"While you have an active libido and know much about lust, love is of no concern."
"...usually very sexual, but not passionate. There is sex, but no love."
"You fixate on lust and sex. But what of love? Do you know anything about it? Ever really experienced it?"
"It strikes me as sad that a man would still behave like a sex starved teen."
"...a shallow, superficial man feverishly clinging onto his fading youth."
"I often think I give you more credit than anyone else."
"I don't think you can understand what it's like to fight personal demons."
"I don't think you worry about the 'sins of thought'. I'm willing to bet you indulge them without any consideration as to where those thoughts may take you."
"You could never understand this because you see virtue and morality as antiquated concepts, misplaced in our world."
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
melt furnace operator
My furnace breathes before me,
a gray giant, all steel and brick
shuddering red-blue flame
roaring loud enough to burn the words we utter in awe.
I serve at this leviathon,
a cook whose silver aluminum soup
roils in the maw of a monster
always hungry for more.
We offer a constant charge of man's detritus:
old cans, radiators, lawn chairs, engine castings
discarded shapes, the bent and broken
sinking into the melt to be made new again.
When people tour my plant, visitors, tourists of some industrial zoo,
here in their leisure to watch men at work,
"Hotter'n Hell," is what they all say.
But they're wrong.
Hell is not hot; hell is cold.
Hell is not this blistering job.
Hell is being frozen in place,
a life unchanging and unchangeable and wrong.
I tend my furnace in despair,
my frozen hell a poor counterpoint
to the infinite liquid possibilities of the metal before me.
Until I see my chance
and clamber up on the sill.
My boots smoke, and my wool coat begins to singe
before I launch myself,
not into hell,
but out of it,
thawing my heart the only way I have left.
seeking renewal and rebirth.
a gray giant, all steel and brick
shuddering red-blue flame
roaring loud enough to burn the words we utter in awe.
I serve at this leviathon,
a cook whose silver aluminum soup
roils in the maw of a monster
always hungry for more.
We offer a constant charge of man's detritus:
old cans, radiators, lawn chairs, engine castings
discarded shapes, the bent and broken
sinking into the melt to be made new again.
When people tour my plant, visitors, tourists of some industrial zoo,
here in their leisure to watch men at work,
"Hotter'n Hell," is what they all say.
But they're wrong.
Hell is not hot; hell is cold.
Hell is not this blistering job.
Hell is being frozen in place,
a life unchanging and unchangeable and wrong.
I tend my furnace in despair,
my frozen hell a poor counterpoint
to the infinite liquid possibilities of the metal before me.
Until I see my chance
and clamber up on the sill.
My boots smoke, and my wool coat begins to singe
before I launch myself,
not into hell,
but out of it,
thawing my heart the only way I have left.
seeking renewal and rebirth.
Monday, September 10, 2007
I get into the oddest email "discussions"
>First let me say that I don't want to come across like I'm trying to
>tear down your belief system.
That's okay. I don't know what your purpose is or what you get out of it, but it makes me think a little bit so carry on.
>Okay, so Zen is testable and its only value is whether or not it works
>for you? Couldn't the same be said for Scientology or Islam?
I think so, or at least, I don't see why not.
>It doesn't matter whether it's religion per say, if it "works for you."
That's fine. Just because I don't think it's a religion, doesn't mean all the rest of the zennies agree with me, and most don't. There are, after all, many of the trappings of religion associated with Zen Buddhism: priests, monks, nuns, monastaries. In the face of all that, I don't think it's a religion, but mine is a minority viewpoint.
>Consequently, the truth isn't necessarily relevant.
I think that statement does not follow from anything and I don't see how you suddenly jump to that conclusion. I'd point out that truth is very relevant since, for many people, the aim of zen could be said to be simply direct knowledge or experience of truth, so I think it's very relevant.
> What is beneficial to the subject is. Which tells me that Zen is not even
>remotely interested in the advancement of truth or scientific theory.
