We know that individuals create society and that the society creates an individual. When Judith Butler talks about the “performative” nature of the gender, saying, “[G]ender proves to be performance— that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed” her theory reflects the sociological approach.
Alan Watts Trying to explain how Jesus was totally misunderstood by his own followers and the church as we know it today is not the message Jesus was trying to get across. Abit lengthy though.
So let’s suppose then that Jesus had such an experience [one which suggested to him that he was the Son of God] … but you see Jesus has a limitation that he doesn’t know of any religion other than those of the immediate near east. He might know something about Egyptian religion, a little bit maybe about Greek religion … but mostly about Hebrew. There is no evidence whatsoever that he knew anything about India or China. And we .. people who think .. you know .. that Jesus was God assume that he must have known becuase he would have been omniscient. No … St. Paul makes it perfectly clear in the Epistle to the Phillipians that Jesus renounced his divine powers so as to be man: “That this mind be anew which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God thought not equality with God a thing to be hung onto but humbled himself and made himself of no reputation and was found in fashion as a man and became obedient to death.” Theologians call that kinosis which means self-emptying. So obviously an omnipotent and omniscient man would not really be a man. So even if you take the very orthodox Catholic doctrine of the nature of Christ, that he was both true God and true man, you must say that for true God to be united with true man, true God has to make a voluntary renunciation for the time being of omniscience and omnipotence … and omnipresence for that matter. Now therefore if Jesus were to come right out and say I am the son of God, that’s like saying I’m the boss’ son, or I am the boss and everybody immediately says that is blasphemy – that is subversion, that is trying to introduce democracy into the kingdom of heaven. That is .. you are a usurper of the throne. No man has seen God. Now Jesus in his exoteric teaching as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels was pretty cagey about this … he didn’t come right out there and say I and the Father are one. Instead he identified himself with the Messiah described in the second part of the Prophet Isaiah – the suffering servant who was despised and rejected of men. And this man is the non-political Messiah in other words. It was convenient to make that identification even though it would get him into trouble. But to his select disciples as recorded in St. John he came right out and said “Before Abraham was, I am. I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. I and the Father are one and he who has seen me has seen the Father.” And there can be no mistaking that language.
So the Jews found out and they put him to death or had him put to death for blasphemy. This is no cause for special antagonism to the Jews. We would do exactly the same thing. It’s always done. It happened to one of the great Sufi mystics in Persia who had the same experience. Now what happened? The apostles didn’t quite get the point. They were awed by the miracles of Jesus. They worshipped him as people do worship gurus … and it’s … you know to what lengths that can go if you’ve been around guru-land. And so the Christians said: Okay, okay, Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God but let it stop right there … nobody else. So what happened was is that Jesus was pedestalized … he was put in a position that was safely upstairs so that his troublesome experience of cosmic consciousness would not come and cause other people to be a nuisance. And those who have had this experience and expressed it during those times when the Church had political power were almost invariably persecuted. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake, John Scotus was excommunicated, [sic] Meister Eckhardt’s theses were condemned and so on and so on. A few mystics got away with it because they used cautious language. But you see what happens … if you pedestalize Jesus, you strangle the gospel at birth and it has been the tradition of both the Catholic Church and in Protestantism to pass off what I will call an emasculated gospel. Gospel means good news and I cannot for the life of me think what is the good news of the gospel as ordinarily handed down. Because look here .. here is the revelation of God in Christ … in Jesus … and we are supposed to follow his life and example without having the unqiue advantage of being the boss’ son.
