History

I've decided that due to the nature of the Analects of Confucius (which I am writing my paper on) I needed a stronger historical understanding of the context that informed what Confucius' teachings. Most interestingly, I've found that the context that many ancient religious movements started in was because of the increased efficiency of production when civilizations moved into what's called the iron age. The increased abundance allowed huge parts of the populace to specialize their labor in ways that where not possible before. This produced huge problems as societies tried to restructure their social systems in order to accommodate the new economic reality and new social classes. During this transition period many still influential religions and systems of thought arose, such as Buddhism, classical Greek thought, the first Abrahamic prophets, as well as the great Chinese thinkers appearing during this transition.

It makes me wonder if we are going through a similar transition now. We have very recently, in historical terms, undergone a revolution in abundance. Humans, in some places, have far more than just their needs taken met by the modern economy. Do we have a modern spiritual crisis that is analogous to this ancient one?

Australian Buddhism

This is a documentary about a particularly successful group of monks from the Thai Forest tradition in Perth, Australia. It gives an interesting account of Buddhism adapting to the west. The documentary was, however, produced by Buddhists very sympathetic to this particular monastery and I would say that it crosses the line between sympathetic portrayal and open laudation quite regularly.

Freedom of Speech and Islam

For an American one of the most disconcerting things about Islam in Middle Eastern public life is that it seems like conservative Muslims have no tolerance for any sort of criticism. If a Qur'an is burnt, or an image of the prophet or god is shown on TV, there is the very real threat of violence. In the west, religion is constantly criticized, as is the lack of religion, and all religions different popular forms. There is a constant back and forth, but no one expects to be physically harmed as a result.

This may be because we are in a very lucky position of religious plurality, where there is so much diversity of belief that one group could never get away with violently attacking another without making all the other groups insecure and hostile to that one group. That plurality may be very deeply ingrained due to the United States being home to many different Christian sects even before other faiths where widely introduced. In many parts of the Middle East Islam is the only religion, and religious conservatives may thus feel more secure in acting violently.

Response to "Power of Words"

That's shocking and bizarre! Considering that so many people are turned off from religion precisely because of this pushiness. Even when missionaries are not being pushy people tend to avoid them.

I wonder if this is something wrong with the christian 'brand?' I'll admit I get a bit anxious when those missionaries are camping out in the marketplace and handing out materials. Usually I'd go up and look at a few free books just to see what they say if their being given away, but there's something about middle aged men in suits purveying books with tastelessly designed covers, that I'm pretty sure are going to tell me I'm going to hell, that scares me away and makes me less welcoming.


Original post here

Response to Biological Repression

Original post here

Do Christians have any spiritual practices available to them besides prayer, celebrating mass, and applying the moral teachings of their faith? The entire point of Buddhism is the path, the metaphysical stuff comes second to that. In Christianity it seems like you affirm your beliefs and are done with it. Fasting seems more like a physical act of self hatred of the body, and I don't quite understand what that has to do with Jesus' message. Maybe this acquaintance of yours is trying to achieve union with Brahma through self denial?

I have a vague understanding of religious history in Europe and it seems that beleif in biological repression comes from Manichaeism, which thought that the flesh was evil and humans should instead try to side with God and affirm their souls supremacy. Considering we are made of flesh and I think there is little doubt that consciousness is a byproduct of flesh, there is a clear danger in accepting this doctrine.

NTC Bans Religions Parties from Running

Al Jazeera reported today that the National Transitional Counsel in Libya is banning parties based on religion. This is a very surprising and interesting move. The Arab spring was set off by young college educated citizens who where extremely liberal compared with the rest of society. Now that elections are being held, it is clear that the rest of the population is still deeply conservative. The question on the table is weather Islam can be compatible with a liberal democratic state like the young protesters have demanded. In Tunisia the moderate Islamic party that won a plurality of seats in the government, Ennahda, is very promising in this respect.

The article on Al Jazeera can be found here.