Well, you're running off the track here, but I'd agree that zen is not particularly concerned with promoting anything or advancing anything, at least not in the sense that you mean here. But how you can say that someone seeking knowledge of truth is not "remotely interested in the advancement of truth" is a bit odd.
> It is a system of living designed solely to enhance the subjective
> perspective of any individual who digs it.
From the outside, at first glance, I can understand how you get that impression, and it's not totally wrong, just incomplete. There's nothing to attain by the practice, nothing special about zen people, nothing special about zen itself that's not present elsewhere. Don't think of it as a path that leads anywhere. There's nothing at the end to reach would be a better way of saying it maybe.
>Why not just drink lots of wine. You'll get the same result.
No. You absolutely won't get the same result. As I said above, there's not some pot of gold to be won. There is NO RESULT at all. Forget cause and effect because they don't apply. It's not some practice to make you feel better. It's neither hedonism nor asceticism.
> Like C.S. Lewis says: "I didn't go to religion to make myself
> happy. I always knew a bottle of port could do that."
The purpose of zen practice is not to make me happy. The purpose of zen practice is zen practice. That's it. There's nothing else. Nothing in sight, including some nebulous goal of feeling better.
>All philosophical systems change perspective, religions or not.
That may be true. I dunno. I'd agree that knowledge changes one's perspective. How's that?
>question is, why change perspective at all?
Good question. Again, I don't know why. It just seems to happen naturally. I'm not sure that changing perspective should be a goal or should be the impetus for choosing a philosophy or religion.
>you are desiring your own good first and implementing a
>certain practice for that purpose.
No. That implies that there's a goal, and that zen is a tool to reach that goal. That's wrong. I realize that many people come to zen (and other religions for that matter) exactly for that reason, but it's a wrong-headed approach in this case.
> In other words, you didn't come to Zen and have
>your perspective changed. You came to Zen to change your perspective,
I'm sure that happens, but not in my case. As I said, I had these experiences, thoughts, questions, whatever for years and years and only stumbled across zen as something that explains what I've ALREADY experienced. Now, intellectually, the study of zen can certainly codify and systemitize my knowledge, but that's not zen practice. That's just useless intellectual masturbation.
>of course is exactly what you would expect to happen. First, you
>desire a change in perspective because you aren't digging on your current one.
>Then, you try various things to get the perspective you want. The fact that
>Zen gives you what you want is not because it's intrinsically valid. It's
>because you came into this thing wanting what Zen gives.
For some people, possibly that's why they take up the practice, but not in my case. I'm being totally honest when I say I had no intention of ever getting involved in any particular religion. I didn't come to zen practice because I desired a change in perspective. I simply got curious about my own thoughts, and in my never-ending reading came across things that seemed to fit what I thought. I had nothing in mind as a perspective I wanted, because I didn't know what perspective I had in the first place. How could I want what I didn't even know was there?
Again, forget this goal-oriented stuff. There's no goal.
>Like Zen, prayer produces a result.
Well, I'm not certain that zen produces anything, but I'll agree that meditation and prayer both can have measurable physical physiological psychological and maybe other results.
>Whatever in reality happened is irrelevant.
I disagree that reality is irrelevant.
> "Prayer doesn't change God. It changes us."
Amazingly enough, I think that one is true.
>Likewise, with Zen, you practice and you get a result.
No, you simply practice zen. There is no result to "get."
>because the real change in perspective occurs the minute we want our
>perspective to change.
There's something to that, but again, that's not been my experience. Maybe I'm atypical or stupid? I'll admit to a desire to be better than I am or have been, but if I were looking for a system to bring that result about, zen would be last damned place to look.
>This makes no sense. Me typing right now is living. So
>is my jogging, sleeping, beating the kids or screwing my husband. All
>these things are living. Sitting in noise or silence is living.
You've got it!
> Are they rightliving? That's the question, isn't it?
