BTW, your explanation of the meaning of evangelical and your transformation is interesting. You probably don't realize it but there are striking similarities between that view and a Buddhist view.
Truly there is not even the slightest similarity.
What you recognize as your flaws of emotion are what buddhists call the source of suffering, the First Noble Truth.
This is false because I have never recognized any such thing as a “flaw of emotion.” The flaw is so much greater than what this oriental crap suggests. It is a flaw of space and time-- of matter. It is a flaw from which no thing can escape.
And suffering arises from not realizing the true nature of reality. Suffering ends when one is able to transform one's view of reality-being reborn, so to speak.
Believe as you wish, but it is clear to me that this is all rubbish. It is impossible to realize anything here because ultimately there is no “here” here. Everything here is dead already and unless knowledge comes upon it, then it will remain ever dead. One doesn’t “transform” a single thing because dead men do nothing-- but stay dead, of course.
However, unlike your approach, there is no obligation to tell anyone about it, other than living that reality.
There is no obligation to tell because those who embrace this stuff really have nothing to tell. Those who have something of the greatest value and beauty cannot help but use every single one of their faculties to display it, not withholding anything. The sparrow makes its sound because it was born a sparrow. It does not hold back from being a sparrow because the jay nearby might be offended. As long as freedom prevails, it naturally expresses sparrowness, including the use of its voice. These ideas of yours are the result of a vast spiritual wasteland dressed-up for the modern palate. You claim to have the truth, but arbitrarily forbid the use of certain human faculties to express it. It is just a bunch of silly horse crap and you must know this.
As you imply, you can tell if someone has truly undergone this kind of deep transformation. There is an obligation to live a life of service to all, but there is no obligation to proselytize.
If the transformation has taken place, then all faculties are engaged – every single one of them. If the transformation is true, then it commandeers all of the dead entity, leaving nothing of it dead. All things become new. Everything gains life – including its voice.
In fact, to do so would contradict the essence of the transformation itself. To feel compelled to "teach" in this way is, IMO, an error of perception and a perversion of the original intent.
The compulsion is borne of the creation of a new nature within a dead nature. It is as if an inert body of dead clay lies upon the ground, doing nothing. Then life is breathed into it and it begins, by definition, to breathe. The compulsion to speak the truth exists because the very nature of the transformed entity is one of truthspeaking. Truth inhabits the entire creature such that when he speaks, truth exists, despite the folly of his dying body.
"Being" your awareness is a powerful statement in itself. Why screw it up by suggesting that everyone else who doesn't believe what you do is messed up?
There is no ‘screw up,’ pal. Dear me. Sharing the thing is natural – well, of course from your vantagepoint it is odd, a “screw up” to you. But from my vantagepointe it can be no other way. Telling me not to share is like my telling you not to circulate blood through your veins and arteries, claiming that if you do this, you are a “screw up.” It is just preposterous to those who have truly received the new birth.
This is why there are religious wars fought, why there were Crusades, Islamic fascism. Name one war, one person murdered in the name of Buddha, ever.
Wars are fought because the hearts of men, including those of Buddhists, are corrupt and removed from reality. Wherever humans exist, there we find dead men who think themselves more worthy than others – though all are but dust. Read the book “Zen at War” by Brian Victoria. findarticles.com. We see clearly how Zen authorities have engaged in the same sort of evil as everyone else, this, simply because they were human, hopelessly separated from reality. Buddhism is no more in union than anything else.
You promulgate a fantasy with this non-warring Buddhism claim, setting up for yourself a standard of judgment that is both arbitrary and even false by your own rule. When you think of this “non-warring Buddhism,” you think of a Buddhism that hasn’t employed swords or machine-guns. Well that may be fine for nonthinking folks, but others will readily see it is a very false standard. Wars with swords do not stand on their own. They are not their own roots. At the heart of all war is a failure by at least one party to see reality – even the most trivial of realities. Consider that at the very moment you find yourself at even philosophical odds with another, you are asserting the inherent wrong of that person – claiming yourself capable of being his judge. When you part ways with him, you are claiming he is not you, that you and he are somehow fundamentally different. Here is where war first exists and even Buddhism has caused it. If you are going to judge, then you ought to go to the very root of the issue and admit the truth about the rotting filth you see there. No one is exempt from acts of dissension, conflict and disunity, though your reality makes it plain that you are all one thing. Everyone at some point lives contrary to what he is.
Similarly, to suggest that someone who sees the world differently from you is a liar, ie can't help but lie because of their paradigm, is about as contradictory to your essential religious beliefs as you could get, isn't it?
It would be contradictory only were you and I ultimately the same things. But we are not. You are just the result of a bunch of interacting material processes. When those processes cease, so will you. Contrariwise, there is a real me inside my flesh, and only for a time. It uses my body as a potential bridge from me to you. That is Evangelism. But the time will come when I will be rid of slogging around in this mess. The thing I will leave behind will be your equal. Should it ever suggest that someone who sees the world differently from it is a liar, then you would have reason to dismiss its claims as contradictory.
When we living people see dead people like you claiming to “see” the world in a certain way, and thinking you actually are seeing it when it is obvious to us you are just experiencing yourself from a certain subjective point-of-view, this, through corrupted and appropriately dying flesh, our reality establishes in us that you are hopelessly dead and cannot really ever see anything. You are in a body, sir. That means you are trapped away from any serious reality. Anything you perceive must get to you through a whole lot of garbage. And you can never get to anyone outside of yourself. You don’t even really know what the closest person to you thinks right now. You have never known and can never know. You literally can know nothing. Walking death.
It is the initial small step in a course that easily leads to, and has certainly led to awesome violence throughout history.
And all men have taken that small step, including every single Buddhist who has ever lived. Your measure of truth is dead. Truth does not forbid conflict and dissension. It just exists as it is. Things that are not in the truth will perish by the truth just as darkness perishes by light. We ought not curse the light merely because it is what it is. |
