Seymour Grass wrote:
<ilya_shambat2004@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1108067982.910260.93910@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
The Christian belief that all suffering is caused by sin, like the
Buddhist belief that all suffering is caused by desire, like the
Hindu belief that all suffering is caused by karma, like the New
Age
belief that all suffering is caused by negativity, lead to extreme
cruelty and abomination. It leads people to cease striving for
justice,
for freedom, for goodness, for betterment of mankind. And for the
human
experience to be worthwhile, all must be stood on their head.
For the Judeao-Christian, while it is secondarily true that sin
causes
suffering, before that happens, suffering causes sin. The myth and
parable
that exist for contemplation of this for both Jew and Christian is in
Eden.
There is a reason that Eve and Adam are subject to temptation. The
'paradise' although it be styled as such is not paradise so long as
anything
imperfect dwells therein. What dwells therein is the suffering that
leads
to temptation and then to sin. The act of disobedience to the
commandment,
not to take and eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,
okay,
that was the 'sin'.
Misinterpretation of this myth has led to the silly notion that 'sin'
is a
substance born into the members of men. Nonsense. What's born into
man is
suffering, as with it comes the knowledge (conscious or not) of one's
mortality. That is the knowledge which makes crazy, causing Eve and
then
Adam to think that it doesn't matter what they do, and let God's
commandment
fly to the wind: suffering is the nature of life, and as Kierkegaard
so
succinctly put it, this life is a "Sickness unto Death". Life itself
is
suffering and that suffering leaves man prey to temptation. This is
so
because forever and always, more than man believes in his "salvation"
he
knows that death is certain. So, nothing matters. Do what you want.
Once the Parable of the Garden is properly interpreted, you see that
there
is no distinction between what is taught from Torah by Christ and
what came
to enlighten the mind of Gotama Buddha under the Bodhi tree. So
there, you
have it backward again where you say that all suffering is caused by
desire.
Not at all: all desire is caused by suffering.
You also have it wrong to say Hindus have it that "suffering is
caused by
karma". Karma is the law of cause and effect. Some mistakenly take
karma
as Christians have done with sin, to be a sticky spiritual substance,
the
"original sin". But these are the heretical errors of literalism.
Buddhism is to Hinduism as Christianity is to Judaism. The latter
revelations are there to explain and enlighten the former. What
Buddha had
to say about suffering is that it is the root of all evil. The
doctrine of
"Original Sin" that is derived by exegesis from the teachings of
Christ was
demonstrated by him on the cross where he showed all mankind the
essence of
human life: life is crucifixion, it is suffering. Christ showed
that it
can be borne, you can suffer with your hands and feet nailed down and
still
you will be subject by that suffering to temptation, hence he was
heard to
cry, "Father, O Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Christ by his death on the cross demonstrated the futility of living
one's
life without falling to temptation because so long as we live we
suffer and
for so long as we suffer we are tempted to do the crazy thing, to
curse God,
our fellow man, the very fact of our own lives.
What is the message in all this? it's so blindingly simple!
Paradise does
not and cannot exist upon the earth. Only via death can man come to a
release from suffering and sin. It is blasphemy to heaven to go forth
as
Marx, as the radical environmentalists, as the feminists and other
fascists
trying to make a sow's purse from a silk ear. You can't expect women
to
perform in battle as do men, nor can you subject your nation to the
hazard
of even so much as trying it.
On the earth in life there is only suffering and part of that is the
pain of
inequality. It's not fun for some, the way God and Nature has seen
fit to
make men the stronger of the two genders. But you are crazy if you
think
you can defy God and Nature. Your suffering under the yoke of
natural
inequality makes you crazy and in temptation you, Eve and that fool
of an
Adam with you, oh you reach to the branch to take of the forbidden
Utopian
Fruit. It's poison to all that touch it, to you who are woman: you
take it,
you eat it and your breasts shrink, your waist widens, your arms
thicken,
and in your lust to be "equal to" men, it only makes you the *same
as* men,
without grace, style, delicasy and that is such treason to the beauty
of
your own natural, God-given beauty. You are crazy: you get all
anorexic and
bulimic as you try to defy God and your own glorious nature as woman,
and
all the lovely lacy things of the feminine, of the things that men
are never
equal to, you despise, you waste, you trample under foot and they are
lost
to civilization because you wanted not to be a woman you screamed for
the
blood of Martha Stewart and you came out looking like Molly Yard.
That is why Islam will never come to peace with all this ego-driven,
gender
narcissism going on in the west. Do you want to know why they hate us
so
much? They know we are crazy.
Within the bounds of what is natural equality, this needs to be
allowed to
come to full fruition--but there are bounds of sanity: you don't put
women
on the battlefield. You do that and you tell to posterity of all
history:
We were crazy.
What is the revelation that is given from all the great religions of
the
world which are, at their metaphysical and moral foundations at
unity?
Simple, it's so easy . . .
Paradise does not exist, can never can exist on the earth and
therefore it
is in heaven.
