[MD] Tit's

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
I respect your irreligious position and I am glad that you can actually back up your position with substance.  It is good for me to have my religious convictions challenged, because it forces me to learn how to adequately defend and talk about my own positions. Personally, I like Pirsig because of the many ways his philosophy can be applied.

dmb says:
Thanks for that. 

For whatever its worth, the perennial philosophy claims that there is an esoteric, mystical core at the heart of all the world's great religions. This is an area in which all religions essentially say the same thing. Thou Art That or you yourself are it. We hear this idea when Jesus says, the father and I are one. In the exoteric version of christianity, the mainstream churches, that sort of talk would have gotten you killed. And even today, the more secular minded types would label you as delusional or downright crazy, which is true at least sometimes. (Charlie Manson thought he was some kind of Christ.) I mean, with certain qualifications one can be a christian and a mystic at the same time. You'll find that the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (online) makes a distinction between theistic mysticism and non-theistic mysticism. This same line is drawn in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy (a book I happen to own). Both of them point out that non-theistic mysticism is more compatible with certain forms of Eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism.

I think one of the most striking differences is shown in the way mainstream christianity puts so much emphasis on some other world, on heaven and hell and eternity while Buddhism puts the emphasis on the present, the here and now. Nietzsche really hated that otherworldly dimension in christianity and offered the idea of an "eternal return" as an antidote to it. He asked us to imagine that every detail of our entire life would be repeated over and over again forever. This was his way of getting people to ask themselves about what they really love, really should be doing, what really matters in life. This was his way of getting people to ask themselves, at any given moment, "do I really want to be doing this?" "Would I want to do this forever? He was really making any claims about eternity. Its just sets a standard by which we should measure our lives. 

The other day I went to see a play in which my buddy plays the role of Jesus (And Stephen Hawking). It was all about this religious fanatic who talked to Jesus all the time and was very anxious to know when the rapture would occur. Toward the end of the play she convinces herself that Jesus would return on a certain Wednesday and so has a rapture party where they wait and pray and watch the "Left Behind" movie. They also play cards and have some fun. Of course Wednesday comes and goes with no rapture. She's very disappointed, of course. But there is a goofy little Elvis impersonator who says something like, "maybe we should have a rapture party every Wednesday, and so what if he doesn't come back? Would that really be so bad? At least we'd be together. At least we'd have some fun." I saw this as a version of the Nietzschian reversal of that otherworldliness. Instead of sitting around waiting for heaven, he just wants to be loved right here and right now. The character was quite the dork and got beat up everyday for it, but he was giving voice to Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return. At one point I realized this about the play and asked myself if I want to attend the performance with a glass of red wine in my hand and have a nice conversation about it afterword with the director and actor who played Jesus. Hell, yes! And I got myself another glass of red too. 



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