Depends on what you mean by "right." I think you mean right in a moral sense. When I say "right living" I mean "right" in more the sense of to right a boat. That is, not morality necessarilty, though morality comes into play. When I say right living, perhaps you'd understand more the flavor if you read it as "skillful" living, or "quality" living.
What does that mean? Ah....that's the real question.
>Somehow I don't think Zen is about doing whatever the hell you want,
No, though some zennies act that way.
>Which brings me to my final issue. If Zen is about right living, then
>how do you judge what is right?
First, remember that right living really means skillful living. I've been thinking about that a LOT lately and have some ideas on it, not fully formulated yet, but getting there.
Of course, all I've really done is rephrase the question, because you can come right back and ask, "Okay smartass. If zen is about skillful living, then how do you judge what is skillful?"
To which I'd have to answer truthfully, I don't know, but I have some ideas and some guidelines. If I want to fall back on dogma and doctrine, there's a hell of a lot of Buddhist literature from the last 2,500 years dealing with exactly those questions. The short answer is that buddhists follow the 3 jewels, the 4 noble truths, and the 8-fold path. Depending on how devout you want to be, sticking just to that stuff gives you a foot in the door. I won't go into details, since you're probably not interested, but just assume it ain't too different from any other system that tells how folks ought to behave in large groups so they don't end up killing each other.
If you want more, there's the precepts, which is sorta like a buddhist version of the 10 commandments with some differences. There's not 10 of them for one thing, and they're more suggestions than thou shalt nots. Different sects of buddhists have different numbers of precepts and pay more or less attention to them, depending on whatever sect they belong to.
Having said all that, though, I don't think any of that stuff is more than guidelines. In truth, I think you just make yourself perfect and then act naturally.
This is nothing new or unique to Buddhism either. There's a Greek quotation from some Socratic dialogue in which Socrates asks a guy named Phaedrus "And what is good Phaedrus, and what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?" Socrates is telling Phaedrus to look for himself and see what has quality and what doesn't. He doesn't need an external guide. So I think the same thing applies. How do I know what's skillful/right and what's not? I ask myself, and if I'm being honest with myself, then I already know the answer and so do you.
If zen practice does anything, it gets you used to being honest with yourself. That's what people mean when they say zen destroys illusions. We all have our illusions, but if you just pay attention (and sitting on a cushion for long periods of time you either pay attention or you go to sleep) then you realize what your particular illusions are.
> And you cannot claim that we have some purpose unless you say there is a God.
But I don't think I've ever said we do have some purpose, have I? At best, we may have some purpose, but I don't know what it is and (more to the point) I don't think I CAN know what it is.
>If we are simply the random result of evolutionary forces, we have no
>purpose and are not intended to be one way or the other.
Right, because intent implies someone who intends. If it's random, and it may be, then there's no intent.
>Consequently, you cannot claim you were meant to be happy or that people are
>supposed to be ethical.
But I don't claim that I was meant to be happy or that people are supposed to be ethical. I DO think my life will be more enjoyable to me if I'm happy, but I don't know that anyone besides me intends that to happen. In fact, some days I'd suggest that everyone else, including my children, intend the opposite.
> There is no right living because there is no right. If you say
>that it is right to do what has value for you or makes you happy, then
>you are denying that you are a random result.
You're shifting the meaning of the word "right" here. Replace it with "skillful" or "quality" and the first sentence falls apart because you're using two different meanings of "right" or else it means "There is no skillful living because there is no skill" which is just mush. In the second sentence you use the word right to mean "moral" which is a third meaning. Certainly, there is right living in the sense of skillful living. What's skillful living? Ah, back to that question again. We can literally talk the rest of our lives about what makes a skillful, right life, but I think it'd be better to live it than talk about it.
> If you say, "I'm just doing what I want because I want to," I say
> that if you are random, your desire isn't valid and cannot be trusted.