Now the tradition, both Catholic and Protestant fundamentalist represents Jesus to us as a freak – born of a virgin, knowing he is the son of God, having the power of miracles, knowing that basically it’s impossible to kill him, that he’s going to rise again in the end. And we are asked to take up our cross and follow him when we don’t know that about ourselves at all. So what happens is this: we are delivered therefore a Gospel which is in fact an impossible religion. It’s impossible to follow the way of Christ .. alright … many a Christian has admitted it. I am a miserable sinner, I fall far short of the example of Christ .. but do you realize the more you say that the better you are because what happened was that Christianity insitutionalized guilt as a virtue. [applause] You see you can never come up here … never … and therefore you will always be aware of your shortcomings and so the more shortcomings you feel the more in other words you are aware of the vast abyss between Christ and yourself. [interruption by a member of the audience who suggests that Watts is setting up a strawman and "trying to shoot down" the Church] You will have your opportunity to speak in the Question Period madam. So … you go to confession .. and if you have a nice dear understanding confessor, he won’t get angry with you, he’ll say my child, you know you’ve sinned very grievously but you must realize that the love of God and our Lord is infinite and that naturally you’re forgiven … as a token of thanksgiving say three Hail Marys … and you know, you’ve commited a murder and robbed a bank and fornicated around and so on … and the priest is perfectly patient and quiet. Well you feel awful … I have done that? To the love of God I have wounded Jesus, grieved the Holy Spirit and so on. But you know in the back of your mind that you’re going to do it all over again … you won’t be able to help yourself … you’ll try but there’s always a greater and greater sense of guilt. Now the lady objected that I was putting up a straw man and knocking it down – this is the Christianity of most people. Now there is a much more subtle Christinity of the theologians, the mystics and the philosophers but it’s not what gets preached from the pulpit, grant you. But the message of Billy Graham is approximately what I have given you and of all .. what I will call fundamentalist … forms of Catholicism and Protestantism.
What would the real gospel be? … the real good news is not simply that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God but that he was a powerful son of God who came to open everybody’s eyes to the fact that you are too. And this is perfectly plain … if you will go to the tenth chapter of St. John, verse 30, there is the passage where Jesus says I and the father are one. There are people who are not intimate disciples around and they are horrifed and they immediately pick up stones to stone him. He says many good works I have shown you from the father and for which of these do you stone me? And they said for a good work we stone you not but for blasphemy because you being a man make yourself God. And he replied: isn’t it written in your law I have said you are Gods? He’s quoting the 82nd Psalm – is it not written in your law I have said you are Gods? If God called them those to whom he gave his word Gods and you can’t deny the scriptures, how can you say I blaspheme because I said I am a Son of God? Well there’s the whole thing in a nutshell … because if you read the King James Bible that descended with the angel, you will see in italics in front of these words Son of God, the Son of God, because I said I am the Son of God and most people think the italics are for emphasis … they’re not … the italics indicate words interpolated by the translators .. you will not find that in the Greek … the Greek says a Son of God.
Talk Given By The Great Alan Watts.
O Nobly Born, O you of glorious origins, remember your radiant true nature, the essence of mind. Trust it. Return to it. It is home.
–Tibetan Book of the Dead
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine.
Do not speak – unless it improves on silence.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.
No road to happiness or sorrow… Find them in yourself.
The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.
Alan Watts
“The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.”
“Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery — the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets — is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.”
Not to study the Buddha way is to fall into the realm of shameless and erroneous ways. All preceding and succeeding Buddhas always practice the Buddha way.
- Dogen Zenji
Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it (religion) should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.
- Einstein
All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your own salvation with diligence.
- Buddha’s last words
I have discovered that all of mans unhappiness derives from only one source, not being able to sit quietly in a room
- Blaise Pascal
The Middle Way
Buddha had seen firsthand that indulging oneself in the pleasures of the world didn‟t lead to the end of suffering (he was born a prince). But practicing extreme yogic austerity and being averse to the world‟s pleasures didn‟t result in the end of suffering either (he spent many years with such practices). Buddha had realized an important principle of Buddhist philosophy, the Middle Way. On one extreme, craving; On the other extreme, aversion. The Middle Way attaches to neither extreme. Otherwise, one is stuck in a karmic vicious circle, oft visualized as the Wheel of Life. The Middle Way is a way off this merry-go-round.
The Nature of Reality
Buddha told his followers that they must realize the truth for themselves. Believing scriptures was missing the whole point, as Buddha‟s teachings concern realization and awakening. The Dharma is not about belief, but about realization. In order to awaken to one‟s true nature, one has to drop all of one‟s preconceptions. Even more than this, one must learn how to push the off button on that conceptual word generating machine in one‟s head. When the incessant prattle of thoughts ceases, so does delusion.
With right meditation, one can attain a state fully awake and clear, devoid of thought streams. In this state of mind, one experiences an extreme sense of connectedness to all that is. All concepts subside, including all concepts of oneself as a separate entity. Concepts of inside and outside, self and other, subjective and objective, all completely dissolve. One experiences not emptiness, but rather an infinite radiant fullness and a profound peace.
Buddha avoided metaphysical speculation about the nature of reality. After all, attachment to concepts is what gets us into all our trouble in the first place. What‟s the point of weaving more verbal nets, since getting caught in these conceptual nets is the very cause of the suffering we seek to escape? This is just weaving more netting to entangle us further.
