In pondering my own mortality, and in particular the temporary nature of life on Earth, I stumbled into a comparing of my life here with the taking of a vacation.
That a vacation is temporary is not normally perceived as a problem. And that a holiday is not forever is not actually thought of as an impediment to enjoyment of the holiday. …
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Just saying …
So we are faced with three different truths about the shape of an object seen by three separate people. The object is a either round, square or a strange shape … surely they cannot all be correct?
You say it’s round I say no, it’s a square, another says it’s a strange shape. But imagine our seeing ability is restricted to just one eye … i.e. …
Continue readingAnyone who embarks on an adventure with eastern thinking cannot help but come across the notion of the ‘Four Defects of the Conditioned Soul’.
… and the argument that these defects prevent determination of dependable truth, especially in the matter of the meaning and/or purpose of human life.
But the widely recommended solution – submission to infallible authority of guru-sastra-sadhu* – to my mind does not automatically remove one’s personal limitations from their truth-equation. …
Continue readingA follower of religion might fear that by admitting any uncertainty they risk losing their faith. Easier and safer (and certainly more cosy) to just pretend I know rather than I choose to believe … and bury deep any doubting thought as the work of a devil. That somehow it is a fundamental to maintaining and cultivating faith that one never entertains any type of doubting. …
Continue readingAchintya-Bheda-Abheda is a school of Vedanta representing the philosophy of inconceivable one-ness and difference. In Sanskrit achintya means ‘inconceivable’, bheda translates as ‘difference’, and abheda translates as ‘non-difference’.
Achintya-Bheda-Abheda, as explained at Wikipedia
The big difficulty for me with this philosophy is how to overcome the inconceivable part. That there is a simultaneous one-ness and difference between/with God and everything (us included) that emanates from God. …
Continue readingOne often finds the sanskrit word karma translated as action or work. But sometimes, and especially in the western mind, people take it to mean reaction rather than action, or something subtle that binds one to the cycle of birth and death (samsara) — administered by some sort of unseen cosmic debt collecting task-force requiring balance in the universe be restored. …
Continue readingWe find it relatively easy to dismiss as false or deluded the truths of others … especially when they don’t tally with our own. We might consider them ridiculous, unbelievable, inconceivable, implausible, or even insane. No more thought required.
But what if the same processes apply to us that make such ‘wrong’ truths acceptable, or even absolute, to others? In other words, our finding something believable – real – true, no matter how implausible to another, is arrived at in fundamentally the same way as theirs is. …
Continue readingAccording to Vedic thought, planet Earth is located in the midway planetary system (Bhu-loka), and our present time is near the beginning of Kali Yuga, the last of the four cyclic ages.
Planet Earth, as a middle level planet, is not typically a place where enlightened beings tend to take birth. Compared to the other three yugas, Kali Yuga is characterised as the age of least enlightenment. …
Continue readingIf everything is simply the imaginings and role-plays of God, then surely everything is contrived: God is pretending – contriving – not to be god for the sake of achieving some specific experience and enjoyment?
What we generally mean by contrived is something we consider to be concocted for a less worthy objective. But is not worthiness of objective a subjective (contrived) judgement? …
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