I don't follow the logic here. Why, if I am random, is desire invalid? That doesn't make much sense.
>If you say, "I have no choice but to trust my
>desire," then I say you are standing on blind faith.
What if I say that I trust my experiences? I suppose that's blind faith in myself and my own judgment? But if I'm random, how can I be otherwise? I don't see the point of even pursuing this line of thought.
>You see, if nature randomly produced us such that we crave pleasure and
>happiness, then reacting to that desire is not necessarily good or
>right.
Why not? You're just arguing that there's no such thing as morality if we don't have free will.
>And if we have no control over our reacting to it, then of course, it
>makes no sense to forsake pleasure for anything else such as ethics.
But if we do have control over our reacting to it, and can choose, then is the converse true? That is, it DOES make sense to forsake pleasure for ethics?
>People like Aristotle, Plato, Jesus and Buddha are in fact wrong and
>harmful because they tell us to seek after peace often at the expense of
>pleasure.
Quite possibly they are harmful. I don't know.
>Of course if peace produces pleasure, then pleasure is not necessarily
>doing what makes us happy but instead doing what resolves internal conflict,
Or maybe it's doing what is skillful, i.e. right living?
>brings us back to the point. If you're random, why is conflict either
>escapable or bad, unless it feels bad and you're doing nothing more
>than seeking after pleasure again?
I do not understand this sentence or this thought. A buddhist answer would point to the fact that it's not the pleasure or the pain, it's the seeking after it that is bad/unskillful.
>Then, you are simply standing on faith that nature produced you to want
>to feel good, because there is quite a bit of evidence that we were
>designed for conflict.
>So, either you believe in God and stand on a faith in Him or you trust
>what cannot be verified as trustworthy and stand on faith in that. But one
>way or the other, you're standing on faith. We all are. The question is,
>where do you choose to put that faith?
I've quoted the above in total because I want to point out that you're jumping to conclusions and not making a lot of sense. What question are you really asking? Are you asking a question at all or trying to work the words around until you get the question you want, even if the steps don't lead there? Any time you start going down that either/or road, you lose me. I cannot follow what you're asking here.
>emails that you "trust only in your own experiences."
>Alright, that's just horseshit. You trust in much much more than your
>own experiences. Why, for example, do you trust that Alexander the Great
>existed or that Plato and Buddha lived? Is it your experience that
>historians never lie or embellish? Why do you trust in historians at
>all, if you haven't met or known them? And why do you trust some and not
>others (i.e. Luke and Matthew)? You say it's experience.
Time out! But it is my own experience that I trust. Based on a thousand things I've done, read, and heard during my lifetime I tend to trust this writer over that writer or this historian and not that one. We all make thousands of these little assumptions every day. Hell, I assume the floor will support my weight when I get out of bed, else I'd never move from under the covers. There is nothing beyond my own experience I can trust. However, that doesn't automatically mean I'm right and my assumptions won't bite me in the ass.
I'm not saying that only things I've personally witnessed are true, which is the argument you seem to be attacking. I'm saying that my experiences have made me who I am, and the who that I am believes (or doesn't) thus and such.
> But you don't know any of these men so you can't say experience
>has led you to believe some and disbelieve others.
I didn't say I had personally known them. See my note above. And yes, my experience HAS led me to believe some and disbelieve others. Doesn't mean I'm correct.
>You trust that what you experience has some sort of instructional
>value, which is why you trust what you experience.
I don't know about instructional value.... well... maybe I do believe that.
> But that is one hell of a baseless assumption. You are simply
> learning from your experiences in order to make them useful,
> not because they necessarily are useful.
I want you to take a deep breath and read that little bit again and tell me if you really believe that's true. If you do, then I don't know what to say because I don't understand it.
>Consequently, you do not believe your experiences are random and
>meaningless and that can only be if you believe some force imparted
>meaning to them.
There's nothing "consequently" about it. How does that logically follow from anything?
