The Finger Pointing At The Moon

I do not consider myself a Buddhist, but I admire the directness of Zen. I love one of their admonitions, "Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the Moon.

Throughout our history, men have tried to deal with the Divine in countless ways. We have gathered in beautiful Cathedrals and isolated ourselves in caves. We have stared at crosses and statues, at icons and mandalas. We have prayed to countless gods and goddesses and to a single God. We have chanted and prayed, meditated and contemplated, danced and beat ourselves. We have consulted spirit beings and oracles and channeled the dead. And, we have swallowed and smoked just about every chemical imaginable.

We have tackled the issue with logic. Just read the tortured, twisting logic found in the epistles of Paul and some of the Buddhist texts. Our scientists have used pure logic and describe a Universe that seemingly is almost irrational and filled with a fantastic array of weird particles that zip about with little rhyme or reason.

And, still, we search. We become convinced that the path we take, the methods we try, are the only way. In fact they give no answers; they only raise more questions. What is worse, they divide us more and more, as we defend our little paths out of fear that if we admit that they are lacking, we will be lost. We would rather soldier on, down a dead end road, than admit we were wrong and that we have wasted time.

The prime and obvious example of this began in the Middle East where Jews, Muslims,  and Christians, all professing a belief in the same God, have been fighting for centuries over silly bits of dogma. All of their battles are just a way of saying, "Daddy (God) loves me best." It is stupid and childish and is threatening the World, spreading bloodshed and wanton destructiveness everywhere.

All of the methods I noted have their uses. Each can show you a glimpse of the Divine mystery, but only a glimpse. You cannot see the whole, the unity that underlies all the diversity and is the source of it all, by just looking at the parts. Staring at your toenail tells you nothing of the rest of the foot and it certainly cannot bring you in touch with the whole body.

Just accept that we know very, very little, that it is all a grand mystery and get on with your life. Do that, and slowly, bit by bit, you will get glimpses of the Divine, little peaks behind the curtain. You will learn at the pace you are ready to learn. First though, stop mistaking the pointing finger for the Moon.

Religion and History - Don't Believe Everything You Read

We in the West, and at least for now we are the dominant culture ( notice I said for now), have a tendency toward literalism, a side affect of the Rational Enlightenment. All plusses have minuses attached and this is a big one.

Let's look at Buddhism. The oldest Buddhist scriptures are the Pali canon, written about the time of Jesus. They are said to have been written about 500 years after Gautama Buddha lived. Yet, they are filled with the sayings of this man. Are they actual quotes? Well, I have trouble remembering what I said 20 minutes ago and I seldom make long, detailed, intricate comments on the nature of the Universe and its relation to human consciousness. I have trouble believing that his precise words, and they are exceedingly precise, were remembered for 5 centuries. Yes, I know that in so-called primitive cultures, knowledge is passed and preserved orally and we are told that this is done to perfection, to which I say, "phht."  If oral traditions say that a giant lizard ate the village chief 342 years ago, must we believe that? I don't.

What about that belief that he lived around 500 BC? Well, that is what most Western references say and so do many Indian histories. But, other Indian histories place that time about 1000 BC, plus or minus a few hundred years, as do some Chinese histories and some Arab histories (remember, the Arabs were trading with China for many centuries before the Roman Empire was dreamed of).

Those promoting the 500 BC idea say that some Buddhist scriptures point out that shortly after the death of Gautama, a king, Ashoka, converted to Buddhism and created an idyllic kingdom. True, there was a King Ashoka in the 3rd century BC but recent research seems to be showing that his reign was considerably less than idyllic. However, the same research has shown that there was another Ashoka who's, by what accounts we have, did have a fairly pleasant kingdom. However, he lived about 2500 BC. Now you have a gap of 2000 years between Gautama's life and the first written record of his words.

Then to complicate matters more, about 100 years after the Pali canon, new saying of the Buddha began to be written by the Mahayanists, often contradicting the original sayings. They pulled a standard trick, saying that the new teachings were what he taught advanced students, the others were for dumb laymen. This same tactic has been used much by Christians trying to explain why Jesus often contradicted himself in the Gospels.

In other cultures, there is not the obsession with literalism that we Westerners have. That is a good thing in ways and a bad thing in other ways. They can follow a figurative teacher, we have to believe our teachers were real and that every word they are said to have spoken was actually spoken. I suppose the first is a better way of thinking but, why not just test the ideas for yourself, see what you find, and stop worrying about what someone said in the dim recesses of time.

My point?  All ancient writings are suspect. For that matter, so are all modern ones, and tales of the ancients must be taken no more than  semi-seriously. If you think they make sense, and are of some use to you, great. Just don't hammer others over the head with your beliefs. If some of what is written in these texts make no sense to you, then you are probably right, but, again, be easy with those who believe them. Unless they start hammering you with them. Then respond as you see fit.

Religion - Mistranslations,Mistakes, and Out and Out Lies

Today let's look at mistakes. I am going to stick with Christian tradition here, because I am most familiar with their mistakes. I am sure all religions make them, but I'll stick to this because it's a fine line between mistakes and differing opinions and lies and I want to get this right.

Let's start with a big one. As a young man, I was taught that Muslims did not believe in Jesus. This is a mistake. While Muslims do not believe that Jesus was Divine, they certainly believe that he was a great prophet and revere him as such. Likewise, many Hindus view him as an avatar of God and Buddhists tend to see him as Bodhisattva.

I was also taught that Jesus was born in Nazareth, near the Sea of Galilee. One problem. At the time he lived, there was no Nazareth. That town was developed in the 2nd Century, well after Jesus lived. This is a fairly honest mistake. Seemingly Jesus was called, by some, 'the Nazarene,' but exactly how the word is spelled determines its meaning. If Nazarine, then it applies to a sect that was close to the Essenes, but not the same. If Nazorite, then it means a Jew who has taken a special vow of holiness, which usually involves not cutting hair and abstaining from wine, for a certain time, which can vary from weeks to a lifetime. If Nazir, then it simply means a green shoot on a seemingly dead branch (the way grapes vines grow). This is what I believe it meant. His followers thought he was the new growth that would reanimate their culture.

Let's look at the Apocalypse of St John. Most of us were taught that this was the end of the world. It did not mean that at all. It was to be the end of an age. The word itself simply means 'a sudden revelation.' The word 'Armageddon' also does not mean the end of the world. It is the name of a location, 'har Mergiddo,' the plain of Megiddo. It was simply the spot where a great battle was to be fought. Because of the mistaken way we were taught, many of us were needlessly traumatized as kids. I mean the whole Book of Revelation is nightmarish science fiction, but thinking it describes the world's end makes it nearly intolerable to young minds.

There are countless other mistakes in Christian teachings. I stress Christian mistakes, not to pick on them, but because, of all belief systems, it is the one that says quite clearly, that it rests on real history. As such, mistakes by its teachers are unacceptable, yet they are perseverated.

I am willing to be charitable in describing these as mistakes. Those who taught me, and others of my era ( and eras before and after) were simply reciting what they were taught. However, if you go further back, to the earliest Church, you will find that some of those men out and out lied. That will be the next subject of this blog.