Sometimes a good question can better direct your thinking than a thousand answers
Category Archives: Aphorism
Romance occurs when two* people’s shared appreciation of what they are experiencing is intensified by their appreciation of each other.
* or more
Some men will not sleep* with a prostitute mostly because it allows them to maintain a feeling of moral superiority over those who have.
(I have never slept with a prostitute. So there.)
_
* Or pick any ‘bad’ thing e.g. cheat romantically, cheat on taxes, lie, gossip etc.
A belief – defensively held – is the first act of war*
This short animation illustrates this reality. It could equally apply to having strong beliefs of ANY type e.g. atheistic beliefs, beliefs that there is only one ‘right’ way of doing things …
* More concisely, this attitude could be described as “Belief as offense” [Thanks for this Ben]
Non-dual spirituality non-self vs Atheist non-self
When you believe* in the spiritual concept of ‘liberation’ i.e. a recognition/realisation of the delusion of a separate self, but you don’t have ‘life after death’ beliefs e.g. a belief in heaven, reincarnation etc. – then ‘liberation’ amounts to this:
1) either ‘dying’ when you die i.e. the concept of a separate self dies when your body dies – as for most people
2) or ‘dying’ a few years before you die i.e. the concept of a separate self dies and one’s own experience is transformed into ‘life experiencing life’
Given that for these people liberation only amounts to a few years of changed experience (often quite joyful) … does ‘liberation’ actually amount to much anyway? Is it actually such a ‘big deal’?
Presumably this is ‘something’ like the way Sam Harris (an atheist philosopher) and Tony Parsons (a ‘liberated’ ‘person’) experience the world (at least sometimes during meditation in the case of the former, permanently in the case of the later).
Since neither ‘believe’ in free-will, do they both doubt that you can ‘do’ anything about the outcome either?
* Strictly speaking – perhaps its not appropriate to refer to spiritual teachers as ‘believing’ certain words such as those written here – since they would say that this is the way they ‘experience’ reality – not a set of beliefs they have ‘about’ reality.
Sam Harris:
http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/blogs/heather-wax/sam-harris-already-has-his-next-book-planned
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/consciousness-without-faith
Tony Parsons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUSGiWV0kqE
Insight Junkie 