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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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And in response to jgill's question, the Zen tradition would not be interested in your dream experiences. Rather, they would label them makyo (illusion) and tell you to ignore them and get back to the search for nothingness.
Yoga and tantra schools of meditation however, would say such experiences are very useful in understanding the nature of one's own mind and other dimensions of reality and a definite step in the right direction.
I know this because I sought advice from a Zen master when I was having unusual visual effects as the result of meditation and was told to just forget about them as they were makyo. However, they kept getting more intense so that wasn't very helpful. A tantric master however (tantra believes that where ever you are is a good place to start) was more than willing to work with me until I went on to the next phase and the next and the next.
Myself, I think of it as the baby step method of progress instead of the shoot for the moon and crash and burn method.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"Maybe the atheist community will evolve in this direction, but so far they can't hold a candle to traditional religion in terms of support systems." -Jan
That's just the silliest statement to those who don't buy into the atheist theist dichotomy to begin with.
Perhaps you don't have much sense of just how many non theists there are these days who don't identify with the atheist label. That might help explain your statement?
In the last couple of years I've been to two Celebrations of Life and two funerals in the Lutheran tradition. The former surely held its own against the latter.
Times are changing, thank atheist God. 100 years from now, they won't recognize most of the older ways in regard to belief systems. Yes, the information-intensive internet driven information age is that powerful.
And as far as support systems go. You write as if you don't get around. Today's 2015 world is bristling with support systems of all manner and stripes.
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Am I an atheist? No. As I don't frame my thinking or its beliefs in terms of atheism-theism to begin with. That is so 20th century if not pre-. Time to grow up.
So Werner's hate atheist rants apply to whom? lol
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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It is also a community of people supporting each other and attempting to be better, more open and loving, human beings.
'Support systems', sure, if you remove the oppressive context. But "open and loving human beings"? Man, you clearly weren't raised catholic or lutheran; they are some of the least open humans I've experienced and some of the harshest towards one another. In fact, they are almost entirely governed by guilt, oppression and suppression.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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In fact, they are almost entirely governed by guilt, oppression and suppression.
Just B.S. and ignorance.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Paul,
religion is worship of the supernatural, no more no less.
-sarc (for spider, et al)
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No BASE, no supernaturalist belief here...
"I know this because I sought advice from a Zen master when I was having unusual visual effects as the result of meditation and was told to just forget about them as they were makyo. However, they kept getting more intense so that wasn't very helpful. A tantric master however (tantra believes that where ever you are is a good place to start) was more than willing to work with me until I went on to the next phase and the next and the next." jan
another hate-religion rant? if so jgil, sorry
hey but what's this thread title called?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jgill asked "So are those experiential adventures?"
I suspect you know the answer. every moment is an experiential adventure.
For me what is important is what is your relationship to the moment. Am I engaged (fully open)with the moment or am I pushing it away or grasping at the experience.
John your art of dreaming experience obviously had a strong impression on you and was a powerful experience; I have had similar "big" experiences. I became attached to the experience and tried to define it and understand it and have them again which I did and still do from time to time. What I realized is I can't take the experience with me. It happens from moment to moment and changes moment to moment.
What is discursive view? Good question,probably wasn't necessary to say that; IMO it is attempting to think your way through an issue by defining it and in a way being done with it because now it is defined. Where as from a non discursive view you just be with it not attaching to any idea or feeling you have about it just letting them go by like clouds or noticing when you do attach them.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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healeyje, I think a lot of Christians are well aware of their shortcomings in the past and are making a lot of effort to overcome them. I too have always thought of Lutherans as rather austere but that was not the group I encountered. Perhaps it was the Boulder venue, or perhaps because it was a mixed congregation of several northern European ethnicities rather than just one small ethnic group. There are many factors at play in religion as in any other social situation.
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crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
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Sep 1, 2015 - 09:20pm PT
You couldn't strike anything worth the sh!t.
Atheists are frogs living in a deep well.
When these atheists are told there's a huge ocean they say it doesn't exist.
The atheists in the deep well never leave their well and thus remain stooopid and always make their stupid claims based only on their life in their well.