Mohamed in Medina

Very glad to be reading this Armstrong book. My understanding the life of the prophet Muhammad and Medina was that Mohamed left Mecca and returned with an army to capture Mecca after several decades. This sheds allot more light on that period, and I'm interested to see what actually does happen when Islam gains control of Mecca.

I also found it very interesting the Islam grows and modifies itself over the life of the Prophet. Very distinctly when he changes the direction of prayer for Muslims from Jerusalem to Mecca.

Armstrong's Aproach

Karen Armstrong's approach to understanding Mohamed and Islam heavily relies on economic and social information of the time. Of course, this is just the beginning o the book and she may change her strategy as the book goes on. I was hoping for a discussion of modern Muslim practices and modern Muslim beliefs, but I suppose we will get this indirectly as the book goes on.

Reading The Book of Mormon

When I went to Utah during vacation one summer (don't ask) I was intrigued to find hotel rooms stocked with The Book of Mormon instead of the requisite Gideon's Bible. Of course I took one of these free copies, being the last person to pass up a free book, and The Book of Mormon has been sitting on my shelf ever since.

I have made a few abortive attempts to start it in the past, and while it is infinitely more readable than the Old Testament, I never quite developed the taste for it. Despite my misgivings it seems eminently clear that Mormonism is one of the most important minority religions in America, it would be wise to make an attempt to understand it. With a possible Mormon president around the corner, Mormonism is here to stay and will certainty become an increasingly important social and political force in the United States over the course of our life times.

I will also admit a certain amount of fear. While the predominant secular ideology's of mainstream Catholics, protestants, and persons of no faith have provided an atmosphere of incredible religious and social tolerance, it seems that Mormonism goes hand in hand with a sort of intrusive social conservatism imposed by legislation.

Does the Dhammapada Make Sense?

I've heard extramly mixed responses to the Dhammapada over the last week or so. I've heard from some classmates that it's contradictory, and Buddhism just doesn't make sense. When talking it over with JonDavid (blog here) he said he had exactly the opposite problem, the Dhammapada made so much sense he didn't have anything to blog about.

I suppose I can see where both groups are coming from. I know I was certainly knocking my head of a wall when I first read the Dhammapada because of the seemingly esoteric doctrines of Buddhism. The Dhammapada isn't a book that lays out some systematized doctrine, it can be taken line by line and you'll still get something out of it.

On Rerererererereading the Dhammapada

I got a copy of Thanissaro Bikkhu's translation of the Dhammapada in the mail the other day. This translator is a Theravada monk based out of the Metta Forest Monastery in California. Reading and rereading the Dhammapada always impresses on me the importance of practice.

I think that is the thing that attracted me to Buddhism that I didn't see in any religion at the time. It's the practice that matters, and when you practice it will actually do something for you. It is not affirming your belief in dogma or prayer, it's a real thing, even if like in any religion it's not for sure. In Buddhism revelation and mystery isn't something to be handed to you, in fact, it can never be handed to you. You can be told about it, to a certain extent, then you have to get there yourself. The Dhamma is latent in the very nature of existence.

Where did Easwaran get his Dhyanas?

Jhanas, called by Easwaran by their sanskrit name dhyanas, are centrally important to Buddhism. They are, arguably (of course), the original invention of the Buddha that makes Enlightenment possible. So my question is: Where did Easwaran get his conception of the jhanas?

There are a million and one doctrinal disputes about everything in Buddhism, but there are things that are generally accepted that Easwaran ignored. While 'jhana' is the Buddha's preferred word to use for what we call 'meditation' the jhanas are a series of refined states possible in meditation, the four jhanas are not the four levels of mediation. I've also never seen his description of what it is like to experience those states anywhere else.

I suppose I would just be happy if he told us what his canonical source he referenced, teacher he learned from, or else why he synthesized his understanding of the Dhamma in this way.

