From the point of view of us not being God the world may appear to be mainly a place of suffering and ignorance. After all, it is a place of birth, death, old age, and disease. And we don’t really know with certainty who we are, or the limits of our power, or the connection between desire and realisation of dreams etc. …
Continue readingFor a westerner embracing the dharmic tradition, the concept of nitya-baddha (sanskrit) – often translated as ever-conditioned or eternally conditioned soul – is routinely confused with the idea of fallen soul prominent in Abrahamic religions. A fallen soul, in simple terms, being one who has rebelled against God, and has thus been cast out of / banished from the kingdom of God. …
Continue readingIf one believes God exists, and God is perfect/all-powerful, one might reason that everything that comes from God must also be perfect. Us and this world included. If that is the case, how then are our lives and this world, along with all of its apparent horrors*, perfect?
To my mind, if everything comes from God, in a sense there is nothing but God. …
Continue readingPremise:
God exists. God is perfect and complete. Everything that emanates from God is likewise perfect and complete. Us and this world included. Seeming imperfect/flaw points to misunderstanding of purpose.
How are we and this world perfect?
Possible Purpose:
That God is benevolent and completely in control, yet at the same time bad things happen in this world is a problem for logical and rational thinkers. I think. If we embrace any idea that artificially distances God from something he/she is absolutely in control of, i.e. to explain the suffering of this world without implicating God … as most religions tend to do in one form or another (law of karma, natural law, punishment for sin, our fault, the devil) … even though at the same time believing not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of God aren’t we deceiving ourselves and turning our backs on logical and rational thinking? …
Continue reading1. God chooses to taste and explore rasa.
Our life adventures, dark or light/conscious or unconscious regardless, contribute, albeit in a small way, to the completeness of that exploration. How? Our personal experiences of emotion/feeling, by dint of our enternal jiva individuality, together with our current lifetime tailored conditioning, have a uniqueness about them, and thus value because they add to the completeness of God’s exploration. …
When I say I don’t believe in Karma, it’s not that I don’t believe in karma per se, but I don’t believe in karma as reaction to thought and/or deed that one is obliged to accept. I find that sort of understanding fundamentally incompatible with the divinity of the soul in that this idea of karma is simply a thinly disguised version of against-my-will-obliged. …
Continue readingBondage of karma, fallen soul etc., … this type of thinking can go unchallenged/sit comfortably with the idea that we are not God. That our being a separated part and parcel of God more or less minimises the fundamentals of our continued divinity. I feel this is a false argument … much in the vain of the passing of huge amounts of time makes the ideas of natural selection / random mutation / man from monkey / big bang / primordial soup / something-coming-from-nothing, seem plausible. …
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How strange it is that cultivation of the sense of ‘other’ is prominent in so many of the religions of the world? Surely understanding that everyone (and I’m not just talking about human beings) and everything comes from God is at the very ABC beginning of spiritual vision? That being the case, we are all family … brothers and sisters so to speak. …
Continue readingMany religions consider freedom from judgement of others a saintly quality. But how attainable is it for a person of faith? Especially when at the foundation of their existence are a number of huge personal judgements. For example
How is it possible to maintain such convictions, and at the same time whole heartedly celebrate the divinity and perfection of others – and especially when their life paths are opposed to your chiselled in stone truths? …
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