Evolution, Science & Religion (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, June 29, 2012, 18:13 (4319 days ago) @ romansh

I've practiced Zen over the last 8-9 years, with a couple of small breaks. What parts are dissonant? I might be able to muddy the water a little more for you
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> The self that does not exist has free will? -What is your definition of free will? -Buddhism rejects the idea that we have unfettered free will. Specifically, more often than not we're not exercising it, even when we think we are. -Have you ever entered a room and then wondered why? Have you ever tried to break a habit? Buddhism's "rejection" of free will is really the psychological observation that our animal will exerts more influence on our daily lives than we want to admit. -Why did I pick computer science? Because I get really excited when I think about it. Why do I get excited? It isn't through conscious, or conditioned effort. Unless you want to say, my drive to solve puzzles. But why do I have a drive to solve puzzles and not to be an Attacking midfielder? -Our egos tend to wrap all this up into discrete, concrete things, and it is Buddhism's perspective that these things are precisely--not concrete. -What are you passionate about? Why? The answer to Buddhism's half-rejection to free will lies within the honest answers to those questions. -When you realize exactly how much unconscious will drives you, it is scary. At least it was for me. 
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> > The amouun of work that Judas requires the reader to do is much more involved than what you are expected to do with Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John. That's because there is no "mystery" in those books. 
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> > I'm very interested to hear your take.
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> I certainly am not an expert on the apocrypha. So I better stay silent on the subject. Have you read anything of Joseph Campbell? I think he has a grain of truth in his interpretations of our mythic sacred stories. 
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> For example the vedic poem of two birds in a tree is (for me) a retelling of the garden of Eden story.-Campbell is hard to read because you have to be familiar with ALL mythology (and THAT is difficult.) His thinking though is embedded in the ideas of Carl Jung and that consciousness is literally a shared object. -The similarities in myths as the one you pointed out is most easily described by similarly limited peoples arriving at similar conclusions. And probably a liberal dosing of pyschotropics. (See Mayan, Azteca)-Its no different than the near simultaneous invention of Chinese and arabic algebras. -Though his roots were in... murky waters, Campbell's analysis is quite thought provoking... but to me it seems more a generalization of story archetypes than necessarily, a single, common story.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"