Andrew Furst's Blog, page 129

Say What? – Does Buddhism Reject Faith?

Say What?  is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip.

This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... it's dirty. - Mitch Hedberg  

Does Buddhism Reject Faith?

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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)

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Compass Songs – Love Is Not All

 
Compass Songs is an ongoing series of works by poets that I enjoy. Poetry, as the Zen Masters have said, is like a finger pointing to the moon. It speaks the unspeakable.

Love Is Not All

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

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A Meditation – Memorial Day

 

One  Minute Meditations is an ongoing series of short videos, poems, and commentary intended as a meditation.  Offered as an opportunity to step back from your cyber routine and settle into a more natural rhythm, if only for a minute. 

Memorial Day

This morning, Memorial Day, at 6:45 AM my son and I participated in our yearly ritual at the town cemeteries with the scouts honoring veterans who have passed away. I shot some video today to share the experience for those who were unaware or not awake.  It’s the most meaningful part of the day for me.

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Dialectic Two-Step – Can We Find Satisfaction In The Rat Race?

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio Paz  

Can We Find Satisfaction In The Rat Race?

Question: Is it possible to escape the monotony of the modern day rat race? Do people, especially young adults, still find intrinsic value or satisfaction in their work?

Response: The answer to this question at a very high level is one about responsibility and opportunity.  We are responsible for our own happiness.  We are responsible for assigning value and satisfaction in our work.   We are also deeply dependent on our circumstances and opportunity.  It’s a balance and its uncertain.

On one extreme you might consider a developmentally disabled person who is born in a third world country. Their opportunities for satisfaction and meaningful work are extremely limited.

On the other hand there is the handsome, intelligent,  child of a wealthy philanthropist who has the opportunity to change the world in truly meaningful ways.

We have no control over many of our circumstances.  My wish to be the latter did not come through! However we do have the ability to and control over seeing value and finding satisfaction in our lives. My advice is to look deeply for it and it will be there.

There are a couple of things that I’ve found bring satisfaction and value to my life:

Helping othersMeditatingOpening my eyes to the inherent beauty of the world.I’ve been lucky  in that I’m able to do these things in the work that I do.

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First Name:

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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)

  

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One Minute Meditation – Driving the Fells in the Rain

 

One  Minute Meditations is an ongoing series of short videos, poems, and commentary intended as a meditation.  Offered as an opportunity to step back from your cyber routine and settle into a more natural rhythm, if only for a minute. 

Driving the Fells in the Rain

The practice of meditation begins with an inward journey.  In a sense it starts in the middle, perhaps a coincidence in being part of the Buddha’s middle way. You lie a midst it all, of course a matter or perspective, but none the less we start with ourselves.

This week’s one minute meditation is part visual, followed by a lapse into darkness.  The music continues another 30 seconds.  As I watched and then closed my eyes with the fading picture, I trailed the sensation of everything coming inward. As you do this weeks meditation, follow the sensations, feelings, and direction. Does it go somewhere?  Does the  sensation reach  a destination? Or does it simply dissipate?

This is an introduction to emptiness.  The noticing that nothing ever arrives, nothing ever departs, no beginning or end.  There is no point, in time, in space, or in meaning. This can be a scary place, if so, let it go, return  to the music. because, of course in meditation you go nowhere that you  haven’t been before. There is always and only the present moment.  It is our choice to enjoy it or to fear it.

For me emptiness compels me to enjoy it.

Moving Inward

Following it in
the  sensation is  only
passing by, through you

Driving the Fells in the Rain

Veloma by Fabrizio Paterlini is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

 

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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)

The post One Minute Meditation – Driving the Fells in the Rain appeared on Andrew Furst.

Sunday Morning Coming Down – Set Great Heights

Sunday Morning Coming Down is an ongoing music  video series.  The songs fit my definition of music for a lazy couch bound Sunday morning.

Set Great Heights  – The Postal Service

The month of May is being curated by my eldest son Ian.  This is Set Great Heights by The Postal Service

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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)

 Set Great Heights

by The Postal Service

I am thinking it’s a sign
That the freckles in our eyes
Are mirror images and when
We kiss they’re perfectly aligned

And I have to speculate
That God himself did make
Us into corresponding shapes
Like puzzle pieces from the clay

And true, it may seem like a stretch,
But its thoughts like this that catch
My troubled head when you’re away
When I am missing you to death

When you are out there on the road
For several weeks of shows
And when you scan the radio,
I hope this song will guide you home

They will see us waving from such great heights,
“Come down now,” they’ll say
But everything looks perfect from far away,
“Come down now,” but we’ll stay…

I tried my best to leave
This all on your machine
But the persistent beat it sounded thin
Upon listening

And that frankly will not fly.
You will hear the shrillest highs
And lowest lows with the windows down
When this is guiding you home

They will see us waving from such great heights,
“Come down now,” they’ll say
But everything looks perfect from far away,
“Come down now,” but we’ll stay…

They will see us waving from such great heights,
“Come down now,” they’ll say
But everything looks perfect from far away,
“Come down now,” but we’ll stay…

They will see us waving from such great heights,
“Come down now.”
They will see us waving from such great heights,
“Come down now.”

