AUT: Re: Re: Star Wars and Archetypes

["commie00" <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Tahir: But what sort of energy is it? You don't mean that it is the same
energy as physics deals with I presume?

actually, it is exactly the same energy that physics (esp. quantum physics)
deals with. in q.p. there is a name for it, but it escapes me right now...
anyway, there are several books around about how a significant chunk of the
new physics was anticipated by eastern philosophy. _the tao of physics_ is
one, and there are references to quite a few more thru that book.

> Tahir: I once read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I talks in great detail
about what happens to you after you die. Is this part of the
misinterpretation of the West or is it the kind of thing that Buddhists
believe, yourself for example?

a) i'm not a buddhist. i'm sympathetic to many aspects of zen buddhism and
taoism for a whole host of reasons... but i'm far too critical of them as
broad catagories to start indentifying myself with them.

b) most buddhists (esp. zen, japanese tantric and theradavan buddhists)
consider tibetan buddhism (and japanese amida buddhism) to be a "religious
perversion" of buddhist philosophy, for exactly those reasons.

the gautuma buddha (the fella who got the ball rolling so to speak) said
straight up: there is no god. there is no soul. deal with it. when asked
about reincarnation, he said "imagine a candle, now light as many candles as
you can with that candle until it burns completely out..." (i.e. since there
is no soul, there is no transmigration of souls... the closest would be the
dispersal of physical energies [which can not be created or destroyed,
remember] into everything else when we die).

c) however, most tibetan buddhists argue that the book of the dead, the
whole pantenon of gods, etc. that they have, etc. are not supposed to be
taken literally, but understood as symbolic, yadda yadda.

> Tahir: How materialist is nirvana?

"nirvana" literally means "extinction", not enlightenment, no heaven, etc.

the japanese came up with a better word to explain it: satori... which means
"a sudden flash of insight". so satori (nirvana), in a buddhist sense, would
mean to realize (instead of just intellectually knowing) that there is no
god, there is no soul, etc. etc. and the implications of this. that is: that
this life, this world is all we have... better make the best of it.

the idea is that when a person really comes to understand, realize these
things, they'll stop worrying about life and death, etc. etc. and get down
to the serious business of living.

> Surely any religion can quite legitimately claim to be "against
alienation, for community". I certainly have never encountered any religion
that would not say the same.

but zen buddhism and taoism as philosophies are "against alienation, for
community" in the here and now, on earth, etc. i think you'd be hard pressed
to find (theistic) religions that agree with this...

> Tahir: This nostalgia for a past which is part real and part imaginary is
nine tenths of the appeal of all religions today, Islam for example. So
what?

its part of everyone's psychological make-up... the questions are: why? what
could this tell us? simply trying to shirk off these questions with your
statement above doesn't suddenly make these issues not real...


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