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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (13559)	5/14/2001 1:57:44 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

If you think about life in terms of it's parts, and consider the atoms that move in and out of our bodies, with every breath we take- we are already submerging our self in the universe. Every breath sends our essence out into the universe. Pieces of us fall off all the time- we shed dna with every hair that falls out, with every skin flake, and the dna codes all of our information. You could say we are submerged in the universe with every tiny flake of skin we lose. Is it painful? Is it nihilistic? I don't feel it to be so. Do you find the possibility of being part of an endless path of energy and matter depressing? I don't think you do, and neither do I. I am not at all sure the Buddhists got what Buddha was saying completely right. They are much nicer than most religious folk, but still, many of them are religious. I do not see that as necessary to Buddhism. I see that Buddhism can be a way to merely embrace whatever reality we eventually face- if we do come up against reality at some point in the cycle of our birth, life and death- or to face whatever it is we do come to experience. No other belief system seems so yielding, and pliant- agnosticism, of course, is very nice indeed. But Buddhism seems very close to that- at least in some of the texts, with it's embracing of all that can and will be known. Buddhism embraces the reality yet to be known- in order to do that, one must allow that not everything is known- this seems to me the central truth of agnosticism. On another note I saw Sunshine today. It is a really marvelous movie. I can also highly recommend Duets (although it's not as good) and Bamboozled, by Spike Lee.

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (13559)	5/14/2001 10:26:12 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I agree, it is very likely Providential that Hinduism and Buddhism survive to show us the best that paganism was capable of, and to offer alternative version of civilization to juxtapose with our own, not only for aesthetic interest, but as matter for reflection. As far as one can tell,several areas of civilization developed with only minor commerce between them, more or less independently. The Chinese definitely dominated Korea and Japan, and penetrated further south; the Indians dominated an area from the Himalayas to Thailand, and shared a sphere of influence in Indochina. In the West, civilization grew from the Tigris- Euphrates and Nile valleys, became highly developed among the Greeks and Persians, and finally achieved political dominance of the Mediterranean basin and Western Europe under the Romans. Similar things, happened in the Americas under the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. These civilizations were impressive, and did, eventually, trade to some extent. We know that China contributed gunpowder and the rudimentary printing press to Europe, for example. As you say, the Indian sphere gave us tea and spices. However, it is difficult to trace the particulars of influence. For example, we know that Buddhism moved East, but there is no clear evidence it went west beyond Afghanistan, although there may be speculation. Anyway, Indian and Chinese and even the Roman civilization, as exemplified in the Byzantine Empire, seem to have reached points of comparative stasis. Somehow, in Western Europe, there developed the cultural matrix which permitted the Renaissance and the rise of science and advanced technology and liberal democracy and so forth, all of those things which we consider the hallmarks of the modern world. Somehow, in other words, Western civilization became inherently progressive. In that sense, it is not a matter of "laying claim for all progress", since each civilization got on well enough by itself for centuries, and each contributed something of import to the others. But the fact is, somehow only the civilization that developed in Western Europe as an off- shoot of the Hellenistic/Roman civilization became inherently progressive in its patterns of thought and in its institutions, and the benchmark for progress in other countries has largely been how modern (i.e., like Western Europe) they can become, thus improving the material and moral lot of the common man, through economic development and the acknowledgment of human rights. Although one important stimulus to this result was the fall of Byzantium and the emigration of scholars to Italy, it is idle to say that it was all a matter of the rediscovery of much of Plato et al. The Byzantines never made so much out of these treasures, nor did the Moslems, like Avicenna and Averroes. Somehow, the matrix was already formed to make the most of the stimulus. I do not feel obliged to defend Catholic doctrines on sexuality........