Dhammapada Translations

An excellent site for Buddhist materials in general is Access to Insight. Here are two translations of the Dhammapada that are freely available on that site:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/index.html

Another Biased Post

In my last post I bemoaned a perceived movement in charistianity from it's 'authentic' roots, the mission that it origionaly set out on. In this post I want to complain about the changes in christianity after Jesus.

My own personal beliefs very strongly side with the Jesus Crossan extracts from his studies. Egalitarianism, fighting an occupation, and compassion to the marginalized sounds fantastic. The Christianity after Jesus, starting with Paul, just seems so irrelevant to me compared Jesus' original ideas. Pauline Christianity seems even distasteful when Crossan seems to describe the Pauline movement as a movement more about the leadership of Christianity more than anything rather more important like radical egalitarianism.

Commensality to Payment

I find the discussion of the evolution from commensality to payment to be a uniquely interesting insight. I'm a bit of a materialist, I think it is reasonable to assume that the way that people act is tied to how they live, and in the case of Jesus' followers this change would seem to represent not only a change in organization, but an associated change in belief. It almost seems like some sort of unfortunate loss of authenticity.

From Radical Comensality to Reactionary Comensality

This weekend I watched a very unique documentary called Into Great Silence, about the daily lives of the monks at the Grande Chartreuse, which is the seat of the Carthusian order of monks in the Catholic church. At one point the monks are eating together while one brother reads a book of monsatic rules which I couldn't identify, but it was a text something like the rule of St. Benedict, and at one point it began talking about proper behavior if one must pass through a town. I cannot find the text (likely because the subtitles where a freelance translation) but it it specifically prohibited 'entering the house of seculars' or eating or drinking anything while in the area.

This naturally stuck out like a sore thumb to me after reading the Cross an text. I'm honestly not sure why this change took place in Christianity. What was it in Christianity that changed? Was it the simple fact that it went from being a peasent's movement to something institutionalised and thus became antipopulist in exactly the way it was populist in the beginning?

Crossan Against Egalitarianism

I suppose I bent the parameters of the Q&A a bit to discuss this, but I think it was interesting to note Crossan's response to radical egalitarianism as presented by Jesus. The only example he used was electing the president of the United States by lottery and then going on to say that we are not ready for it. Of course I'm biased myself in the way of radical egalitarianism, which is why this stuck out to me.

Despite this I don't think his bias will harm his conclusions significantly. If he was that sort of scholar I think he would have not included that section at all.

The Need to Evangelize

Along with the Crossan book I'm also reading Journey to the East by Liam Brockey. I borrowed it from Freel, incase anyone is interested when I'm done. Journey to the East is a history (and at some points an analysis) of the Jesuit mission to China from its earliest beginning to 1724.

The history is a bit dry and, by the nature of the mission, repetitive; this missionary arrives, moves to a city, meets with little success, repeat. What is striking though, and what connects this more modern Christianity to the Christianity immediately after Jesus, is the faith of these men and their desire to spread Christianity in foreign lands. I would submit that it is this desire to gain converts, as much as any bending to suit cultural beliefs, that caused early Christians to write a non-biographical account of the life of Jesus.

The New Text

The transition from the Gita to the Crossan text is quite jarring. They are almost extremes in two directions. Where the Gita is a brilliant archetype for a poetic and religious text, the Crossan text is extremely academic, though it is aimed at popular audiences. I do rather enjoy the straight forward nature of this text though I miss the poetics.

Hindu Ideas Emergent in American Culture

One of the most striking things about the Bhagavad Gita's message is the occasional (or not so occasional) connections you get back to western culture. A strong theme in Hinduism in the Gita and from what we have been discussing in class is that there may be many gods but they are all aspects of the same god/god-head/unifying spirit (still slightly struggling with the concept of what exactly that is.)

In neo-paganism there are two major strands of thought dealing with the nature of the gods. The less popular is that they are all separate entities that acted out what happened in the myths. The more popular strain of thought may have been influenced by Hinduism, and that is that the gods are all aspects of the same God and/or ultimate reality. Some neo-pagans also consider the gods to ultimately be man made images that need to be left behind if one wants to mystically approach the true divine.

