23 December 2024

Thots on various religio-philosophical issues


Dear diary,

When talking with my sister, she asked what I thought about karma. I repeated my boilerplate opinion: The idea, I said, is pleasing from a certain perspective, but it also worries me, because I fear that certain types of people will think “I need not try to harmonize with others, for if I hurt them, it’s only the cosmic justice working through me.” – I prefer the emphasis to be on forgiveness: if someone offends you, forget about it; get over it; move on. So I have a love-hate relationship with karma. I love the idea of reversing harm (if that’s what’s happening), but I hate that one’s personality is lost by the time one receives one’s just deserts. Since death cancels memory, and memory is identity, the recipient of the reward or punishment is never the culprit. That seems even less fair than plain old reality.

Then my sister told me how she’s been learning from “this online guru who teaches about Buddhism,” so her views on karma have changed from what they once were. “I used to think of karma,” she said, “sort of the way that mom thinks of Judgment Day – like: Karma is always watching and listening, ready to hand out consequences if you do something wrong or bad.”

This made me laugh. I remarked that it sounds like a government surveillance program – or Santa Claus:

He knows when you’ve been sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness’ sake.

The more I read about karma, the less I know about it. It’s like the term “God” – people use it according to their own personal understanding and just assume that everyone else is on the same page. The last thing I learned about it was that the Sanskrit word means “work” or “deed.” This makes me think that the confusion over karma is related to the Christian argument over “Faith versus Works,” in the New Testament epistles, where the Apostle Paul takes the side of “Faith Alone,” and James the brother of Jesus takes the side of “Good Deeds” or “Works” (charitable action). – If karma is seen as a spiritual bank account, then having a positive balance is “good karma” and a negative balance is “bad karma.” So karma is like soul-money. (Note that the religious concepts of “faith” and “sin” have roots in “credit” and “debt.”) The Christians on Paul’s side of the “Faith vs. Good Deeds” argument say that Christ is so rich, he can pay off your debt, so you don’t need any karma-cash of your own – in his letter to the Romans (ch. 3 & 4), Paul argues:

All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus . . . Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. . . . For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

You don’t need to do good works to acquire good karma to put funds in your spiritual account to pay off what bad-karma balance you owe, Paul claims: Just believe in Christ and he’ll use his infinite credit to spot you, so you don’t end up in debtor’s prison (Hell). – But the Christians on James’ side disagree with Paul. In his own epistle (2:14-20) James says:

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?

(These questions are asked rhetorically, sarcastically. Also consider, when reading these passages, whether that term “works” might be replaced with the phrase “good karma.” James continues . . . )

If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, “Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled”; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, “Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

It seems to me that James is saying that one cannot achieve good karma without earning it through hard labor. Whereas Paul is like someone who has a wealthy relative who will bail him out of trouble.

I’m also now reminded of that bumper sticker that I once saw: “My karma ran over your dogma.”

No matter how ill-defined these concepts are, they seem to be hovering over the same territory. The questions are: How should we act in this life? How should we think in this life? Are there sure consequences for helping or harming others? Can any trace, memory, consequence of life’s actions get past the full-stop of death?

Think of the difference between, on one hand, saying that there is no life after death, and, on the other hand, saying that there is life after death albeit with no memory of prior existence. Since memory IS identity, the only way that reincarnation can have meaning for us is if memory is made death-proof.

One person says “I remember my past lives.” Another person says “I imagine my past lives.” Think how hard it would be to show the difference between the truth value of these two statements.

[At an event celebrating the release of his latest book, LANCASTER DODD, the founder and leader of a metaphysical movement, is approached by one of his followers, HELEN SULLIVAN.]
SULLIVAN: I’ve been reading the new book.
DODD: What do you think?
SULLIVAN: I think it’s wonderful.
DODD: Wait till you get to the good parts.
SULLIVAN: Oh, yes. Well, as I’ve begun, I did notice, on page thirteen, there’s a change. You’ve changed the processing-platform question. Now it says, “Can you imagine—?”
DODD: Yes. . . . Yes.
SULLIVAN: If our previous method was to induce memory by asking, “Can you recall,” doesn’t it then change everything if now we say, “Can you imagine?”
DODD: We are invoking a new, wider range to account for the new data. “Can you imagine” allows for a more creative pathway to the mind. More open.
SULLIVAN: But if the new—
DODD: What do you want!? Helen. This is the new work.
[from The Master, a 2012 film 
by Paul Thomas Anderson]

Identity is all we really own in this world; it’s all we are; and since it seems utterly vulnerable to death, I place a high value on the elements that support and augment identity: memory and imagination. That’s why the differences (or lack thereof) between what we call memory and imagination enchant me. They seem to be related to objectivity and subjectivity; and I’m not even sure whether they’re two things or one. I tend to think of memory as involuntary whereas imagination is informed by one’s will or fancy. However, memory is not rigidly limited or unable to be manipulated by one’s volition; and imagination is dependent on real-world experiences and stimuli – it can merge, revise, invert, flipflop, or blot one’s perceptions, but it cannot create them from whole cloth.

