Lovely essay. I take some issue with the work fallenness. I think that word is too tainted by the Christian tradition. You interpret it in a secular way closer to the Buddhist tradition of suffering as the human condition that can only be escaped only through enlightenment and exit from the cycle of life. I interpret the word fallenness …
Lovely essay. I take some issue with the work fallenness. I think that word is too tainted by the Christian tradition. You interpret it in a secular way closer to the Buddhist tradition of suffering as the human condition that can only be escaped only through enlightenment and exit from the cycle of life. I interpret the word fallenness not as our being subject to force, violence, or suffering, but in the way it's defined by Christianity, which is that we are all born bad or evil and have to supplicate to a magic outside power to have any chance at not being evil in the world. I think that's the source of many of the ills of Euro derived culture. A true curse. A deep blocker for healthy self-understanding, wisdom, and generosity of spirit.
For sure, I'm no Buddhist and don't believe we're all going the Bardo and back until we achieve enlightenment. As one who doesn't claim any version of enlightenment, I'm not going to claim I've got the path to wisdom and generosity of spirit. But I'm 100% certain the path is not through abdicating all responsibility and believing the only path to purity or holiness is supplicating to a magic fairy. That framing structurally blocks you from truly seeing yourself or others. The wisdom I've found has in many ways been driven by secularized and westernized learnings from various strains of Buddhism. In fact, my take on fallenness is more or less directly taken from Pema Chodron. One of my favorite quotes from one of her talks:
Behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there’s always fear. [to your point, shared by the Buddhists, that the default is force, violence, and suffering, which engenders fear in us from the start] But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungraspable, and unbiased.
Perhaps because there is nothing worth fearing. Which does not preclude assessing a threat to lives you love, and confronting it with force if necessary.
I do happen to subscribe to enlightenment, when taken to a level much deeper/higher. If we consider “The true hero, the subject, the center of the Iliad is force,” can we extend that to imagine love as a force? We don't understand it now, just like we don't really understand the other forces of gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces. But we understand them more than we did five centuries ago. Imagine an enlightenment which includes love as more than a tenet of certain spiritual traditions, but a wisdom that can move mountains. And like the other forces, it applies everywhere, even beyond our precious little planet. The universe is large, we know. It's taken a long time for it to grow us, a supposedly higher species. But if we are not able to keep life on this planet, or even this planet, from destruction, the forces do not disappear, nor does Love. There will always be hope, and 'life' in some other galaxy continues. So tragedy becomes comedy. But let's continue to not let the curtain down on this production just yet.
Lovely essay. I take some issue with the work fallenness. I think that word is too tainted by the Christian tradition. You interpret it in a secular way closer to the Buddhist tradition of suffering as the human condition that can only be escaped only through enlightenment and exit from the cycle of life. I interpret the word fallenness not as our being subject to force, violence, or suffering, but in the way it's defined by Christianity, which is that we are all born bad or evil and have to supplicate to a magic outside power to have any chance at not being evil in the world. I think that's the source of many of the ills of Euro derived culture. A true curse. A deep blocker for healthy self-understanding, wisdom, and generosity of spirit.
Except I’m not sure I subscribe to enlightenment, nor do I yearn for release. The secular fallenness I’m describing is more like Hobbes.
How does one reach healthy self-understanding, wisdom, and generosity of spirit?
For sure, I'm no Buddhist and don't believe we're all going the Bardo and back until we achieve enlightenment. As one who doesn't claim any version of enlightenment, I'm not going to claim I've got the path to wisdom and generosity of spirit. But I'm 100% certain the path is not through abdicating all responsibility and believing the only path to purity or holiness is supplicating to a magic fairy. That framing structurally blocks you from truly seeing yourself or others. The wisdom I've found has in many ways been driven by secularized and westernized learnings from various strains of Buddhism. In fact, my take on fallenness is more or less directly taken from Pema Chodron. One of my favorite quotes from one of her talks:
Behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there’s always fear. [to your point, shared by the Buddhists, that the default is force, violence, and suffering, which engenders fear in us from the start] But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungraspable, and unbiased.
Perhaps because there is nothing worth fearing. Which does not preclude assessing a threat to lives you love, and confronting it with force if necessary.
I do happen to subscribe to enlightenment, when taken to a level much deeper/higher. If we consider “The true hero, the subject, the center of the Iliad is force,” can we extend that to imagine love as a force? We don't understand it now, just like we don't really understand the other forces of gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces. But we understand them more than we did five centuries ago. Imagine an enlightenment which includes love as more than a tenet of certain spiritual traditions, but a wisdom that can move mountains. And like the other forces, it applies everywhere, even beyond our precious little planet. The universe is large, we know. It's taken a long time for it to grow us, a supposedly higher species. But if we are not able to keep life on this planet, or even this planet, from destruction, the forces do not disappear, nor does Love. There will always be hope, and 'life' in some other galaxy continues. So tragedy becomes comedy. But let's continue to not let the curtain down on this production just yet.
Simple kindness to fellow man?
By becoming more like Jesus
By following Buddha's Eightfold Path: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path
Yes. I’d go a bit further. But yes.
Further how? I can imagine at least a few things you might mean!
To simply not neglect the least of us. Something beyond religiosity.