The Gunnas

When reading about the gunnas in the Bhagavad Gita I cant help but think of the humors of classical Greece. I'm not sure if these gunnas are a physical thing or entirely mental, but certainly an interesting, sort of psudo-scientific, way to look at human motivations.

My Dilema

This is the dilemma I used for the first phase of my essay:

"Lacking the capacity for any normal form of rebellion as a young 12/13 year old humanities nerd, I thought it would be interesting to study other religions and choose one for my own. I read all sorts of books with no interference from my parents, who are at least shaky in their Christian faith, but I will never forget when I finally persuaded them to let me buy a Koran. “Its fine to read anything you want,” said my father In a deadly tone I had never heard before “but always remember you are a Christian.” Unfortunately by that time I had already decided I was a Buddhist (though my knowledge of the Dhamma was rather thin) and I was wondering when I should tell my parents. After that incident I shut up. As I learned more about Buddhism however it was clear that I should never ever lie, especially to my parents. I eventually told them the year before I left for college, where it turned out they didn't particularly care!"

Rebirth and Liberation

Similar to the view presented in the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism's central proposal is rebirth and the suffering of continuous life. This proposal is hugely counter intuitive to the western mind, and in fact in some neo-pagan philosophy it is the embracing of eternal life that leads to the end of suffering. Instead of trying to reach enlightenment, one should be happy with and find comfort in rebirth.

Self and self in the Gita

One of the most striking things about Bhagavad Gita is the clear demarcation between the Self (capital S) and the self. According to the glossary the 'Self is translated from the word Ātman which means "the innermost soul of every creature, which is divine." Sanskrit's use as a language for the divine and mystical experiences would explain why it would have specialized words to describe different parts of the spiritual mind, beyond the basic English 'self.'

The Ātman has nothing to do with the self in the conventional sense, and seems to be more like the equivalent of a soul. The self, a mental construct conducive to attachment to the world, is actually an obstruction to finding the Self/Ātman/soul. So interestingly the philosophy that the Gita puts forward is the opposite of an egoist philosophy that emphasizes the denial of the self in order to advance towards unity with God.

What is peace?

I'm Brian Fitzpatrick, a rather nondescript anglo-irish kid from a medium sized town in eastern Massachusetts called Tewksbury. One of my earliest experiences regarding religion was in school, there had been a snow storm going all day and right before we were about to leave for home the principle announced over the intercom "Due to weather conditions CCD has been canceled for today." Every student in my line of sight cheered. Now I wasn't a Catholic (which I found out that day put me in the minority in Tewksbury) but I knew that CCD was as boring as Sunday school, just like everything else to do with church.

After that when I became a teenager I developed a healthy fear of death, and like many teenagers, went window shopping for a spiritual palliative for my troubles. The thing was no matter how much I wanted to surrender to certain interesting and exotic beliefs I was also a natural skeptic who couldn't quite believe in things I hadn't seen or couldn't be proved.

At this time I have found two doctrines that I do have deep faith in that are not necessarily mutually compatible. Maybe primarily I am a Buddhist, I started with the doctrines I could take up as obviously true and I trust in the ones that I can't yet verify myself. In Buddhism all metaphysical doctrine are secondary to practice, and through practice you supposedly will find the truth of the metaphysical doctrine.

My second faith wouldn't be conventionally called a faith, but if you (like me) define religion as an ideology where you find comfort it counts. I am a marxist/communist/anarchist/leftist believer. Now that's sort of an ambiguous title, but fundamentally it means I believe in the rational progression of history, and that at the heart of that progression is Great Crime committed by the ruling classes against the rest of us.

So that should be the last of my self-centered ramblings for the course, I felt it best to get that bit out of the way before I assumed some level of neutrality for the rest of my posts. I really enjoy exploring this topic in my own time and I can't wait to have some interesting discussions with y'all.