Buddha likened our state to that of one just shot with a poisonous arrow. The point is to pull out the arrow and clean out the poison, STAT! Discussions about why the person was shot, or the
trajectory that the arrow took, etc., are clearly not helpful at this point. Also, once realization blooms, the meaninglessness of metaphysical speculation is evident.
What is the Meaning of Zen?
The word Zen has become part of the English language, but what exactly does it mean? It‟s much easier to answer the question “When is Zen?”, for that answer would have to be “Now!”. The whole point of Zen practice is to become fully aware, here and now. To come home to the present moment; this is truly where we live. Thinking verbally takes us far into the past, or into the distant future. But both past and future are fantasies, since the future isn‟t known and our memories of the past are often quite distorted accounts of what really happened. Zen exhorts one to “Come to your senses!”, for when we get lost in thoughts of the past or future, life passes us by. When one mindfully dwells in the present moment, one completely dissolves into whatever activity manifests. One becomes the activity. Most people have had peak experiences, which all involve being so totally involved with life that one‟s sense of separateness dissolves into the experience. Very Zen.
Cognitive scientists tell us that it takes about a third of a second for our brains to start thinking about a sensory experience (meaning verbally interpreting it). A third of a second is a vast chasm separating one from “right now”.
A Zen master once proclaimed:
Lightening flashes, sparks fly! In one blink of the eye, you have missed seeing.
Living fully and authentically in the present moment makes each instant of one‟s life a peak experience. Each moment is filled with a profound peace and clarity. Each moment is perceived to have infinite depth and significance, charged with magic and mystery, infinitely precious. Zen brings us face to face with our true original nature, undefiled by cultural conditioning and painful neurotic tendencies.
Words and concepts can be useful, but mistaking them for reality is a big mistake. Concepts about reality are not reality. The menu is not the food. Dissolving all ones preconceptions, beliefs, concepts, and judgments about ourselves and the universe, can be a very liberating experience. What a relief to let go of all that baggage! (Most or all of it is not true anyway.)
Simplicity is often associated with Zen. And Zen practice is indeed simple, if not easy. Just practice being fully present, right here, right now. Perceive directly, without filtering perceptions through beliefs and preconceptions. Dissolve into the eternal now, and realize that the Universe itself peers out through your eyes, hears through your ears, and breaths each breath. Unity beyond all conception. If not now, then when?
Courtesy of some unnamed Zen proponent online(unknown)
A few days back i was arguing with some friend of mine about nationalism, loyalty and patriotism to ones country and ideals. they where taken aback by the fact i openly told them I do not vote and that i think it is a total waste of time.
Basically the other party argued loyalty to one’s culture and ideals are very important and one should never compromise them for anything.
Loyalty is undoubtedly a virtue when we are dealing with pet dogs or friends(though still very subjective). We like our dogs to be loyal. We like our dogs to do what we tell them to do. The loyalty of a human being is not necessarily a good thing, however.
Loyalty is a matter of committing oneself to a person, to a group of people or to a cause. But people and causes can be either praiseworthy or despicable (or something in between).
Sometimes, it is a terrible idea to be loyal. Consider a wife’s loyalty to a husband who beats her. I know that there are some neocons out there who think the wife should stick it out, patiently reading the Bible for inspiration when he’s not actually in the act of smacking her, but I consider it sick to be “loyal” to a person who causes one physically harms. This brings to mind another aspect of being “loyal.” We don’t usually talk about “loyal” husbands, “loyal” employers or “loyal” governments. It seems that loyalty is often a duty that usually falls upon those who are relatively powerless. That’s why the word fits so well with dogs–and common citizens.
Basically you really must question yourself why your loyal to whatever you are loyal to and is it a good or rather just cause.
Loyalty to a country which at the end of the day is a piece of land that may lose its identity and gain a new one in the new 100 years or so is pointless really. Do not get me wrong we do identify with our country and culture but i really do strongly believe we should identify first with mankind or rather the world should be our country. We then share our culture or countries heritage or religion or political ideology with the world, keeping in mind nothing is ever final. The most brilliant idea your community has ever deviced could be replaced by a better and new from another community, so its very important to have that open mind and open eye to evaluate your most core beliefs and check if they are still relevant in the advent of a new idea.
Point is just do not be loyal because its supposedly a good thing and is expected of you. Think through hard and deep of what is expected and check if you are actually helping or just part of the machine.
