Heard someone recently make a blanket statement about how "the Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman and that's good enough for me." It dawned on me that she could've been a Muslim and said the same thing about the Koran. Also it obviously wasn't 'good enough' for her or else she'd have been content to live the way her religious text insists and not needed to support legislation for everyone else based on her beliefs. These kinda people wouldn't realize what theocracy means til they had it and then they'd be sorry. I hear the voice of Christian sharia law come from people who are often otherwise very cool and I wonder at it.
If there's a God, as in an anthropomorphic centrally intelligent creator who's watching and judging, FINE. But judging by the history of religions, particularly those that sprang from the levant this God is seemingly not helping one religious demographic over another.....so, um....I dunno I think we should be able to look at this particular big picture and say enough. We....are....learning. In these times it seems like we better figure some stuff out or we'll be in trouble.
I hear talk about the end of the world, the End Times, 2012, the collapse of the world economy, environment etc. and I think we really need to pull up our big boy pants and be.....reasonable, conscientious, adult human beings.
It really is exciting to be in one of these things....bodies, that is. Bipedal, carbon based primate go carts. Seriously, it requires more binary digits of information to run a single virus that it took to run the Martian land rover. Viruses are far less complex than even a single cell, of which we are composed of approximately 3 trillion. These things are cool.
Anyhoo, so...what? There's no afterlife? Just this? I dunno. Neither do you. I think that recent breakthoughs in science (quantum physics, string theory, MWI) make for a far more interesting view of reality than our imaginations could've hitherto devised. I happen to think for various reasons that this corporeal, linear reality that we're dealing with head on is the tip of the iceberg or as Buddha said "the foam of a wave."
I would suggest reading Dr. Suzuki, Takuan Soho, Christmas Humphries, and Suzuki Roshi (Sunryu) to people trying to be all they can, see all they can and free all they can. Because while Zen Buddhism is a religion, Zen by itself stands apart in it's aims and assertions. Humphries suggests that Zen is the light that all religions are offering, or as I would have it, marketing. Meanwhile here we are. Or, at least here I am. Breathing, thinking, enjoying, laughing, exploring, adventuring, working, giving, loving, playing my sax, sleeping, growing, screwing up, fixing, seeing....being.....dreaming.....and I can't be converted.
Once you've flown around the world you know it isn't flat.
