minsocal

I did not know this. While looking into the background of the "Two Birds" .... this came up.

The tree is important, but ...

"The ancient Hindu scriptures speak of the Universe as an inverted Banyan/Ashwattha tree with its roots in the Higher Worlds of Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss) and its branches in the many lower worlds that have been created. This is a comprehensive list of references to this tree in the ancient scriptures and the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. The world tree motif is present in many other religions and mythologies (See World-Tree)" (emphasis added)

http://auromere.word...ed-banyan-tree/

Now it makes more sense, to me at least.

If the birds are "inseparable" then perhaps the notion of the "two birds" is human illusion? Other translations substitute "identical" for "inseparable". Is this really a denial of mind-body dualism? Perhaps. The idea seems worth some thought. Or is it that the two aspects need each other as they live on the "selfsame tree"?

Interpretations bend this way and that way in the winds of time. In the lull, there is wisdom.

Friends, thank you so much for your touching comments. And, yes, I agree that it is in the way we live our lives that people come to understand what it means to be Christian. And yet...

From my local Tibetan Buddhist temple. "Each to their own capacity ... whether rational, emotional or intutive."

Friends,

 

As some of you are aware, I am working toward my MDiv and ordination in October. I have been reading and studying and learning 'til my heart and mind are full! Three books, especially, have touched me deeply: A Monk in the World, by Wayne Teasdale, The Underground Church by Robin Meyers, and The Heart of Christianity, by Marcus Borg.

 

In these books, i have learned what makes a Christian. It isn't about doctrine, it isn't about us vs. them. It's about radical inclusiveness and taking only what we need so others have enough. It's about turning the other cheek and seeking the way of nonviolence. It's about proclaiming Jesus is Lord (as opposed to Ceasar). It's about standing against the empire in favor of the poor and disenfranchised.

 

I see the way Christians act, and it seems to me many have forgotten the injunction "love your neighbor as yourself". I'm not saying there aren't good Christians doing acts of mercy and compassion. There good people reaching out, I know that.

 

I believe that as Christians, it isn't so much what we profess to believe, but in the way we conduct our lives that counts. The early Christians were subversive in that they took care of one another, refused to worshop Ceasar, wouldn't bow down to the empire. I want to conduct my life like that. And yet, because I am practically home-bound (due to a disability, among other things), because I have no influence or power or money, I feel there is little I can do to influence others. I think that's why this forum, and my new spirituality forum, are so important to me. At least I can write. And pray. But, sometimes, that just isn't enough.

 

Thanks for letting me share.

To want, to desire indicates a lot about who we are. It tells me a lot about who you are. And, that helps keep me going.

I checked to see whether Haidt (The Righteous Mind) has anything to say about 'shame.' Among other things he says that psychopaths lack certain emotions such that "they feel no compassion, guilt, shame or even embarrassment, which make is easy for them to lie, and hurt family friends, and animals." (underlining mine). As I suspected, shame is an emotion that yields a social benefit.

 

George

George,

You are correct. Antonio Damasio, also an expert on human emotion, notes that the capacity for empathy often leads to feelings of emotion "as if" one were the other person. That can be uncomfortable when it does not match your expectations. It's the mismatch that's the problem.

Myron

I have read somewhere that there is some evidence to suggest some of our more important decisions are mulled over in our unconscious while we sleep and we wake up making a conscious decision based on our unconscious weighing up of factors, believing we have made a purely conscious decision. This gives some credibility to the well known saying "Let me sleep on it". I know I need to reference this but I thought I'd mention here at this point in the discussion. I'll hunt around in the meantime and see if I can find a credible reference (can't remember where I read it!)

 

 

Here's an article for starters:

 

http://www.scienceda...81224215542.htm

 

Paul

Antonio Damasio, now at USC. The Somatic Marker Hypothesis. Dates back to C. G. Jung. Similar to John Searle's Thesis of the Background or the earlier theory of Edmund Husserl.

