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Pastimes : Understanding Islam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IN_GOD_I_TRUST who wrote (603)	11/26/2001 9:24:25 AM
From: James Calladine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2926

But as soon as there is a deviation in the characteristics or nature of God between the parties, then you can see that it is more than a difference in the name. In my experience, it is INEVITABLE that such differences occur, for many reasons. First of all, each person has a different voculary, and uses language differently. People pretend that when they use a given word, that it means exactly the same thing to everybody. The dictionary is used to "anchor" the central point of the meaning, but there are differences from one dictionary to another in the language used, with a resultant different "shading" of meaning. When, for example, the word "dog" is used we assume that everbody means the same thing. But for some people that word conjures up the image of a large hunting dog, great companion, huge helper on the hunting trips. For other, fearful people it conjures up a different image of a pit-bull, leaping for their throat! There are cultural differences also--lots of stories about people taking their dog to be looked after while they dined at the Chinese restaurant and then discovering that delicious item on their plate is "Rex"! So some people believe dogs are to be eaten, but little old ladies with 20 year Pekingese companions on their lap believe they are to be cuddled! There are great differences as you move from one language to another. "Breakfast" translates to "petit-dejeuner" in French, but what is conceded to consist of breakfast, in the normal case, is significantly different. Eskimos have, I understand, something like 40 different words for "snow", but I imagine that the pygmies of Africa do not have any such word. So in the face of all these linguistic differences, God inevitably has many names. More than that, because of cultural differences, different qualities are "ascribed" to God. Of necessity, all this is man's effort to describe God, usually in "human" terms. But what do you think a buffalo thinks of God? My Guru says, for example, that the Guru appears to EACH species in like form. So no doubt to the buffalo, God looks like a buffalo, instead of (in some cultures), an elderly man, with a white beard, sitting on a throne! So, coming from the direction of being to God, it is inevitable that the "names" and "pictures" will be different. However, when one is able to let go of normal egoic experiencing, and feel profoundly and unlimitedly into God, other descriptions appear. I will post such a description on this thread this morning, from my Teacher, Adi Da, which I think you will see resembles some traditional descriptions, while being very different from others. Namaste! Jim