Meaning

"OM Mani Pedme Hung"
"Bow to the Jewel in the Lotus, OM!"

Each event, each entity,
each place echoes with
every other event, entity, and place.
'Echoes' is to bounce off, reflect, engage.
This also inside and outside of time and particular places.
Synchronicity of the Jung kind
reveals the role of meaning.
It is not just coincidence, this synchronicity,
it is also merged with meaning.
This is a clue to the depth of life.

Yes, the clue.
Meaning, overtly, is of a mind.
Yet a mind requires an object to function,
to establish meanings.
So it is in the midst of subject and object
that meaning arises - and where does meaning lodge?
In Knowing. Focussed intent, like ritual,
resonates with Knowing.

Meaning for whom and for what?
Where is the electron's meaning
in the quantum's double split?
Perhaps it is by meaning, established by connection
and pattern, inescapable resonances
that the form of our reality arises and emerges.

Can you imagine, friend, that all past, present and future
is one great interacting, interdependent living story,
complete in itself, perfect from a beginning that never was,
death finallly, a fiction -
not stagnantly static, but brimming with ever rolling
movement, potentiality and life?
An act of magic without a magician - or is there?
Perhaps it is You, whoever you are.

R.M.L.

Originally posted by Taoman
"OM Mani Pedme Hung"
...
Perhaps it is You, whoever you are.

R.M.L.

Thou Art

I Am

Om

_()_

Originally posted by Taoman
"OM Mani Pedme Hung"
"Bow to the Jewel in the Lotus, OM!"

Each event, each entity,
each place echoes with
every other event, entity, and place.
'Echoes' is to bounce off, reflect, engage.
This also inside and outside of time and particular places.
Synchronicity of the Jung kind
reveals the role of meaning.
It is not just coincidence, this synchroni ...[text shortened]... f magic without a magician - or is there?
Perhaps it is You, whoever you are.

R.M.L.

Thanks for the inspiration,.

"Meaning", a word like and akin to"purpose", is an easily misconstrued word.

Biologists refer to the "function" of something, not its "purpose" or "meaning".

The heart's function is to pump blood. This is ascertainable by studying it and does not vary from person to person, as can purpose and meaning. Assigning purpose or meaning is fine if you want to spiritualize the universe in order that it have purpose and meaning for you.

This is how chopping wood, carrying water, work -- reminding us that they are functions, not purposes or meanings. Being aware of the differences, regardless of whether you spiritualize the universe, is possible.

Originally posted by JS357
Thanks for the inspiration,.

"Meaning", a word like and akin to"purpose", is an easily misconstrued word.

Biologists refer to the "function" of something, not its "purpose" or "meaning".

The heart's function is to pump blood. This is ascertainable by studying it and does not vary from person to person, as can purpose and meaning. Assigning purpose or ...[text shortened]... of the differences, regardless of whether you spiritualize the universe, is possible.

Meaning - information, patterning, connecting, understanding, resonating.

These things appear to me to be happening both within my mind and outside my mind also. Perhaps this why we have bi-cameral brains, where one side is analytical and the other is more holistic and making the subtle connections of experience - emotional, psychological and physical. One side of our brain is more to fore at one point and then the other in a different circumstance, but in either case maintaining contact with both is unifying and completing, it appears to me.

I see meaning as much more than a simple association mechanism in our brains. It is, in the qualities described above, the underlying nature of existence. We are co-producers of meaning within a constantly meaning confronting and resolving existence.

Synchronicity is more than just coincidence, it presents meaning-filled (for the experiencer) events in time and space that arise without any interference or preparation from our part, and often very surprising and jolting for that reason. There is more here than meets the eye, or fathomed by a reason restricted in its wider awareness.

Thank you.

No meaning to life,though.

Originally posted by karoly aczel
No meaning to life,though.

self

Originally posted by mikelom
self

There you go...

So we could start calling Atheism "Selfism"?

Sounds about right.

Originally posted by Suzianne
There you go...

So we could start calling Atheism "Selfism"?

Sounds about right.

