Thoughts on the notion of eternal, beginningless conditioning of the jiva (soul) Posted in: Perfection in Seeming Imperfection, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

In this connection the reference sanskrit words are nitya-baddha (eternally conditioned) and anadi (beginningless).

Firstly, our experience of life here makes it difficult to think outside the box of cause and effect – where everything has a beginning and end in time. However that is precisely the eternal arena that the words nitya-baddha and anadi are dealing with. This difficulty is perhaps the reason that even sanskrit scholars and/or dharma-tradition religionists who accept the situation in the material world for the conditioned soul is anadi, beginningless, sometimes prescribe remedies as if suffering here is actually caused by poor attitude toward God of historic origin. …

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Maybe Sin Is Not An Actual Thing Posted in: Perfection in Seeming Imperfection, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

Maybe sin is not an actual thing.

More a way of explaining why we are here, and at the same time not blaming God for the suffering of the world.

Needed by those who doubt good reason for God’s creation.

An attempt to distance God from what appears to be unworthy … incompatible with an all-beautiful, all-perfect, all-powerful God.

Personally, given (my) conviction that not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of the Lord, I find the ‘sin’ explanation fails to convincingly separate the situation here from God. …

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God Is Not To Blame Posted in: Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

So long as a believer characterises this world as primarily a place of ignorance and suffering they have a problem in connecting it closely with God. Especially if they also embrace the idea that not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of the lord. And God is all powerful and all loving. I believe it is for this reason that the majority of religions seek, through various means, to separate God from the goings on here. …

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Trouble is, if everything comes from God … Posted in: Perfection in Seeming Imperfection, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God, What are we doing here?

To tell someone who strongly feels they are suffering, and/or this world is very much a place of misery, that they are not in fact suffering at all, and not a fallen soul being punished for their sins, but a divine part of God eternally engaged in the beautiful divine lila (pastimes) of God is unlikely to resonate positively. Reality of suffering is so proven and real that such a idea is more likely lead to negative judgement about God. …

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Suffering By The Will Of God? Posted in: Aggressor-Victim, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

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? …

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. …

Why Do We Suffer? Posted in: Aggressor-Victim, Divine Expression, God On Our Side, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

While sitting in the comfort of ones’ armchair it’s easy to philosophise that whatever comes to us we desire on some level or another. Indeed many ‘new-age’ programmes of self-empowerment revolve around this idea, and certainly it seems to sit very well with the notion of our divinity.

However, when faced with suffering, the idea that it is coming to us only because we want is less appealing. …

Where is the Love? Posted in: Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

Haiti Earthquake, Jan 12th 2010 – if God loves us, and is in control … how can one reconcile that idea with the horror and tragedy of such a huge scale natural disaster?

OK … everyone still has an individual experience of death/loss of loved ones, as in the normal course of life. And perhaps those who lose their life are not particularly aware that they are dying as part of a mass loss of life. …

The Food Chain … Where is God’s Love? Posted in: Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

Beautiful and wonderful as nature undoubtedly is, it has a very dark side as well: The body of one species is always food for another. We call this the food chain.

For most species, their choice of food seems to happen instinctively. By design you could say.

The body of one species being food for another … where is God’s love in this design? …