1. Cape Town
    Joined
    14 Apr '05
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    52945
    21 Jan '08 10:17
    Originally posted by jaywill
    I'll have no regrets even if I turn out to be wrong. I'd trust in Christ all over again if I had to do so. I'd give myself completely to Jesus Christ even earlier in life. I could not have asked for a better life.
    For some reason that made me think of "better to have loved and lost than never loved at all".

    1. If you discovered a drug that made you extremely happy for the rest of your life, but had some undesirable side effects - for example it caused others in your family grief, would you continue to take it?

    2. If I could prove to you that converting to Scientology would lead to an even better and more fulfilling life, would you be willing to come for the initial brainwashing sessions?
  2. Hmmm . . .
    Joined
    19 Jan '04
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    22131
    22 Jan '08 07:051 edit
    Originally posted by jaywill
    [b]==========================
    Self-preservation is an instinct which keeps us alive long enough to figure out what the hell we're doing here.
    ================================


    That is all I was saying really about the scene of the man hurrying across the street. You see various forms of Buddhism are very influencial into convincing you that so mu ty much what you're left with.

    I found that to be eventually dreadfully empty.[/b]
    That is all I was saying really about the scene of the man hurrying across the street. You see various forms of Buddhism are very influential into convincing you that so much of life is an illusion.

    All I was saying was that noticing the practical response of self preservation shook me out of that mode of considering self and the world as illusionary or meaningless.


    Setting aside the point made about the instinct for self-preservation (though it is a point well-taken), it seems that you are using the word “meaning” here in its sense of “significance”. And that is the point of my question when I ask people what they mean by meaning: how they are using it in the discourse at hand, or in their own thinking.

    So, let’ say that the young man considered his life to have enough significance to want to continue it. And I think that your comments affirming how you have chosen to live go to that as well: how you live your life has significance in terms of the quality of that life. Now, here we are speaking of self-viewed significance: one’s life may have significance for others, for good or ill; and we may not even be aware of the significance they see in our life.

    Alan Watts (since you mentioned him! 🙂 ) once used the analogy of a symphony. If you are listening to a symphony, it’s significance (it’s “meaning” ) rests in its affect on you as you do so; that’s why you listen to it. In that setting, if one spends his time wondering how it’s all going to end, for example, one is likely to miss some of what is going on right now—and that is what experiencing the symphony is all about. [And I think that you have argued this yourself, in a Christian context.]

    Now, it is precisely because I see this life as transient that I see it as significant, no matter how it all comes out in the end. I do not see life as being imbued with significance by some exoteric source, nor do I see it as needing to be so imbued. The (self-composing, self-conducting) symphony is significant in itself, as itself. [And I suspect that our only real metaphysical differences lie in that parenthesis.]

    ____________________________________

    To clear up this notion of illusion—maya— a bit: Buddhists (and Vedantists and Taoist) seem to use that word in different ways, with different understandings. For some, it does seem to mean that the phenomenal world is not actual. That is not my view. I take the phenomenal world (including myself) to be actual manifestations of the whole. The old question of the one-and-the-many: Is there ultimately just one? The whole? The all-without-another? Yes (in my view). But that All clearly manifests in myriad forms. Of which I am one.

    Illusion, in that context, is to either claim that the manifestations are separate from the ground, or that there is only ground. Either one. To put it another way, for me to think that I am an enduring, separate being is illusion; to think that I am not an actual existing being—in and among all the others, and from and of the same ground—is also illusion. It is like saying that a symphony is just a bunch of scattered, separate notes, on the one hand; or that the symphony is not really composed of distinctly identifiable notes, on the other. Either view is illusory.

    Now, as to the question of meaning/meaninglessness in that context—

    Some Buddhists (and Vedantists, though likely not Taoists) see the whole as being mind: the one mind. I do not make that metaphysical leap, so I am closer to the Taoists (Zen Buddhists often seem to be). The human mind, as it has developed and evolved, is itself a phenomenal manifestation.

    And our mind is all we have to even ask these questions. We use the grammar of our own consciousness to try to decipher the syntax of our existence, but that grammar itself is part of that larger syntax. Our quest for meaning, our questions of personal significance, is carried out in terms of that grammar, and hence is inescapably participatory—and I would say, creative. The very raising of the conceptual question is a creative move. Meaning is not simply disclosed to us by some external agency; nor do we simply fabricate it ourselves without existential interaction with the phenomenal world of which we are part—the story that I make of my life is an interactive affair. That does not make it meaningless—at least to me.

    The particular variation that I play in the continuing symphony of existence will one day come to an end, and the symphony will continue without repeating that particular variation. I do not have sufficient hubris to think that my part is the whole composition; nor do I think that my part must continue forever. Right now, the symphony includes me. At this moment, without my participation, the symphony would be a different one: it would not be precisely this composition, but simply some other one.

    And so, the meaning of my life derives from my opportunity to play my existential variation in the symphony while I am here. I can play in concord with the whole symphony (as best as I can see it), or in discord. I may well have played some discordant notes, but I have come to think that playing in concord with the whole leads to a richer way of living, without denying the creativity of my own existential variation(s) (maybe like jazz: you’re the musician!). That is the way of the Tao.

    And that is why I can affirm your earlier statement as being of a kindred spirit, despite our various differences.
  3. Joined
    02 Aug '06
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    12622
    22 Jan '08 12:392 edits
    Originally posted by vistesd
    [b]That is all I was saying really about the scene of the man hurrying across the street. You see various forms of Buddhism are very influential into convincing you that so much of life is an illusion.

    All I was saying was that noticing the practical response of self preservation shook me out of that mode of considering self and the world as illusionary ...[text shortened]... can affirm your earlier statement as being of a kindred spirit, despite our various differences.
    [/b]

    I kind of like your analogy to symphonies because I have studied and known hundreds of great symphonies being at one time a composition major.

    I may write one myself as I do compose for a hobby.

    Now I would really have to go back and read your post again to get all your points. However, we believers in Jesus do not see the "end of history" as we know it as a state of static sameness, concluding all "movement".

    Eternal life implies endless variation, don't you think?

    The final symbolic picture in the Bible is of God in Christ on the throne flowing the river of the water of life into the city New Jerusalem. We undertand this as God dispensing Himself like a river, into His transformed and glorofied people.

    Sense the universe itself seems endless or virtually so, I see eternity as and stage upon which God continues to impart and dispense His divine riches of life into His people.

    It is true that a great symphony must come to a climax. However Haydn wrote 104 of them at least, Miakovsky 24, Havergal Brian about 34, Mozart about 41. They died so had to stop.

    God has eternity to compose many symphonies of Him imparting Himself into man. The counterpart of Christ is called His Bride and His Wife. That means to share a life together in some kind of divine romance for eternity.

    If the enjoyment of Christ has no boredom for me this afternoon there is no reason why I should expect it to in the age of the new heaven and new earth.

    Let me read though your post again.

    (Remember, on the third day He ROSE victorious)
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