: not having a proof tell us nothing about something, not having evidence tell us something. Saint Gasoline’s blog (thanks for the pointer) talks about standards for evidence in evolution, which also shows that evidence can’t ever give us 100% certainty of anything, but it doesn’t mean it’s worthless. A few years ago I was enlightened to study bayesian inference and see how it can use little evidence to create a fairly accurate (up to an acceptable margin of error) view of some unknown.
So if we keep looking for evidence of god and fail to find it where it should be it says something about the nature of god. If a murder happens but there’s no evidence, no matter how much we look for, that incriminates someone, we can’t keep on accusing this person of murder (without being irrational, that is). While I agree that “absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence”, absence of evidence by itself means that particular piece of evidence is missing and if it was supposed to exist that tell us that or hypothesis is wrong. If a physicist comes up with a theory that predicts a particle X, devises an experiment that models his theory (i.e. it “proves” the theory) and after doing it he fails to find such particle, then the absence of evidence of existance of particle X implies that the theory is wrong (because the theory said that it should be there without error).
Agnosticism asks us to not invalidate any theory, even if it doesn’t make any observable predictions. Atheism isn’t worse because it says god doesn’t exist, agnosticism is worse because it fails to distinguish between evidence and proof.
Also even if we accept Sabbath’s evidence (I didn’t read it yet, so I have no opinion about it) we still need to balance it against all the missing evidence in other places. We have to balance miracles against tragedies: why a miraculous healing “proves” god but the indian ocean tsunami doesn’t “disprove” him? Why people on religious ecstasy is treated differently than depression (which can be viewed as the complete opposite of ecstasy of any kind)? Saying that god works in mysterious ways doesn’t cut it, because it isn’t like he doesn’t interfere in the first place.
Please don’t dismiss atheism because some atheists are just a bunch of angry brats that act like teenagers “rebelling” against their parents. It’s just a form of ad hominem.
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