Memory and memory defects can be tragic. There is a famous example of a man in the United Kingdom who cannot form long term memory. Every time he hears that his father died, he experiences the same initial grief. Every time. Those around him have learned to shield him from this agony.

It is impossible for the human mind-brain to store every mental state (experience). The "wetware" just does not have that capacity. It does have the capacity to store mental events that have no physical reality. I can imagine an elephant with horned rimmed glasses wearing a pink tutu and belting out Lady Gaga songs. I can do that today and remember it tomorrow.

What is required is that an experience be tagged with a code that says "remember this, it is significant." That's about it.

Dr. John Searle is and interesting study. People here have objected to the positions taken by Daniel Dennet. Searle is Dennet's major opponent. Most here would never know that. Searle is in the top of the field concerning these issues. Searle is an atheist, but does not deny the possibilty of God. He admits that we could some day find a causal role for God in a causal world order.

Those who participated in the anti - Dennet debate seem to be long gone ... pitty.

"We are making a mistake in posing the question in this way. And it ought to be obvious to us. On the view of the mind as containing an inventory of mental states, there must be a category mistake in trying to draw a line between Network and Background, because Background consists of a set of capacities, and Network is not a matter of capacities at all, but of intentional states.

I now think the real mistake was to suppose that there is an inventory of mental states, some conscious, some unconscious. Both language and culture tend to force this picture on us. We think of memory as a storehouse of propositions and images, as a kind of big library or filing cabinet of representations. But we should think of memory rather as a mechanism for generating current performance, including conscious thoughts and actions, based on past experience. The thesis of the Background has to be rewritten to get rid of the presupposition of the mind as a collection, an inventory, of mental phenomena, because the only occurrent reality of the mental as mental is consciousness.

The belief in an occurrent reality that consists of unconscious mental states, and that is distinct from Background capacities, is an illusion based largely on the grammar of our language (Searle, 1992, p. 187)."

Myron,

 

Searle may well be talking above of consciousness here but not awareness. Awareness is behind consciousness and not dependent on it.

 

If I am conscious it is in relation to being unconscious. If I am conscious it is always conscious 'of something' . Consciousness always has an object of which i am conscious. So while the self realization of my identity as the "I am" is very much closer to reality than the idea that i am this or that, it is still a step away from the final realization of the absolute. By that i mean the realization that I am the non- dual awareness which is allowing the consciousness to be conscious. Awareness is that which one could say is shining through the consciousness, yet i do not believe it would be correct to say it is consciousness itself.

 

But of course. if you would differ in this, i have no argument and do yield to you. Perhaps i could be wrong.

 

Joseph

Joseph,

Not exactly, since I used Searle as my launch point.

"Awareness is an example of intentionality (Searle, 2002, p. 62). It is a "... a near synonym for consciousness, but awareness is more closely related to cognition and knowledge than is consciousness (Searle, 1992, p. 84), and ... We may have to allow for cases of "unconscious awareness" (ibid)."

Myron

Myron,

 

Interesting..... That may be one way that at least psychology looks at awareness.

 

 

Awareness to me is recognized more as a potential or state or ability to perceive existence, to feel, or to be conscious of events. Awareness in this sense is the source which brings attention to one's conditioning, which includes thoughts, emotions, memories, ideas, ideals, belief-systems, actions and reactions. However, conditioning or understanding or memory for that matter to me do not seem to be required for awareness which i believe is always present.

 

Joseph

Joseph,

I was not limiting my stance to psychology. My appeal is to cognitive science and philosophy. Your error.

"To be conscious of something you have to be conscious of it as something ( again, barring pathology and the like), but perceiving as, and other forms of consciousness as, require categories. But preexisting categories imply prior familiarity with the categories, hence the perceptions are under theaspect of the familiar. So these features hang together: structuredness, perception as, the aspectual shape of all intentionality, categories, and the aspect of familiarity (Searle, 1992)."

Your argument is familar, I've seen it before. Memory allows me this, and allows me to respond. There would be no reason for a message dialoque if this were not true.