> If you impart your own meaning to them, then your experiences are
> necessarily irrelevant and thus untrustworthy. So either you trust
> in your subjective apprehension of past experiences and admit that
> you only do it cause it works for you.
>But that makes you no different from the people that believe the earth
>is flat or that the moon-landing was staged. These theories coalesce
>nicely with these individual's past experiences and it works for them.
>And why trust any scientific theory or observation? Why trust in
>Darwinian evolution if you've never been an ape or seen an ape
>transform into man?
>You have no experience with these things (or dinosaurs for that
>matter)? Is it your experience that scientists never make mistakes?
>Because spontaneous generation was a widely accepted scientific
>theory for quite some time.
>Entropy is no ancient concept and the big bang (while I love it) is
>currently under assault by many scientists. Evolutionary theory is
>also being continually reworked. So why trust in any of it?
Rather than deal with what is (I hope) sarcasm on your part, I think I'll just let your words speak for themselves at this point. If it's not sarcasm, if you're totally serious then your argument is pitiful and not worthy of any more response on my part.
>tear down your belief system.
That's okay. I don't know what your purpose is or what you get out of it, but it makes me think a little bit so carry on.
>Okay, so Zen is testable and its only value is whether or not it works
>for you? Couldn't the same be said for Scientology or Islam?
I think so, or at least, I don't see why not.
>It doesn't matter whether it's religion per say, if it "works for you."
That's fine. Just because I don't think it's a religion, doesn't mean all the rest of the zennies agree with me, and most don't. There are, after all, many of the trappings of religion associated with Zen Buddhism: priests, monks, nuns, monastaries. In the face of all that, I don't think it's a religion, but mine is a minority viewpoint.
>Consequently, the truth isn't necessarily relevant.
I think that statement does not follow from anything and I don't see how you suddenly jump to that conclusion. I'd point out that truth is very relevant since, for many people, the aim of zen could be said to be simply direct knowledge or experience of truth, so I think it's very relevant.
> What is beneficial to the subject is. Which tells me that Zen is not even
>remotely interested in the advancement of truth or scientific theory.
Well, you're running off the track here, but I'd agree that zen is not particularly concerned with promoting anything or advancing anything, at least not in the sense that you mean here. But how you can say that someone seeking knowledge of truth is not "remotely interested in the advancement of truth" is a bit odd.
> It is a system of living designed solely to enhance the subjective
> perspective of any individual who digs it.
From the outside, at first glance, I can understand how you get that impression, and it's not totally wrong, just incomplete. There's nothing to attain by the practice, nothing special about zen people, nothing special about zen itself that's not present elsewhere. Don't think of it as a path that leads anywhere. There's nothing at the end to reach would be a better way of saying it maybe.
>Why not just drink lots of wine. You'll get the same result.
No. You absolutely won't get the same result. As I said above, there's not some pot of gold to be won. There is NO RESULT at all. Forget cause and effect because they don't apply. It's not some practice to make you feel better. It's neither hedonism nor asceticism.
> Like C.S. Lewis says: "I didn't go to religion to make myself
> happy. I always knew a bottle of port could do that."
The purpose of zen practice is not to make me happy. The purpose of zen practice is zen practice. That's it. There's nothing else. Nothing in sight, including some nebulous goal of feeling better.
>All philosophical systems change perspective, religions or not.
That may be true. I dunno. I'd agree that knowledge changes one's perspective. How's that?
>question is, why change perspective at all?
Good question. Again, I don't know why. It just seems to happen naturally. I'm not sure that changing perspective should be a goal or should be the impetus for choosing a philosophy or religion.
>you are desiring your own good first and implementing a
>certain practice for that purpose.
No. That implies that there's a goal, and that zen is a tool to reach that goal. That's wrong. I realize that many people come to zen (and other religions for that matter) exactly for that reason, but it's a wrong-headed approach in this case.
