The main elements-stresses, sorrows, pleasures, challenges-in our lives do not change.
--R. Hoggart.
Or do not change that much. This is still the tent of scattered stars that love made, is it not? This old story, of joy and sorrow, is old, not only yours. The wounds we think ours alone have scarred others before us (though there's no solace in that). There is no need to insist upon it. If someone wants to maintain that faith is a story, then that's fine. There are no proofs here, no philosophical arguments. Get over it. Reason without faith can circle around itself and, quite evidently, lead to barbarism (Goya: "The sleep of reason..."). Instrumental reason that knows nothing of first things, final ends, can and has served bureaucracies that sent people to the gas chambers.
To talk of faith seriously in these times is, it is claimed, to border on contempt-a contempt of the most obvious of realities: that religion is a handmaiden (or perhaps even inextricably bound with) the most atrocious violence and nihilism in the modern world.
'The sense of constant unfinishedness' might, for some, point to despair and meaningless; for others it might necessitate the belief in progress and a striving for human perfection. I like to think, though, that it points to the divine. Ahad and 'm', as the Muslims would say.
The pattern of our belief composes our sense of the self.
For centuries now we have believed the polar opposite. The self, if it can be said to exist in any enduring sense, is a moving tissue of desires and fragmentary self-awareness, a mirage or phantom, as insubstantial as the morning mist that is dispelled as soon as the sun rises. the unreality of the self mirrors the unreality of the world. I don't know if that's Buddhist...
But what pattern the self has is composed of its material desires. When you look at the commodities around you, the material possessions you've surrounded yourself with, you're supposed to say: that's me! And in a sense, a depleted one, that's quite true. Men and women cannot live without images. What image or picture (Iris M) of the self do we have of ourselves today? What image do we grow into (are allowed to grow into)?
The radical nature of religion: to reject false images. To negate the idols of the day. But that can never be enough since it is, sure enough, often accompanied with a zeal and a fanatical spirit devoid of all humility and charity. What, then, do we turn to? Which qibla?
Who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?
--Solzhenitsyn
Perhaps more reasonably, and less dramatically we may aim to tame those aspects of the self we find disagreeable. Does opposition, resistance to the world have to be so one-sided? (Render unto Caesar..?).
We are surrounded by vast areas of self-deceit. In many ways we haven't really grown up, preferring denial and childish outbursts to an understanding of what we really are. Who, today, can bear to look themselves in the mirror? Under what light?
The moral courage not to be swayed by the opinions of others, the dominant way of thinking. A certain amount of obstinacy is required to stand against the times.
--R. Hoggart.
Or do not change that much. This is still the tent of scattered stars that love made, is it not? This old story, of joy and sorrow, is old, not only yours. The wounds we think ours alone have scarred others before us (though there's no solace in that). There is no need to insist upon it. If someone wants to maintain that faith is a story, then that's fine. There are no proofs here, no philosophical arguments. Get over it. Reason without faith can circle around itself and, quite evidently, lead to barbarism (Goya: "The sleep of reason..."). Instrumental reason that knows nothing of first things, final ends, can and has served bureaucracies that sent people to the gas chambers.
To talk of faith seriously in these times is, it is claimed, to border on contempt-a contempt of the most obvious of realities: that religion is a handmaiden (or perhaps even inextricably bound with) the most atrocious violence and nihilism in the modern world.
'The sense of constant unfinishedness' might, for some, point to despair and meaningless; for others it might necessitate the belief in progress and a striving for human perfection. I like to think, though, that it points to the divine. Ahad and 'm', as the Muslims would say.
The pattern of our belief composes our sense of the self.
For centuries now we have believed the polar opposite. The self, if it can be said to exist in any enduring sense, is a moving tissue of desires and fragmentary self-awareness, a mirage or phantom, as insubstantial as the morning mist that is dispelled as soon as the sun rises. the unreality of the self mirrors the unreality of the world. I don't know if that's Buddhist...
But what pattern the self has is composed of its material desires. When you look at the commodities around you, the material possessions you've surrounded yourself with, you're supposed to say: that's me! And in a sense, a depleted one, that's quite true. Men and women cannot live without images. What image or picture (Iris M) of the self do we have of ourselves today? What image do we grow into (are allowed to grow into)?
The radical nature of religion: to reject false images. To negate the idols of the day. But that can never be enough since it is, sure enough, often accompanied with a zeal and a fanatical spirit devoid of all humility and charity. What, then, do we turn to? Which qibla?
Who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?
--Solzhenitsyn
Perhaps more reasonably, and less dramatically we may aim to tame those aspects of the self we find disagreeable. Does opposition, resistance to the world have to be so one-sided? (Render unto Caesar..?).
We are surrounded by vast areas of self-deceit. In many ways we haven't really grown up, preferring denial and childish outbursts to an understanding of what we really are. Who, today, can bear to look themselves in the mirror? Under what light?
The moral courage not to be swayed by the opinions of others, the dominant way of thinking. A certain amount of obstinacy is required to stand against the times.
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