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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: briskit who wrote (17441)	5/10/2004 8:38:09 PM
From: 2MAR$	Respond to of 28931

rereading that post of mine on "Darwin's Worms", i am almost completely amazed at the synopsis in the second paragraph : Message 20110618 When Phillips turns to Freud's beautiful essay On Transience, he shows how transience is also the condition of value. Knowing that the flower will not bloom forever, that love may dissipate, and that attrition, pain and ageing will turn us into dust, is not only a depressing aspect of human existence, but also the gateway to a new form of happiness and creativity, one which is quaint, adequate and realistic, and therefore also attainable. Exchanging perfectibility for attainability is the way in which we can incorporate failure into out lives without being devastated by it, "to render ageing, accident, illness and death not alien but integral to our sense of ourselves" Is almost transcendant in its elegance & reduced to simplicity....pure Buddhism Buddha (and perhaps pure Ernest Becker ?) I'm not sure that "detachment" is the key to understanding the message of Buddha (and Socrates approach to death as well) as much as the attainment of that possible freedom from illusion and self~delusion but of contemplating : "what is" and what is attainable The secret to life would then become the focus on acceptance of death , and the achievement of a well adjusted perception of a tolerance to being alive itself with all its conditions and variations, without the indoctrinated socialized stigmata of which the fear of death and recoiling from our own mortality has played the dominate role in all of our theologies from the beginning ...no exceptions . Buddha (and Socrates as well) did not hide from death , but both accepted its condition with open arms ( or at least equanimity) , another aspect to be contemplated authentically and lived thru . Jesus cries out at the last oh Father , why hast thou forsaken me ? It is there he is frought (as we all are) with fear that he shall lose his cherished everlasting life ...for some moments . Then the greatest revelation follows(?) for Jesus ....the experience of that compassion for all things which is the goal when achieved liberates eternally us all...compassion. Lord forgive them , they know not what they do That was a very "Zen" moment for Jesus... and that would be a fine moment to pass on . The problem of Judgement is there is too much of it ...based on myths of the afterlife taught to us when extremely young and impressionable. Of acceptance and true experience which proves us tolerant of ourselves and the conditions we cannot change in Life, but can contemplate and comprehend is . csis.hku.hk Buddha never preached the doctrine of eternal life , but a way of "eternally seeing" and eternally feeling beyond indoctrination. I would think Jesus was on the same path as well.

To: briskit who wrote (17441)	5/10/2004 8:54:39 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

Glenn Hughes on "Tasting death: Becker meets Socrates" an interesting piece /fragment : faculty.washington.edu Socrates called his consciousness of death, "practicing death" which was what he believed the true philosopher does. Since wisdom is the ever-deepening understanding of how to live a truly good life, no one can be a lover of wisdom except by continually dying to the perishable; i.e., letting the fact and possibilities of death penetrate the soul on a daily basis. But how do we know that a life lived morally is indeed eternal? The Socratic teaching requires the admission that we simply cannot know what comes after death. It is that mystery which must be embraced. For Socrates, hoping the soul has some kind of immortality is "a belief worth risking; a noble risk." The faith that this hope inspires leads the "death practitioner" to become a transcendent human being who lives consciously with the tension that is "in between" the perishing and the non-perishing dimensions of meaning he or she will discover in this practice. What Socrates meant by the idea of the in-between is that we consciously live in both dimensions of meaning, resolving the conflicts which arise between the two dimensions. Professor Hughes said it this way: "Conscious existence isn't just mortality plus an extraneous and grotesque dollop of intelligent awareness. It is a true union of opposites; it is participation in perishing and non-perishing reality simultaneously; it is the tension of living in-between perishing and non-perishing reality; it is 'life structured by death.' this is interesting stuff ...I like that site , thanks for the Becker reminder Mike ! ;)

To: briskit who wrote (17441)	5/11/2004 12:30:27 AM
From: freelyhovering	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Mike, Thanks for correcting my spelling in the PM. I am just up the road from you in Dallas. In reading your comments about the Phillips book, which I have not read, I was reminded of a section of Peter Gay's biography of Freud. He is describing the 15 year+ friendship between Freud and Oscar Pfister, A Lutheran pastor from Switzerland, who wrote to Freud originally after reading the Interpretation of Dreams. They spent much time together visiting one anothers families and discussed in very amicable terms their differing opinions about religion. According to Gay: "In Pfister's view, Jesus, who had elevated love into the central tenet of his teaching, was the first psychoanalyst, and Freud not a Jew at all. "A better Christian." he told Freud, "never was". Naturally Freud, who tactfully ignored this well-meaning compliment, could not think of himself as the best of Christians. But he was happy to see himself as the best of friends. "Ever the same!" he exclaimed to Pfister after they had known one another for more than fifteen years. "Courageous, honest and benevolent! Your character will doubtless not change any more in my eyes."" Now that's the way to have a religious discussion. Myron