This is exactly the stupid fruitcake atheists platform always .....
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nice to see a (mostly) reasonable discussion that avoids metaphysics: applying a meditative experience to the nature of the physical universe.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"Where as from a non discursive view you just be with it not attaching to any idea or feeling you have about it just letting them go by like clouds or noticing when you do attach them." -pp
Yeah, that's how you zero in on a problem and solve it.
Thank atheist god for discursive thinking!
BREAKING NEWS!
Discursive thinking evolved for a reason.
Discursive thinking is a problem solving heuristic.
Because it's a problem for some doesn't mean
it's a problem for others.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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PSP you make a good point about not attaching to those experiences. Tantra and Yoga do also, but in a different manner. The sects of Buddhism are more differences in style of approach than different interpretations of some kind of truth. One is not better than another, they just represent different methods for different personalities. I like the baroque and byzantine, so zen was not my style. I guess that it's not jgill's either, but it really seems to work for you and I do enjoy your explanations. They make so much more sense than so much of what I have read about Zen ever did.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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(Christ is the only way etc.).
ONLY Jesus can forgive
: )
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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healeyje, I think a lot of Christians are well aware of their shortcomings in the past and are making a lot of effort to overcome them. I too have always thought of Lutherans as rather austere but that was not the group I encountered. Perhaps it was the Boulder venue, or perhaps because it was a mixed congregation of several northern European ethnicities rather than just one small ethnic group. There are many factors at play in religion as in any other social situation.
If only they were "in the past". All the catholics, lutherans or baptists I know are fully business as usual and I have relatives, in-laws and friends involved with all three - the only change I see is basically minority edge cases with the majorities highly resistant to change [for the better]. And to see real lutherans in all their severe glory you'd want to see them in the upper midwest - they rain down more guilt and disapproval than the chicago irish catholics I was raised among. But I'll grant you they are more intellectual, sophisticated and nuanced in their shame versus the baptists who raised / abused my wife as a child.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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The "supernaturalist types" on this thread, occupying at least three discrete genuses by my count, each occupy their own bubbles. No different than FOX News, there really ain't no reaching them, there ain't no getting them out.
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I feel so sorry for the European nations (esp Germany, Italy, Austria) being overrun today by nationals from the ME and Medit failed states. (1) It was so predictable. (2) These emigrants are bringing with them their antiquated belief systems (inner operating systems, if you prefer) and as soon as things don't work out for them they are going to fall back on these ancient and barbaric "support systems."
"No good deed goes unpunished."
What we see happening in this migration today - this year - is only a harbinger of things to come. Note the walls being built.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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religion is worship of the supernatural, no more no less.
Religion is a search for the absolute no more no less. It has nothing to do with the supernatural. By definition there can be no supernatural: there can be nothing beyond what is. Deities do not defy natural orders. The physical restraints of reality are the deities themselves. Your god, all our gods are the restrictions of time and the speed of light and the structure of matter and the things such physical restrictions suggest.
"No good deed goes unpunished."
No doubt, just ask Jesus. Ha!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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That's some "religion" you got there! lol
(Actually I wouldn't have a problem with it. It is quite "modern pantheistic" actually. But stand on a soap box in Islamabad and preach that bouffant, I dare you.)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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(Actually I wouldn't have a problem with it. It is quite "modern pantheistic" actually. But stand on a soap box in Islamabad and preach that bouffant, I dare you.)
I see, there are bad people in the world and they are religious, therefore religion is bad.
My suggestion: go talk to Socrates about that.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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What we see happening in this migration today - this year - is only the smallest harbinger of things to come. Note the walls being built.
This we can agree on. Overpopulation and mass migrations as a result, have been predicted since at least the 1950's. Personally, I think as things fall apart more and more, people will become more religious and more superstitious even in secular ways. When it's over and the survivors analyze what happened, I think the next phase of human history and belief systems will emphasize our place in nature and respecting it.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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The physical natural orders are Just, and the entire universe is the judge. You can do whatever behind closed doors or out in broad daylight. Call it supernaturalism but don't be so naive to think you'll get by without judgement by the universe.
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