The quote the observer is the observed or the observer becomes the observed is one of immense eternal meaning. Sadly on the surface it sounds like nothing and looks like simple word play. This quote demands a lot intellectual and mystical thought I think it may take a second to realize the observer or it may take days or even years but still the realization is not dependant on time. At this point one realizes everything not in a literal sense that can be articulated by any particular language but rather in a subconscious or metaphysical sense, I even quite lack the words to put it across because it has no description or measure and surpasses the realm of mere language.
If one ever does become the observer or reaches the point where they realize the
eternal, what ‘this’ is all about, the point when you feel and know that you are star stuff and everything is star stuff so you are everything, and as the oriental thought would say when you realize you are God. Then and only then is the transcendental experience of happiness nirvana or eternal bliss experienced.
Words really do lack substance a blank page would express this better to be honest; I really do wish communication was on a subconscious emotional telepathic level. Nwae for he/she who even has a hint of what am talking about am glad.
“ You may know the superficial layers of your mind; but to know the unconscious motives, drives, fears, the hidden residue of tradition, of racial inheritance – to be aware of all that and to give it close attention is very hard work, it demands a great deal of energy. Most of us are unwilling to give close attention to these things; we have not the patience to go into ourselves step by step, inch by inch, so that we begin to know all the subtleties, the intricate movements of the mind.
But it is only the mind which has understood itself in its totality and is therefore incapable of self-deception – it is only such a mind that can free itself of its past and go beyond its own movements within the field of time. This is not very difficult, but it requires a great deal of hard work. “
Jiddu Krishnamurti.
I think i really like this new perspective took a while for me to really get the gist but i reckon i do. The argument is quite simple you can not live fully if you do not understand what the implications of death are or rather what death really means, i know people will say they have been taught via their cultures and so forth but the other question posited is have you really thought about what you have been told and if so does it accurately reflect reality or is it a mere exaggeration or at best fantasy of the old men trying to wrestle answers for the unknown. In conclusion what the writer is saying is that life and death are the two faces of the same coin heads and tales….and we all know we cant have heads without tail so with that analogy his point i reckon is you can not have life or live fully without death.
You cannot be frightened of the unknown because you do not know what the unknown is and so there is nothing to be afraid of. Death is a word, and it is the word, the image, that creates fear. So can you look at death without the image of death? As long as the image exists from which springs thought, thought must always create fear. Then you either rationalize your fear of death and build a resistance against the inevitable or you invent innumerable beliefs to protect you from the fear of death. Hence there is a gap between you and the thing of which you are afraid. In this time-space interval there must be conflict which is fear, anxiety and self-pity. Thought, which breeds the fear of death, says, ‘Let’s postpone it, let’s avoid it, keep it as far away as possible, let’s not think about it’- but you are thinking about it. When you say, ‘I won’t think about it’, you have already thought out how to avoid it. You are frightened of death because you have postponed it.
We have separated living from dying, and the interval between the living and the dying is fear. That interval, that time, is created by fear. Living is our daily torture, daily insult, sorrow and confusion, with occasional opening of a window over enchanted seas. That is what we call living, and we are afraid to die, which is to end this misery. We would rather cling to the known than face the unknown – the known being our house, our furniture, our family, our character, our work, our knowledge, our fame, our loneliness, our gods – that little thing that moves around incessantly within itself with its own limited pattern of embittered existence.
We think that living is always in the present and that dying is something that awaits us at a distant time. But we have never questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all. We want to know the truth about reincarnation, we want proof of the survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyants and to the conclusions of psychical research, but we never ask, never, how to live – to live with delight, with enchantment, with beauty every day. We have accepted life as it is with all its agony and despair and have got used to it, and think of death as something to be carefully avoided. But death is extraordinarily like the life we know how to live. You cannot live without dying. You cannot live if you do not die psychologically every minute. This is not an intellectual paradox. To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is or what freedom is.
Most of us are frightened of dying because we don’t know what it means to live. We don’t know how to live, therefore we don’t know how to die. As long as we are frightened of life we shall be frightened of death. The man who is not frightened of life is not frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that inwardly, psychologically, there is no security. When there is no security there is an endless movement and then life and death are the same. The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.
Freedom from the known
Jiddu Krishnamurti.
In the introduction, a call was made for a new surge of creativity in science. By now it will be clear that such a surge must extend into all areas of human activity if the actual challenge, which has finally revealed itself, is to be met. But does this mean that creativity must somehow be elicited from an organism that does not have in itself a natural potential for creativity? It is proposed that, on the contrary, human beings do indeed have such a potential. However as children grow older, this creativity appears to be blocked.
