Four Defects of the Conditioned Soul Posted in: Belief and Truth

Anyone who embarks on an adventure with eastern thinking cannot help but come across the notion of the ‘Four Defects of the Conditioned Soul’.

Imperfect Senses (Karanapatava)
Illusion (Pramada)
Mistakes (Bhrama)
Cheating (Vipralipsa)

… 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. …

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Admitting I Don’t Know Is Good For My Spiritual Progress Posted in: Faith

A 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. …

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Why Me? vs. How Does It Serve Me? Posted in: One And Different, The Self Divine

Achintya-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. …

The Problem With Karma Posted in: God On Our Side, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God, The Self Divine

One 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. …

The Fallacy of Perceived Truth Posted in: Belief and Truth, God On Our Side

We 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. …

Everything Is Contrived Posted in: Belief and Truth

If 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? …

Precious Time (song lyric with analysis) Posted in: What are we doing here?

The lyric of this song is a bit of a rant against what I consider the dumbed-down values and social expectations placed upon us by government/corporations in 2012 UK society (perhaps this is a global trend?) – together with my observation that generations presently growing up do not realise that just a few decades ago ideas like sending small babies to daycare so mum can hurry back to the work place, or the necessity of both partners working just to make ends meet would have seemed outrageous. …

My Part Of Me (song lyric with analysis) Posted in: One And Different, What are we doing here?

The lyric of my song is an imagined conversation between God and a soul, loosely based on the two-bird-in-a-tree analogy found in the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad … but presented strictly in terms of my own understanding 🙂

Free listen/download of song at
http://www.songsofdave.com/song-details.php?id=262

Verse 1
So if you want me
Know where to look
Find my number
It’s in the book

‘So’ to convey this is not the beginning of the dialogue, ‘Know’ intended as both suggestion and acknowledgement. …

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