Now here’s one last karma-quotation that, I think, shares and backs up my position – it’s from that book I mentioned in my previous entry, Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty:

The problem of memory, linked to the problem of personal identity, is one that has plagued the karma theory from its inception and is particularly a thorn in the side of the Buddhists. Even for the Hindus, there always remains a certain amount of psychological uncertainty and cognitive uncertainty about one’s previous karma. One cannot know why one has the karmic destiny that one has; moreover, if one cannot feel responsibility for what one has done in a previous life because one cannot remember that life (and therefore, it could be argued, one is not the same person), one cannot feel the justice in being punished for a crime that someone else did (the other, previous self, lost to one’s present memory). One can be told about it and believe it, but that is something else; that is sharing the dream only on the weakest level.

§

My sister also mentioned Zen Buddhism – I’ve heard people speak about that school or philosophy all my life, and I’ve never quite known what it was. The abovementioned dream book referred to Zen Buddhism as being difficult for Westerners to comprehend. I suppose you could say that about anything, tho – even regular Western concepts!

I should read more about these Eastern religions and systems. I only tend to hover around the Western ones because there are clear translations and excellent scholarly studies available, and they are all so easy to obtain thru the library. Plus I always remember a little anecdote that a traveler relayed—he said:

I left the West to visit the Monks in Tibet, because I was yearning to know about Buddhism. Then, when I finally met them, all the Monks were obsessed with the West and yearning to know about Surrealism!

The grass is always greener on the neighbor’s estate. Romanticism is the desire to be elsewhere.

§

In reading news, I also just finished, for the first time, The Nature of the Gods by Cicero. I really liked it. There are interesting points put very clearly. In his time, the major players in the grand religious kerfuffle were the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Academy. Cicero sides mostly with the latter but also a little with the Stoics. I happen to love the Epicureans (De Rerum Natura by Lucretius is a sacred book, to me), but I cheerfully embrace Cicero the same way that, as the Antichrist, I embrace Saint Augustine.

If the gods had the good of the human race at heart, then they ought to have made all men good. If that were too much to ask, then they should at least do their best for those who are good. . . . Yet time would fail me if I tried to list all the good men for whom things have turned out badly. So it would if I tried to mention all the wicked who have prospered.

Those are the words of Cotta, one of the participants in Cicero’s discourse.

Reporting my ideas and readings here causes me to realize how silly the pursuit of religion is. Why should anyone think, talk, argue about divinity? Why should I care what some man from long ago, halfway across the globe, said or did!

Personally, I’m just fascinated with the possibilities of thought. We all have a mind: what do we do with it? We all have the faculty of imagination: how do we employ it? When we read religious scriptures from ancient days, we’re becoming privy to the imaginations of actual people. I still don’t see how this is any different from reading a poem or novel written by someone today. In either case, we’re peeking into the contents of someone’s mind.

A churchgoing believer might say: “Well the Bible is special, different from a modern poem or novel, because God wrote it and handed it to humankind.” This statement itself contains imaginative material that I love to ponder; but if we test it to see how much it connects to our shared reality, we find it lacking. The Bible, like all other scriptures, was written the same way that any modern poem is composed. But now I imagine someone saying to me: “How do you know that God did not literally interact with the writers of scripture?” And the truth is that I do not know. So, what do I do, now that I’ve admitted my ignorance? Do I believe everyone who tells me that their scripture had a divine origin? Yes; I believe it all. But does that solve the problem? In a manner of speaking. As Duchamp always sez: There is no solution because there is no problem.

