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OrpheusAgonistes -> RE: What is your faith/spiritual/secular perspective? (4/10/2010 11:37:07 PM)
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That's a complicated question. Buddhists have the best logo--the laughing Buddha is always a money shot. On the other hand, the Hindus have the hottest pantheon--Shiva and Kali and their whole deal, 'nuf said. Philip K. Dick makes Gnosticism seem pretty cool, but I honestly don't have the patience for its pure, undiluted form.
My God is a strange looking mongrel, cobbled together from the juiciest bits of sundry religions and ways of liberation.
For example:
The notion of Law and Gospel that I learned in my old Episcopalian Sunday school days. As a corollary, Bonhoffer's idea of "cheap grace vs costly grace" rings true to my cold, American heart.
The idea of Samsara (not so much that if we keep doing bad we have to be born again as an earthworm, but the idea that we are constantly being reborn based on choices we make and that patterns recur endlessly) seems like an extremely useful way to look at the concatenation of coincidences and choices we call life.
There's that beautiful line in the Gita "To your own actions you can lay claim but none to the fruits of your actions."
The root of suffering is desire. The only way to end suffering is to end desire. The Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths strike me as a pretty effective strategy for ending sadness and misery. The punchline? By the time you get there, you find out there's no there there. That's why the Buddha is laughing. He is laughing at you. At me. At everyone. Bastard.
I like Hinduism's emphasis on maya, on the sense of play and playfulness. It reminds me of Nietzsche's mockery of those afflicted with a "gruesome seriousness" that dooms them to misunderstand everything forever.
There are other beliefs, from both living and dead religions, that strike me as beautiful, useful, and possibly even true. There's another thread I just read through ( http://www.collarchat.com/m_3156293/tm.htm ) about the differences between Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and Taoism. That question sums up my conundrum nicely--as an American who doesn't read any of the languages necessary to understand the source texts of Buddhism, or Taoism, or Hinduism (or Gnosticism, or, let's be honest, Christianity) I'm left relying on intuition, aesthetics, gossip, and gloss. I guess a guess is the best I'll do.
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