> In other words, you didn't come to Zen and have
>your perspective changed. You came to Zen to change your perspective,
I'm sure that happens, but not in my case. As I said, I had these experiences, thoughts, questions, whatever for years and years and only stumbled across zen as something that explains what I've ALREADY experienced. Now, intellectually, the study of zen can certainly codify and systemitize my knowledge, but that's not zen practice. That's just useless intellectual masturbation.
>of course is exactly what you would expect to happen. First, you
>desire a change in perspective because you aren't digging on your current one.
>Then, you try various things to get the perspective you want. The fact that
>Zen gives you what you want is not because it's intrinsically valid. It's
>because you came into this thing wanting what Zen gives.
For some people, possibly that's why they take up the practice, but not in my case. I'm being totally honest when I say I had no intention of ever getting involved in any particular religion. I didn't come to zen practice because I desired a change in perspective. I simply got curious about my own thoughts, and in my never-ending reading came across things that seemed to fit what I thought. I had nothing in mind as a perspective I wanted, because I didn't know what perspective I had in the first place. How could I want what I didn't even know was there?
Again, forget this goal-oriented stuff. There's no goal.
>Like Zen, prayer produces a result.
Well, I'm not certain that zen produces anything, but I'll agree that meditation and prayer both can have measurable physical physiological psychological and maybe other results.
>Whatever in reality happened is irrelevant.
I disagree that reality is irrelevant.
> "Prayer doesn't change God. It changes us."
Amazingly enough, I think that one is true.
>Likewise, with Zen, you practice and you get a result.
No, you simply practice zen. There is no result to "get."
>because the real change in perspective occurs the minute we want our
>perspective to change.
There's something to that, but again, that's not been my experience. Maybe I'm atypical or stupid? I'll admit to a desire to be better than I am or have been, but if I were looking for a system to bring that result about, zen would be last damned place to look.
>This makes no sense. Me typing right now is living. So
>is my jogging, sleeping, beating the kids or screwing my husband. All
>these things are living. Sitting in noise or silence is living.
You've got it!
> Are they rightliving? That's the question, isn't it?
Depends on what you mean by "right." I think you mean right in a moral sense. When I say "right living" I mean "right" in more the sense of to right a boat. That is, not morality necessarilty, though morality comes into play. When I say right living, perhaps you'd understand more the flavor if you read it as "skillful" living, or "quality" living.
What does that mean? Ah....that's the real question.
>Somehow I don't think Zen is about doing whatever the hell you want,
No, though some zennies act that way.
>Which brings me to my final issue. If Zen is about right living, then
>how do you judge what is right?
First, remember that right living really means skillful living. I've been thinking about that a LOT lately and have some ideas on it, not fully formulated yet, but getting there.
Of course, all I've really done is rephrase the question, because you can come right back and ask, "Okay smartass. If zen is about skillful living, then how do you judge what is skillful?"
To which I'd have to answer truthfully, I don't know, but I have some ideas and some guidelines. If I want to fall back on dogma and doctrine, there's a hell of a lot of Buddhist literature from the last 2,500 years dealing with exactly those questions. The short answer is that buddhists follow the 3 jewels, the 4 noble truths, and the 8-fold path. Depending on how devout you want to be, sticking just to that stuff gives you a foot in the door. I won't go into details, since you're probably not interested, but just assume it ain't too different from any other system that tells how folks ought to behave in large groups so they don't end up killing each other.
If you want more, there's the precepts, which is sorta like a buddhist version of the 10 commandments with some differences. There's not 10 of them for one thing, and they're more suggestions than thou shalt nots. Different sects of buddhists have different numbers of precepts and pay more or less attention to them, depending on whatever sect they belong to.
Having said all that, though, I don't think any of that stuff is more than guidelines. In truth, I think you just make yourself perfect and then act naturally.