§

Do not read; look at the designs created by the white spaces between the words . . .
—from The Immaculate Conception 
by André Breton & Paul Eluard

My brother-in-law informed me that he is reading a wordless comic-book version of the Mahabharata. I replied that although I’ve read thru William Buck’s retelling of that scripture, I still feel as unknowledgeable about it as I did before I opened its cover. And I felt the same way when my sister brought up her newfound interest in Buddhism. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about these foreign ideas, religions or philosophies, but all the concepts just glitter around in my head like a kaleidoscope. I don’t know what to make of any of it. The Indian pantheon perplexes me. Whatever intelligence I have acquired from studying any of these Eastern systems is hopelessly fragmented; I cherish this or that episode from a given scripture, but I have no idea how it connects to the entirety – or if there even is an entirety. I’m now remembering a passage I admired; I’ll try to paraphrase it:

There’s this sacred altar in a field, and people come and place offerings before the altar, and anoint it with oil, and yet their prayers remain unanswered . . . but then a monkey comes along and kicks the altar, at which point the God appears and announces that He is pleased with this monkey for worshipping Him correctly.

Isn’t that a nice little scene? I doubt that my recollection of it is accurate. . . .

Just now I stopped and paged thru my copy of the Mahabharata, trying to locate the story amid the scriptural chaos, and of course I can’t find it. But now that I’ve invested a few moments of time, I want to share at least something from the text as a keepsake, just for fun; so, instead, here’s a clipping so thin that it could fit in a fortune cookie:

The Death Lord reached into Satyavan’s breast, on the left side, somewhere near the heart, and drew forth his soul . . .

I simply grabbed that quote at random – however, now I recall that, in the final episode of the second season of Twin Peaks, this very same incident occurs and is visually depicted onscreen (which is one of the reasons why the series’ creator David Lynch is my favorite director) – since I always keep the script by my side, it’s easy to share the moment:

[AGENT COOPER’S sweetheart ANNIE BLACKBURN is kidnapped and dragged into the supernatural Black Lodge by his former FBI partner WINDOM EARLE. . . . COOPER follows EARLE into the Lodge.]

EARLE: If you give me your soul, I’ll let Annie live.

COOPER: I will.

[WINDOM EARLE reaches into AGENT COOPER’S chest, on the left side, somewhere near the heart, and yanks out his soul. But this act is at once halted and reversed: The demonic spirit KILLER BOB now appears clutching EARLE like a puppet; EARLE is screaming.]

BOB: [to Earle] Be quiet! Be quiet! [to COOPER] You go. He is wrong. He can’t ask for your soul. I will take his.

[After a burst of flame, EARLE falls silent and still.]

If you’ve never seen this scene, I’m sure that its audiovisual audacity remains lost in the textual translation; but, once you have viewed it, it becomes fixed in your imagination as a touchstone of the cinematic sublime. I don’t know how anyone could remain unimpressed with the fact that a director actually filmed the theft of a soul. It’s hard to believe that this was broadcast on regular television.

§

My sister told me that her yoga teachers announced that they’re planning a group trip to Japan next spring, “to visit the beautiful temples there, and to explore Zen Buddhism.” She also mentioned that “There is a Japanese city called Nara, where deer hang out in the parks and streets. I find this fascinating – the pictures and videos look very cool . . .”

I almost replied that we here in Hastings, just this morning, saw five deer crossing the road (at the crosswalk!) and trotting into the park at Vermillion River – and I began to think that maybe our city could compete with Nara for tourists . . . But then I looked online and saw that “Deer in Nara” is actually a subsection of the place’s Wikipedia article, which has a photo showing whole herds of the creatures browsing around the public square, right alongside the humans. Now I can’t resist quoting a few things from the article:

Snack vendors sell sika senbei (deer crackers) to visitors so they can feed the deer. Some deer have learned to bow, so as to receive senbei from people.
      . . . Additionally, the deer have become aggressive towards humans in their solicitation of food (which leads to people getting injured by deer) . . . and have lost their fear of predators in general.

Just imagine being attacked by a murderous deer! A few months ago, I read through Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals (she’s the sister of the inventor of modern poetry, William Wordsworth), in which she often mentioned walking in the countryside and being afraid of the cows – apparently they were mean-spirited and prone to assault passersby.

§

Between typing paragraphs here I did a little more reading about Zen: I like to know the etymology. The term is said to be derived from the Japanese pronunciation of a Middle Chinese word, which in turn comes from the Sanskrit for “contemplation.” So, Zen Buddhism signifies Mentally Focused Buddhism. At least that’s how I’ll think of it. If this is right, I desire everything to be Zen X, because I’m all for mental focus, contemplation, meditation; thinking deeply about what you’re doing; listening with care. Undivided attention. Zen music, Zen conversation . . .

Zen Christianity is an oxymoron, however, because the Apostle Paul devised Christianity to negate the teachings of Jesus; and Jesus himself was a believer in Zen Yahwism.

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