[MD] dharma, the way, zazen, path, the morning fog, etc...

[david buchanan]

SA, Kevin and all:

SA said to Kevin:
I go for the oneness of life.  Personally I believe G-d and I are one.

Kevin replied:
I believe the spirit of God dwells in everyone and that we are separate 
persons. I am not God and God is not me in the same way that you and I are 
not each other. But through our communications (these email messages to MD) 
we can maintain a relationship.  It's through the relationship that we learn 
about each other.  It's through our interactions that we find meaning in one 
another and in ourselves.  In this same way I maintain a relationship with 
the God that is within me, which is the same God that transcends me; the 
source of all creation.  And it takes effort.  Which is to say it takes 
faith and love and prayer.  And this is a callenge because anything that 
takes effort has to deal with the ego.  Fifty-one years of life has taught 
me that my ego is only concerned with itself.  It could care less about you 
or God or relationships or anything or anyone else.  But it's a part of me, 
a big part.  And I have come to love it.  I just don't let it occupy the 
driver's seat so often; an effort that is mostly about letting go, the 
toughest thing you'll never do.

dmb says:
This explanation is a fairly good example of the theism I've been 
criticizing. I've tried to show that this very common view is to be 
contrasted with a more mystical understanding of "God", one that is not 
about a relationship but one of identity. I recently posted a dozen quotes 
on this topic, but there is a Campbell quote that addresses the problem with 
this sort of theism quite directly...

"Already in the 8th century B.C., in the Chhandogya Upanisad, the key word 
to such a meditation is announced; TAT TVAM ASI, "Thou art That", or "You 
yourself are It!". The final sense of a religion such as Hinduism or 
Buddhism is to bring about in the individual an experience, one way or 
another, of his own IDENTITY with that mystery that is the mystery of all 
being. ...it is the mystery also of many of our own Occidental mystics; and 
many of these have been burned for having said as much. Westward of Iran, in 
all three of the great traditions that have come to us from the Near Eastern
zone, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, such concepts are unthinkable 
and sheer heresy. God created the world. Creator and creature cannot be the 
same, since, as Aristotle tells us, A is not-A. Our theology, therefore, 
begins from the point of view of waking consciousness and Aristotelian
logic; whereas, on another level of consciousness - and this, the level to 
which all religions must finally refer - the ultimate mystery transcends the 
laws of dualistic logic, causality and space-time. Anyone who says, as Jesus 
is reported to have said (John 10:30), 'I and the Father are One', is
declared in our tradition to have blasphemed. ...We in our traditon do not 
recognize the possibility of such an experience of identity with the ground 
of one's own being. What we accept, rather, is the achievement and 
maintenance of a relationship to a personality concieved to be our Creator.
In other words, ours is a religion of RELATIONSHIP: a, the creature, RELATED 
to X, the Creator (aRX). In the Orient, on the other hand, the appropriate 
formula would be something more like the simple equation, a=X." Joseph 
Campbell

dmb continues:
You see the point here, Kevin? Pirsig uses the phrase "Thou art That" to 
describe the mystical experience too. See, I think that both Campbell and 
Pirsig (and lots of other people that I've been dishing up lately) are 
saying that theism is a problem insofar as it asserts that Thou aren't That, 
as you seem to be saying. This idea of God as "other" is part of the 
illusion of dividedness in very much the way way that the idea of subject 
and objects are part of the illusion if dividedness. See, the problem with 
the kind of theism you're asserting is that it re-inforces the very illusion 
that is to be overcome. This is what I mean when I say that theism retards 
spirituality, see, by perpetuating and emphasizing the "otherness" of God. 
In fact, Christianity has a long history of making sure the illusion 
shatterers would suffer for it, which is what Campbell is refering to the 
many that have been burned for claiming an identity with God, rather than 
just a relationship. And speaking of relationships.

How do you figure the ego is only interested in itself and not in 
relationships? I mean, as I understand the term, the ego is just another 
name for normal waking consciousness, our self-consciousness. And so it 
seems to me that the ego is inescapabley involved when we're dealing with 
"people and life". But I think these are static realities, divided realities 
and the domain of the small, static self, whereas genuine religion or 
spirituality is about the big Self. This is where DQ and the mystical "God" 
comes into the picture and where the illusion of dividness, including the 
ego self, is dissolved.

More later,
dmb

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