Myron

Myron,

 

Interesting..... That may be one way that at least psychology looks at awareness.

 

 

Awareness to me is recognized more as a potential or state or ability to perceive existence, to feel, or to be conscious of events. Awareness in this sense is the source which brings attention to one's conditioning, which includes thoughts, emotions, memories, ideas, ideals, belief-systems, actions and reactions. However, conditioning or understanding or memory for that matter to me do not seem to be required for awareness which i believe is always present.

 

Joseph

Joseph,

Without memory, everything would be novel and not familiar. That is the difference between perception and awareness. To be aware, one has to have several points in time. That is the basis of self awareness. That is why perception and awareness are defined differently.

Myron

"Technically, awareness is attention plus working memory - ie. the ability to attend selectively among a range of perceived stimuli and a short term memory store into which several of these attended items can be 'loaded', held simultaneously, and combined. Awareness is a standard variable in psychological research, unproblematically measured in, for example, animal vision. It is studied by means such as measuring performance at memory tasks while monitoring gaze direction, delaying responses, and recording brain activity. When brain activity correlates exactly with performance of tasks then it can be assumed that that bit of brain is involved in that particular task. And the length of time which brain activity is sustained corresponds to an animals ability to 'hold in mind' information for immediate use. Researchers are therefore recording the operation of a temporary store.

Awareness is not therefore an aspect of social intelligence. Instead, awareness is a mechanism of integration

. Awareness is a way of converging and combining information, and it is a functional ability that is found in complex animals living in complex environments. Awareness therefore relates to the ability to cope with complexity or perception and behavior, and it is found not only in social animals, but also in solitary animals. While awareness is found in animals right across the animal kingdom; consciousness is of much more limited distribution. I suggest that consciousness is probably confined to a small number of recently-evolved social animals such as the great ape lineage - especially common chimpanzees and bonobos - and perhaps a few other recently-evolved social mammals such as elephants and dolphins (Charlton, B. 2000)."

Links: Charlton, B. (2000) Awareness, Consciouness, & Evolution. Cave, K., (1998). Awareness of Body States, Feelings

Yes, further investigation on my part did reveal this. Sadly, it was, in my opinion, an overreaction that probably doesn't help advance the GLBT community's fight for equal rights.

 

 

 

That's good that he apologized. He should.

 

I think the whole Chick-Fil-A thing was an embarrassment for the Christian community.

 

Here's an article written by a sane, rational, Christian - just so we don't generalize that ALL evangelical Christians were stuffing factory-fed, deep-fried chicken down their gullets:

 

http://matthewpaultu...iled-yesterday/

 

NORM

We await your fullest investigation, as always.

IMHO, to view gun murders in the same way as an accident, fatal disease or natural disaster, something we can't do anything about, have no responsibility for, is to condone them.

 

Some claim that the government intrudes on privacy, the right to self protection, by requiring background checks or by banning assault weapons.

But what could be more intrusive than invading a house of worship and attacking peaceful, reverent people.

There is nothing more intrusive than invading a house of worship and that is why the FBI is calling this a potential act of "domestic terrorism".

Yep, more dead in an attack on a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin.

From my reading of various gay blogs, the LGBT community doesn't seem to care one way or the other about the issue. This is more of something that's been blown up by the media, a couple of overzealous heterosexual male mayors, and paranoid right wing Christians getting their panties in a knot.

Yes, drama has made it's way into the heterosexual community. Reason sometimes reverses the course of change.

Never underestimate the negative effect of being made the scapegoat. The consequences are well documented. This became a hotbuttton in Americn politics because scapegoating has been used for thousands of years. Jesus reached out to what population? Those in power? I don't think so.

Amazing what focus and perseverance can do for one in spite of handicaps. .

Joseph

Joseph,

Yes, and I think that is a concept Jesus championed. I have long considered Jesus a teacher and leader of resilience in the face of obstacles.

Myron

This comes from my favorite source:

"We affirm our common humanity with all human beings and our commitment to truly value each person regardless of how different they are from us.