This is nothing new or unique to Buddhism either. There's a Greek quotation from some Socratic dialogue in which Socrates asks a guy named Phaedrus "And what is good Phaedrus, and what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?" Socrates is telling Phaedrus to look for himself and see what has quality and what doesn't. He doesn't need an external guide. So I think the same thing applies. How do I know what's skillful/right and what's not? I ask myself, and if I'm being honest with myself, then I already know the answer and so do you.
If zen practice does anything, it gets you used to being honest with yourself. That's what people mean when they say zen destroys illusions. We all have our illusions, but if you just pay attention (and sitting on a cushion for long periods of time you either pay attention or you go to sleep) then you realize what your particular illusions are.
> And you cannot claim that we have some purpose unless you say there is a God.
But I don't think I've ever said we do have some purpose, have I? At best, we may have some purpose, but I don't know what it is and (more to the point) I don't think I CAN know what it is.
>If we are simply the random result of evolutionary forces, we have no
>purpose and are not intended to be one way or the other.
Right, because intent implies someone who intends. If it's random, and it may be, then there's no intent.
>Consequently, you cannot claim you were meant to be happy or that people are
>supposed to be ethical.
But I don't claim that I was meant to be happy or that people are supposed to be ethical. I DO think my life will be more enjoyable to me if I'm happy, but I don't know that anyone besides me intends that to happen. In fact, some days I'd suggest that everyone else, including my children, intend the opposite.
> There is no right living because there is no right. If you say
>that it is right to do what has value for you or makes you happy, then
>you are denying that you are a random result.
You're shifting the meaning of the word "right" here. Replace it with "skillful" or "quality" and the first sentence falls apart because you're using two different meanings of "right" or else it means "There is no skillful living because there is no skill" which is just mush. In the second sentence you use the word right to mean "moral" which is a third meaning. Certainly, there is right living in the sense of skillful living. What's skillful living? Ah, back to that question again. We can literally talk the rest of our lives about what makes a skillful, right life, but I think it'd be better to live it than talk about it.
> If you say, "I'm just doing what I want because I want to," I say
> that if you are random, your desire isn't valid and cannot be trusted.
I don't follow the logic here. Why, if I am random, is desire invalid? That doesn't make much sense.
>If you say, "I have no choice but to trust my
>desire," then I say you are standing on blind faith.
What if I say that I trust my experiences? I suppose that's blind faith in myself and my own judgment? But if I'm random, how can I be otherwise? I don't see the point of even pursuing this line of thought.
>You see, if nature randomly produced us such that we crave pleasure and
>happiness, then reacting to that desire is not necessarily good or
>right.
Why not? You're just arguing that there's no such thing as morality if we don't have free will.
>And if we have no control over our reacting to it, then of course, it
>makes no sense to forsake pleasure for anything else such as ethics.
But if we do have control over our reacting to it, and can choose, then is the converse true? That is, it DOES make sense to forsake pleasure for ethics?
>People like Aristotle, Plato, Jesus and Buddha are in fact wrong and
>harmful because they tell us to seek after peace often at the expense of
>pleasure.
Quite possibly they are harmful. I don't know.
>Of course if peace produces pleasure, then pleasure is not necessarily
>doing what makes us happy but instead doing what resolves internal conflict,
Or maybe it's doing what is skillful, i.e. right living?
>brings us back to the point. If you're random, why is conflict either
>escapable or bad, unless it feels bad and you're doing nothing more
>than seeking after pleasure again?
I do not understand this sentence or this thought. A buddhist answer would point to the fact that it's not the pleasure or the pain, it's the seeking after it that is bad/unskillful.
>Then, you are simply standing on faith that nature produced you to want
>to feel good, because there is quite a bit of evidence that we were
>designed for conflict.
>So, either you believe in God and stand on a faith in Him or you trust
>what cannot be verified as trustworthy and stand on faith in that. But one
>way or the other, you're standing on faith. We all are. The question is,
>where do you choose to put that faith?