No, its outright wrong. Atheism simply means 'not believing in a God/gods. Any other claim about a common belief / property of atheists is doomed to be wrong. Its as stupid as saying "left handed people are conservatives".

Originally posted by Suzianne
There you go...

So we could start calling Atheism "Selfism"?

Sounds about right.

"[T]he Mass, or, as it is sometimes called, the divine liturgy or the Eucharist, is the most solemn of all the Christian sacraments. Through it we are led step by step to the purpose of our earthly lives -- union with the divine -- for at its climax the faithful are made one with God and each other by receiving the body and blood of Christ under the earthly forms of bread and wine."

http://gnosis.org/gnosis_eucharist1.html

It is the above sense of self (or Self) that may be intended here. Or at least, this wording might be the closest that traditional Christianity can get to "getting it" instead of misinterpreting it as small-self egocentrism.



“In Mahayana philosophy this divinity, the Self, was known as the Buddha-nature—the ultimate, eternal and universal principle of which all things are manifestations. In Sanskrit it is called Tathata or ‘Suchness’, a term which has a close affinity with the Chinese Tao or the ‘Way of things’. This principle is described as the Buddha-nature because to be a Buddha means that one has realized one's identity with Tathata, with the one true Self which is not conditioned by distinctions between ‘I’ and ‘You’, ‘Me’ and ‘Mine’, ‘This’ and ‘That’” (p. 29).

...
"In a word, to study the big Self is to forget the little self that self-help Zennists seem to be wallowing in."

http://zennist.typepad.com/zenfiles/2011/04/alan-watts-on-the-big-self.html

Originally posted by Suzianne
There you go...

So we could start calling Atheism "Selfism"?

Sounds about right.

Well for some a lack of belief in the supernatural is perhaps
replaced with a belief in oneself. I see nothing negative in that.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
Well for some a lack of belief in the supernatural is perhaps
replaced with a belief in oneself. I see nothing negative in that.

Besides being incredibly short-sighted when one prefers this to the Glory of God?

Originally posted by JS357
"[T]he Mass, or, as it is sometimes called, the divine liturgy or the Eucharist, is the most solemn of all the Christian sacraments. Through it we are led step by step to the purpose of our earthly lives -- union with the divine -- for at its climax the faithful are made one with God and each other by receiving the body and blood of Christ under the earthly fo ...[text shortened]... owing in."

http://zennist.typepad.com/zenfiles/2011/04/alan-watts-on-the-big-self.html

The page you quoted on the Gnosis.org site on the Mass was excellent. I particularly enjoyed the part on "C.G. Jung and the Mass" since my studies in psychology led me to Jung, and had I continued my education to a doctorate, I probably would have followed a Jungian approach in my own practice. It was also his interest in the occult which led to my own path into the occult, but I have since come to regard that as a dead-end, and I am confident that Jung would have eventually done so himself.

I wasn't so familiar with this concept of Self (big Self) in Buddhism. Interesting that they got so close to the right answer but couldn't quite make the final leap (of Faith? ).

All in all, thanks for the links. 🙂

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, its outright wrong. Atheism simply means 'not believing in a God/gods. Any other claim about a common belief / property of atheists is doomed to be wrong. Its as stupid as saying "left handed people are conservatives".

As they say, "In Soviet Russia, the concept avoids you."



You're so quick to jump on the concept that I don't understand Atheism that you miss the concept I was illuminating.

It's like stepping into a conversation with the dictionary definition to something after someone tells a joke. You just demonstrate your lack of a sense of humor.

Originally posted by Suzianne
As they say, "In Soviet Russia, the concept avoids you."



You're so quick to jump on the concept that I don't understand Atheism that you miss the concept I was illuminating.

It's like stepping into a conversation with the dictionary definition to something after someone tells a joke. You just demonstrate your lack of a sense of humor.

I knew twighthead did not have a sense of humor. 😏

Originally posted by Suzianne
There you go...

So we could start calling Atheism "Selfism"?

Sounds about right.

Tut tut.
the ego is selfish.
Everyone has an ego woman!

atheist and theist alike, none can escape it.