All: We celebrate our unity in our diversity

We acknowledge that there is a longing for a spirituality which is person-centred, humane, truth-seeking, open to doubt and questioning, and in tune with our understanding of the natural world. We hope for one which supports human growth and development, encourages love of others, particularly those who are looked down on by society, and champions social justice. We believe that this should be the core of our faith and lives.

All: We celebrate our unity in our diversity

We acknowledge with gratitude that there are many people of all faiths, and of none, who have a strong commitment to seeking the truth, to loving others, and promoting social justice and human rights.

All: We celebrate our unity in our diversity

We believe that the lack of love and social justice in the world is at the root of most of the evil in the world. Those whose being has not been able to flourish in a spirit of love can become bitter, trapped in their own inadequacies and fears, and wish to prevent others who are different from them from flourishing by engaging in oppressive and sometimes deeply cruel acts. This makes unconditional selfless love and acceptance crucial to the healing of these deep wounds.

All: We celebrate our unity in our diversity

We affirm the integrity of creation. We recognise that human life is rooted in and dependent on the earth and that all of life is bound up in an amazingly complex evolutionary tapestry. Everything is interconnected and how we live and act has effects far beyond what we can see. We are called to respect the earth and life in all its diversity and to secure the earth’s bounty for present and future generations. We acknowledge that the oneness and wonder of the universe and human responsibility for the stewardship of the planet should be central to a life of faith.

All: We celebrate our unity in our diversity

We believe that no faith has an exclusive claim on truth. We recognise that we have much to learn from the ideas, actions and writings of other faiths. Dialogue with those of other faiths can be a rich and valuable experience for those of all faiths and of none.

All: We celebrate our unity in our diversity

We recognise that we need to be constantly open to new insights, knowledge and ideas and to embrace scientific progress where it improves our understanding of the world and our ability to protect and preserve it, but oppose it when it increases the ability to kill or damage living things or the planet.

All: We celebrate our unity in our diversity

We celebrate the opportunity to be able to meet, discuss and share with others from diverse backgrounds. We acknowledge that we are all richer and more fully human as a result.

All: We celebrate our unity in our diversity"

http://progressivechristianity.org/resources/unity-in-diversity/

Would you expect a man who is legally blind to be a world class archer? Probably not, but ...

"Legally blind archer Im Dong-hyun set the first world records of the London Olympics, breaking his own record in the 72-arrow mark and helping South Korea set a team record in the ranking round on Friday.

Im broke the record he had set in Turkey in May by three points with a score of 699, hours before the 2012 Games official opening ceremony.

"This is just the first round, so I will not get too excited by it," said Im, who has 10 percent vision in his left eye and 20 percent in his right."

http://www.nbcsports...__utmk=75149970

The shooter in Colorado obtained numerous firearms legally and passed background checks. He purchased 6,000 rounds of ammunition on the internet. Beyond this we know very little. I agree with those who feel that assault rifles should not be available to the public, nor should 30 and 100 round ammo magazines. The shooter had an assault rifle with a 100 round magazine. As reported by several sources, matters could have been worse but for the fact that the rifle jammed soon after the assault began.

Is there any way in which this catastrophe could have been avoided? The culprit in this incident, who made himself a criminal, had no apparent history of violence. We have, as yet, no psychiatric evaluation but I suspect one will be ordered.

But back to the victims. Some of those who survived had no health insurance and are facing as much as $ 1 million in hospital costs. In the world we know today, they will be hounded without mercy to pay up even as they struggle to regain a normal life. Somehow, this is not right, but I know of no solution other than universal health care. I know this is a big issue with progressives and wish we had a stronger voice.

The only energy associated with the brain-mind is the same energy used to fuel all life. Matter and energy are two states of the same thing. Mind and matter are two states of the same thing. I have learned that it is difficult for some to think this way, but the problem is not universal.

If matter and energy are interchageable according to strict physical laws. Who set the original limit? Finite mass = finite energy. Is there no infinity?