Fry and Peterson

[romansh]

Jordan is bit of a pariah in some circles. Stephen I always find a delight.

It's a bit long, but I think worth it.

 

[tariki]

On 9/14/2022 at 7:06 PM, romansh said:

Jordan is bit of a pariah in some circles. Stephen I always find a delight.

It's a bit long, but I think worth it.

 

I must admit that I have not yet found the time to listen to this. I had never heard of Mr Peterson and googled. Apparently seen by some as one of our ages greatest interpreters of the Bible, yet who resists declaring whether or not he actually believes in God. That is about par for the course these days.

Whipping the thread onto ground that I can relate to (not having listened), Thomas Merton traces the inability to "believe in" God back to Descartes, with his "I think therefore I am"...

 

"Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later “dies,” because God as object is ultimately unthinkable. God as object is not only a mere abstract concept, but one which contains so many internal contradictions that it becomes entirely nonnegotiable except when it is hardened into an idol that is maintained in existence by a sheer act of will. For a long time man continued to be capable of this willfulness: but now the effort has become exhausting and many Christians have realized it to be futile"

(From an essay in "Zen and the Birds of Appetite")

 

Anyway, Stephen Fry I like. A gentle soul, intelligent. 

 

[PaulS]

On 10/12/2022 at 8:26 PM, tariki said:

"Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later “dies,” because God as object is ultimately unthinkable. God as object is not only a mere abstract concept, but one which contains so many internal contradictions that it becomes entirely nonnegotiable except when it is hardened into an idol that is maintained in existence by a sheer act of will. For a long time man continued to be capable of this willfulness: but now the effort has become exhausting and many Christians have realized it to be futile"

This reminds me of a Spong analogy which goes something like "If horses thought of God then that God would probably look like a horse, because being a horse is all that a horse can really understand".  Like us, we can't really understand being any more than a human, because that's our lived experience, so it's no surprise we see God as human-like or at the very least, very relatable to being a human.

[tariki]

10 hours ago, PaulS said:

This reminds me of a Spong analogy which goes something like "If horses thought of God then that God would probably look like a horse, because being a horse is all that a horse can really understand".  Like us, we can't really understand being any more than a human, because that's our lived experience, so it's no surprise we see God as human-like or at the very least, very relatable to being a human.

I love that you spun off at a sort of tangent. One thing suggesting another. Correspondences, one thing not quite the other, but suggestive. 

 

Merton goes on to speak of another type of consciousness, beginning not with our thinking self, but with Being itself, prior to any split into subject and object. Hitting the "ground" of Being first, in Faith, will eventually bring forth all the various diversifications of our own search for our own "time and place", our own journey. Beginning with some assumed split between "self" and "other" will lead to the endless confusions of thought that constitute suffering (dukkha)

 

As one wag once said, we must rest on the firm foundations of emptiness. Or as St John of the Cross...... "If we wish to be sure of the road we walk on we must close our eyes and walk in tge dark"

 

While I'm waffling, another verse or two from St John of the Cross:-

 

On that glad night

in secret, for no one saw me,

nor did I look at anything

with no other light or guide

than the one that burned in my heart. 

 

This guided me

more surely than the light of noon

to where he was awaiting me

— him I knew so well —

there in a place where no one appeared.

 

While I'm waffling, drinking coffee in McDonalds, another thought just popping into my mind, Case 2 of the Blue Cliff Record, all about not having preferences, of Buddhism teaching nothing. In the little book by Terrence Keenan, a commentary by some modern zen worthy:-

In the old city

at the head of Grafton Street

a busker plays his fiddle.

First Brahms, then Bach

and a little Paganini for fun.

Fingers run up and down strings.

Is it the vibrating air,

his skill, or the old melodies

that bring tears to my eyes?

Tell me, I need to know. 

 

It is that "need to know" that causes all the misery.

 

[PaulS]

15 hours ago, tariki said:

It is that "need to know" that causes all the misery.

Indeed.