Some insight into the nature of this block can be gained from the work of Desmond Morris, published in The Biology of Art. In one experiment chimpanzees were given canvas and paint and immediately began to apply themselves to make balanced patterns of color, somewhat reminicent of certain forms of modern art, such as abstract expressionism. The significant point about this experiment is that the animals became so interested in painting and it absorbed them so completely that they had comparatively little interest left for food, sex, or the other activities that normally hold them strongly. Additional experiments showed somewhat similar results for other primates. When very young children are given paints, their behavior is remarkably like that of the chimpanzees.
This seems to indicate that creativity is a natural potential. Yet somehow, in most cases, the urge to create fades as the human being gets older. Or at best it continues in certain limited areas, such as science, music, or painting. Why should this happen?
An extension of Morris’s experiment involved rewarding the chimpanzees for producing their paintings. Very soon their work began to degenerate until they produced the bare minimum that would satisfy the experimenter. A similar behavior can be observed in young children as they become “self-conscious” of the kind of painting the believe they are “supposed” to do. This is generally indicated to them by subtle and implicit rewards, such as praise and approval, and by the need to conform to what other children around them are doing. Thus creativity appears to be incompatible with external and internal rewards or punishments.
Humanity is therefore faced with an urgent challenge of unparalleled magnitude. Specifically, rigidity in the generative order, to which control through rewards and punishments makes a major contribution, prevents the free play of thought and the free movement of awareness and attention. This leads to false play which ultimately brings about a pervasive destructiveness while at the same time blocking natural creativity of human beings.
It seems that the whole conditioning of all who take part must in fact change: society, the family, and the individual. It is thus clear that there is no single stationary point at which these problem might be attacked. The educational system, society, and the individual are all intimately involved. But it is ultimately the overall order of human consciousness that has to be addressed.
from Science, Order, and Creativity
by David Bohm and F. David Peat
Politics and general leadership with Kenya right as a direct reference but one may extrapolate it to encompass a world view. Will try and make the ideas as concise and as clear as possible.
First off my today views as practiced, i never vote and doubt will ever vote. I do not associate with any political party or personality who has political interest am kinda just nowhere really think of it as not sitting on the fence but rather being the fence.
I strongly believe all the top politicians are friends and normally act out scenarios that they have created in which all of them are winners and the common man is given the illusion that via his vote he has a say he has power to make a change this to me is just a delusion. You lose the power of your individual opinion when your over 40million voters.
Electing our leaders for most people is based on on pure whim or emotion or tribe or bribe or how eloquent the political aspirant is, but most of all it based on what the media shows then you form an opinion of the leader, funny how most media houses are owned by this same politicians or business men with specific political interest. Either way how can you critically vote and you do not even know the aspirant, most probably he is just telling you what you want to hear during the elections you know love peace and unity bullshit.
It does not matter who you elect things are never going to change, in that the problem to me is the system and the fact that Kenya is already owned in totality. Think about it people want land to farm but the land is already owned by an individual, people want jobs but they are none, maybe you think the government can create employment, btw it cant employment is created by development and we know how pain stakingly slow we are in that front.
Most people have a fantasy of a messiah like/prophet like leader who will have the vision to simply come in and make the change we want to see around. You know lessen the gap between the rich and poor, how is he going to do that steal from the rich like robin hood.
Political violence is just too sad and in fact i reckon conditions in the country are still ripe for even more violence i mean people have become poorer than they wher the last time they voted meaning they are even more desperate to change their quality of life more than ever before all it takes is organization from leaders.
I really do believe anyone who takes sides passionately helps to fuel divide in the country how ever you want to look at it. the passion you should have is one for change fullstop no party no alliance to politics and that way the politicians lose ther power, we should also stop watching news it has become a mechanism for propaganda and emotional manipulation. point do not ever take sides transcend the petty bullshit and stand on your own do not be a common mwananchi who discusses for hours on end about which political party is best and which leader is best for the job as if you know the person.
Solving our problem always and has been a technical issue that is best solved through rational thought and cooperation, this means if ther is no change we either lack one of the two or both. Politicians are not needed not even abit building a road does not need a politician it needs designers and engineers and labour force. Slum problems do not politicians we need a contarctor who can see the need to do sustainable lost cost housing in abundance. Point is our problems are solved through technical innovation and cooperation in all disciplines. But to me rational thought is most critical.