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Say What? – Do We Want To Be Detached?

Say What?  is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip.

This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... it's dirty. - Mitch Hedberg  

Do We Want To Be Detached?

 

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First Name:

Last Name:

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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)

The post Say What? – Do We Want To Be Detached? appeared on Andrew Furst.

When It Comes To Gods, Who Has The Burden of Proof?

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio Paz  

When It Comes To Gods, Who Has The Burden of Proof?

The burden of proof is viewed by different people according to their purposes

Theists: burden of proof is on the atheistsAtheists: burden of proof is on the theistEvangelist: burden of proof is on the atheists, but not a wise position to take. Winning converts is probably more about showing what belief can offer versus anything to do with non-belief. Logic is really not relevant here!People in general: The necessity of logic is a function of competing individual points of view and is only relevant when resolving disputes and preventing harm.

It’s clear that there is a range of nonsense which people can believe without creating harm. Consider the Asatru movement in the US that began in the 1970s. They believe in the Norse Gods.   In these cases convincing a theist or an atheist that they’re wrong offers no benefit for anyone. This is the space where many of these online conversations live (and where I’m drawn to like a moth to light).

Where belief produces harm to self or others, this is typically diagnosed as a disease or a crime and dealt with. Consider Jim Jones or any of the end times groups that ended in mass suicides.

There is a space between that concerns legislation and liberty.  This is the space where we have to pay attention and where logic is valuable.  Here is where the burden of proof should be on the side proposing the restriction of liberty or potential harm.

This is where all the hot button issues live – abortion, religious liberty laws, same sex marriage, etc. Some of these issues are argued from the position of theological authority.  Here the burden of proof should be on the theists.

For the most part I fall somewhere on the scale of disinterest to empathy towards the beliefs of others.  But when beliefs drive legislation, I become extremely interested, and I will speak my mind. Being a Buddhist, I have few eggs in the Christian basket and would challenge any arguments from authority.  Here’s where logic must apply.

Part of that logic would include a clarification that challenging the beliefs of others in the context of legislation is not an attack on religion or belief. Everyone’s beliefs should be under the microscope.  Anyone proposing restricting liberty or harming others based on theology (or lack thereof) needs to supply proof that the legislation is warranted.

Get Each Week's Dialectic Two Step in your email box

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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)

 

The post When It Comes To Gods, Who Has The Burden of Proof? appeared on Andrew Furst.

Modern Koans – Talking About God?

Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important then their answers.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton

 

Talking About God?

God? Of course, I’m Buddhist, and probably on principle should stay out of this fray, but I’m human and feel that the conversation is compelling. Especially living in a majority Christian country where interpretation of the Bible often leads to legislation that is potentially harmful to non-theists and people of other faiths.

As a former Christian by birth, I’ve always struggled with how to characterize the Christian idea of God. Having studied philosophy, I’ve read Aquinas, Augustine, and have looked for common ground with the Mystics. My study of the Bible uncovered that Jesus was very intimate with God, calling him “Abba”, the same word a young child would call his father. This would jibe with an interpretation where there is a personal God in touch with us in some way.  But there are also vastly different conceptions that encompass ideas like all knowing, all powerful, and so on. How do we choose to understand God. I think the plurality of interpretation is something important with religious texts. I don’t think they offer a menu from which to select the right choice of divine identity. They are necessarily elusive.

I appreciate the more intimate personal view, because it puts God right here in the same space with us. In fact I like to stretch Paul’s words “God, in who we live, and breath, and have our lives” to find common ground with the eastern concept of “oneness”. Such a God might share with us the limitations of this universe (gravity, laws of thermodynamics, and so on), but be faster, stronger, and perhaps be a good example of Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, which states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This conceptualization averts the problem of evil, a very compelling argument against the existence of Aquinas’ distant and separate God. But it leaves the most vexing complaint of non-theists unaddressed, which is that God doesn’t show up or meet commitments. Here we see why Aquinas, et. al. were keen on the other worldliness of God.

I think this conversation is worthwhile. If there was a clear acknowledgement of what we can say about God, and more importantly, what we can’t, there might be room for advancement in this dialog.

The questions:

So what does a constructive conversation about God look like?

What happens at the end of a conversation between a theist and a non-theist or an atheist? Does anything ever change?

How does change happen in cultural religious ideas?  There is no doubt that it does happen, no one worships Baal or Hera anymore? Is it a generational thing?

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First Name:

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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)

 

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Quote – Barry Goldwater on Religion and Politics

Barry Goldwater on Religion and Politics

I rarely find myself quoting Senator Goldwater, but I have to say, there is common ground between us here.

 

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