You may say, "Nuts to that, it's strictly an article of faith! You
have no
proof."
You can never have that unless you have died to come back from the
dead.
Christians believe that's just what Christ did. And the Jews believe
that
Elijah was seen rising up to heaven. The Buddhists preach that
Gotama did
attain Nirvana.
You cannot prove that heaven exists and you cannot prove that it
doesn't.
You are faced with the mystery as to how anything can exist at all;
how
matter could have arisen out of nothing. No scientist on earth can
explain
that mystery and if he should try by saying "matter always existed",
that
it's just in the nature of reality for matter to be the case, then
what you
have is not a scientist that he can be so unscientific as to proceed
on mere
assumption; he's stating for a fact what he cannot prove. What he
says
might sound logical, might have some merit but what it does not have
is the
answer as to *why*. If matter always existed, why is that so and why
is it
not equally possible quite to the contrary that matter should not
exist at
all, nor ever. You cannot ask, "why isn't it the case that nothing
exists?"
You can't say that because *nothing* cannot "exist". Our "scientist"
might
take much from that logic. He might say, "You see, I was right
because not
even our grammar will allow us to contemplate that *nothing* can be a
possibility in the universe."
I would answer, "Well good! If reality is such that "nothing" as such
is
barred from being possible, then there is a reason for that." I
suggest
that nothing is evil and something is good. As something exists, it
is the
good that exists by law of reality. Something was victorious over
nothing.
And yet, *why*?
The Buddhists, Nagarjuna, the authors of the Vedanta contemplated
these
matters and they came to realize that both things are true, that
matter
exists only from one way of looking at it, as dream, as illusion,
while from
another perspective nothing is the case. This view from thousands of
years
ago is in comportment with scientific knowledge as we have it today.
It's
all illusion, a dance of electrons about their nuclei which produce
the
hallucination of solid matter. So, the Buddhists have always found
this to
be a marvelous mystery worthy of spending one's entire life in
contemplation
of it, and in meditation to feel the sense of it.
When you die, you lose nothing because you never really existed in
the first
place. But by the same token you have no way of knowing what manner
of
mystery may be gained to your understanding, your ecstasy when you
die--if
you can rid yourself of being afraid.
More than that, no man can say.
I can say a number of things more.
First of all, why do you assume that equality is something that people
believe would lead to paradise? Kurt Vonnegut wrote a very clever and
illuminating story about what would happen if everyone were in fact
equal, and it was in no way a paradise but rather a hell. People have
different talents, drives, motivations, etc; and equality of outcomes
is not a desirable state - equality of opportunity is.
Second, different societies benefit different agendas. I have most
certainly found societies that, for me, very much were like paradise.
Society is an artifact of people creating and shaping their
environment. Whether a society is perfect, a paradise, etc., is not
really a relevant subject. What matters is that it be good at what it
is good for. Thus, San Francisco is good for having fun and being
young; Midwest is good for having children; Florida is good for
retirement; etc.
Third, suffering is far from the only cause of sin. There is such a sin
for example as overindulgence, a sin of abuse of power, a sin of lack
of compassion, and a sin of cruelty, most of which do not come from
suffering at all. There's another sin common to Republican brats in
America and aristocracy in other places: Thinking that one's advantages
make one better than everyone else and sneering on other people for
having worse habits than oneself, while failing to realize that one's
own habits come from their parents and is not something that one has
earned. There are many causes of sin, and there are many causes of
suffering. To say that either one causes the other is plainly wrong.
Now as for your idea that paradise cannot exist on earth and that
therefore it must exist in heaven - How does that follow? What if, for
example, paradise does not exist at all? What if paradise is a
blueprint in ethereal realms that has been given humanity through
revelation and meditation and exists for them to actualize? Does the
impossibility of something existing on earth or in flesh - an argument
that you are making here - mean that it has to exist after death? What
if it does not exist at all, or else is something that comes as a
result of our efforts?
"Nothing being evil, something being good by law of reality" - what if
that something is a demon or a tuberculosis bacillus? Does the fact
that something exists make it good? That something triumphing over
nothing makes it good? What's worse: Nothing or hell?
As for your statement that "on earth there is only suffering" - I feel
sorry you feel that way, but I feel more sorry for people around you.
I've had a wonderful life, and while I started it with a bad attitude I
am quite happy now - and I've seen just enough hardship and was given
just enough wisdom to know to be grateful for everything, to take joy
in everything and to make the most of everything I do. And while I
cannot talk for the people who endure horrible suffering, I know enough
of them who have been able to find a way to a place of grace, love and
beauty and empathy, that allows them to face life with joy and with
strength and to impart goodness to others. Which most certainly makes
them better companions than people who believe that life is only
suffering.
So that, when you are saying that what you've written is all that a
human being can say, please qualify it by saying that you speak for
yourself. I am another human being, and I can say something quite
different that quite refutes what you have written here. And a third
human being may see something else still.
Regards,
Ilya Shambat.
.