I've quoted the above in total because I want to point out that you're jumping to conclusions and not making a lot of sense. What question are you really asking? Are you asking a question at all or trying to work the words around until you get the question you want, even if the steps don't lead there? Any time you start going down that either/or road, you lose me. I cannot follow what you're asking here.
>emails that you "trust only in your own experiences."
>Alright, that's just horseshit. You trust in much much more than your
>own experiences. Why, for example, do you trust that Alexander the Great
>existed or that Plato and Buddha lived? Is it your experience that
>historians never lie or embellish? Why do you trust in historians at
>all, if you haven't met or known them? And why do you trust some and not
>others (i.e. Luke and Matthew)? You say it's experience.
Time out! But it is my own experience that I trust. Based on a thousand things I've done, read, and heard during my lifetime I tend to trust this writer over that writer or this historian and not that one. We all make thousands of these little assumptions every day. Hell, I assume the floor will support my weight when I get out of bed, else I'd never move from under the covers. There is nothing beyond my own experience I can trust. However, that doesn't automatically mean I'm right and my assumptions won't bite me in the ass.
I'm not saying that only things I've personally witnessed are true, which is the argument you seem to be attacking. I'm saying that my experiences have made me who I am, and the who that I am believes (or doesn't) thus and such.
> But you don't know any of these men so you can't say experience
>has led you to believe some and disbelieve others.
I didn't say I had personally known them. See my note above. And yes, my experience HAS led me to believe some and disbelieve others. Doesn't mean I'm correct.
>You trust that what you experience has some sort of instructional
>value, which is why you trust what you experience.
I don't know about instructional value.... well... maybe I do believe that.
> But that is one hell of a baseless assumption. You are simply
> learning from your experiences in order to make them useful,
> not because they necessarily are useful.
I want you to take a deep breath and read that little bit again and tell me if you really believe that's true. If you do, then I don't know what to say because I don't understand it.
>Consequently, you do not believe your experiences are random and
>meaningless and that can only be if you believe some force imparted
>meaning to them.
There's nothing "consequently" about it. How does that logically follow from anything?
> If you impart your own meaning to them, then your experiences are
> necessarily irrelevant and thus untrustworthy. So either you trust
> in your subjective apprehension of past experiences and admit that
> you only do it cause it works for you.
>But that makes you no different from the people that believe the earth
>is flat or that the moon-landing was staged. These theories coalesce
>nicely with these individual's past experiences and it works for them.
>And why trust any scientific theory or observation? Why trust in
>Darwinian evolution if you've never been an ape or seen an ape
>transform into man?
>You have no experience with these things (or dinosaurs for that
>matter)? Is it your experience that scientists never make mistakes?
>Because spontaneous generation was a widely accepted scientific
>theory for quite some time.
>Entropy is no ancient concept and the big bang (while I love it) is
>currently under assault by many scientists. Evolutionary theory is
>also being continually reworked. So why trust in any of it?
Rather than deal with what is (I hope) sarcasm on your part, I think I'll just let your words speak for themselves at this point. If it's not sarcasm, if you're totally serious then your argument is pitiful and not worthy of any more response on my part.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Boiling coffee
Simmering coffee just right,
hot enough but not too hot,
releases all the flavor
a fragrant, swirling amalgam of bean & water.
It needs careful application of heat,
knowing when to cut back the fire.
A sense of perspective and limits
yielding up more than just wet beans and warm water.
But too high the flame
and your coffee is doomed.
Too much fire scalds, drives out the essence,
like boiling down love into friendship.
You can still drink it,
but it doesn't taste the same.
hot enough but not too hot,
releases all the flavor
a fragrant, swirling amalgam of bean & water.
It needs careful application of heat,
knowing when to cut back the fire.
A sense of perspective and limits
yielding up more than just wet beans and warm water.
But too high the flame
and your coffee is doomed.
Too much fire scalds, drives out the essence,
like boiling down love into friendship.
You can still drink it,
but it doesn't taste the same.
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