awakening wrote:toombaru wrote:
The conceptual overlay.......which is mistaken for reality....the bastard child of conceptual thought.
Thought.............conceptual thought.........is the only "thing" that should be taken seriously......studied with dispassion........and once seen for what it is......thought looses its opacity.....and the Ever-Opening-Naturalness into which we were born.........smiles through
the dream......and we remember who we are.
toombaru
The conceptual overlay may or may not be taken for 'reality' (another BIG concept we could argue about for ever)...but is not even the conceptual overlay itself included in what we call 'reality'?
Here is the distinct impression that you take the G word to 'realistic' as you ascribe all kinds of power to a simple word. Unconditional Apple Pie in the Sky' is fine too...just as long as we know what it's supposed to represent.
Even Buddha's speaking is based in concepts
and so is the Buddha himself.
So it is fine to kill God on the road when you see him.
But what remains after the kill... only One
and this One is All
As far as i know Buddha's conclusion about suffering did not mention conceptual thought.
Suffering exist but there is no one who suffers
The deed there is, but no doer thereof.
And what ever he did or did not say
there seems to be a good option for suffering
in mixing up the concept with what it represents.
Trying to drink the word water
may cause the suffering of dehydration.
As mentioned before: What ever idea one connects to the sound/concept God (or dog or water if you want) is not what God, dog or water is.
If you read that God word in a certain context is meant to represent
The Omni Present One why rant on about the word and say that it IS separation? Isn't separation not again just another noise/word/pixels-string? It was mentioned too, that if the word means something else to you, then feel free to use another concept....
And you did several times, by calling it 'nameless' or something like 'sparkling awareness' or even in this post 'the remembrance of who we are.' This are still words/concepts. Again nothing but sounds or dots strung together.
Of course you know this, but it seems you prefer to keep on 'bashing' the word 'God. But as long as there is discussion (or lately our conversation may be better described as arguing) there are words and concepts involved. Why not simply 'accommodate' that fact (more words) and work from t-here?
I have accommodated and acknowledged your interpretation of the G word and responded that here the same word has another flavor. Yet you seem unable or unwilling to 'hear' that.
In the end it is fine.. If you want to repeat how that word did so many terrible things, that is IT too... And the response will come...until it no longer does.. That too...
Be well..
The believer holds that our reason can, in some sense, transcend the narrow limits of experience.
He holds that we can attain truths not capable of verification, and not needing varification, by actual experiment of observation.
He holds further that the knowledge of those truths is essential to the highest interests of mankind, and enables us in some sort to solve the dark riddle of the universe.
A complete solution, as everyone admits is beyond our power.
But some answer may be given to the doubts which harass and perplex us when we try to frame any adequate conception of the vast order of which we form an insignificant portion.
We cannot say why this or that arrangement is the way it is; we can say though obscurely, that some answer exists, and would be satisfactory, if we could only find it.
Overpowered, as every honest and serious thinker is at times overpowered, by the sight of pain, folly, and hopelessness, by the jarring discords which run through the vast harmony of the universe, we are yet enabled to hear at times a whisper that all is well, to trust to it as coming from the most authentic source, and that only the temporary bars of sense prevents us from recognizing with certainty that the harmony beneath the discords is a reality and not a dream.
This knowledge is embodied in the central dogma of theology.
God is the name of the harmony; and knowable.
Who would not be happy in accepting this belief, if he could accept it honestly?
Who would not be glad if he could say with confidence: "the evil is transitory, the good eternal: our doubts are due to limitations designed to be abolished, and the world is really an embodiment of love and wisdom, however dark it may appear to our faculties"?
And yet, if the so called knowledge is illusory, are we not bound by the most sacred obligations to recognize the facts?
Our dark path is dark enough on any hypothesis.
We cannot afford to turn aside after every ignis fatuus without asking whether it leads to sounder footing or to hopeless quagmires.
Dreams may be pleasanter for the moment than realities; but happiness must be won by adapting our lives to realities.
And who, that has felt the burden of existence, and suffered under the well meant efforts at consolation, will deny that such consolations are the bitterest mockeries?
Pain is not an evil; death is not a separation;sickness is but a blessing in disguise.
Have the gloomiest speculations of avowed pessimests ever tortured sufferers like those kind platitudes?
Is there a more cutting piece of satire in the language than the reference in our funeral to the "sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection"?
To dispel genuine hopes might be painful, however salutary.
To suppress these spasmotic efforts to fly in the face of the facts would be some comfort, even in the distress which they are meant to alleviate.
Besides the important question whether the believers can prove his dogmas, ther is, therefore, the further question whether dogmas, if granted, have any meaning.
Do they answer our doubts, or mock us with the appearance of an answer?
The believers rejoice in their knowledge.
Have they anything to tell us?
Leslie Stephen
