Let your religion . . . .

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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tiltbillings
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Let your religion . . . .

Post by tiltbillings »

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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Ben
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by Ben »

For the sake of setting the cat amongst the pidgeons...
...he wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion.

-- John Le Carre
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

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cooran
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by cooran »

Hello all,

Love is an unusual word.

What do we mean by ‘’love’’? Do we mean romance, lust, desire, lovingkindness, admiration, fascination – or something else?

There are many Pali words for various aspects of ‘love’.
love : (nt.) pema. (m.) sineha; sneha; anurāga. (f.) mettā. (v.t.) piyāyati; pemaṃ bandhati; mettāyati. (pp.) piyāyita; baddhapema.
http://www.budsas.org/ebud/dict-ep/dictep-l.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can look their english meanings up here:
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

with metta
Chris
---The trouble is that you think you have time---
---Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe---
---It's not what happens to you in life that is important ~ it's what you do with it ---
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Sam Vara
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by Sam Vara »

If I say that, from inside, it makes much more sense to talk about belief as a characteristic set of feelings, or even as a habit, you will conclude that I am trying to wriggle out, or just possibly that I am not even interested in whether the crap I talk is true. I do, as a matter of fact, think that it is. I am a fairly orthodox Christian. Every Sunday I say and do my best to mean the whole of the Creed, which is a series of propositions. But it is still a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don't have the feelings because I've assented to the ideas.
From an article by Francis Spufford in the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/au ... e-of-faith

Also:
That's what I think. But it's all secondary. It all comes limping along behind my emotional assurance that there was mercy, and I felt it. And so the argument about whether the ideas are true or not, which is the argument that people mostly expect to have about religion, is also secondary for me. No, I can't prove it. I don't know that any of it is true. I don't know if there's a God. (And neither do you, and neither does Professor Dawkins, and neither does anybody. It isn't the kind of thing you can know. It isn't a knowable item.) But then, like every human being, I am not in the habit of entertaining only those emotions I can prove. I'd be an unrecognisable oddity if I did. Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue. Yet emotions are also our indispensable tool for navigating, for feeling our way through, the much larger domain of stuff that isn't susceptible to proof or disproof, that isn't checkable against the physical universe. We dream, hope, wonder, sorrow, rage, grieve, delight, surmise, joke, detest; we form such unprovable conjectures as novels or clarinet concertos; we imagine. And religion is just a part of that, in one sense. It's just one form of imagining, absolutely functional, absolutely human-normal. It would seem perverse, on the face of it, to propose that this one particular manifestation of imagining should be treated as outrageous, should be excised if (which is doubtful) we can manage it.
He has a book out on the subject http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unapologetic-ev ... 0571225217 which I might buy, as I like his style and sentiments.
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imagemarie
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by imagemarie »

”Go forth, on your journey, for the welfare of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, the benefit, the bliss of gods and men.."

Sounds like love to me :broke:
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Ben
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by Ben »

imagemarie wrote:”Go forth, on your journey, for the welfare of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, the benefit, the bliss of gods and men.."

Sounds like love to me :broke:
But it ain't.
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
plwk
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by plwk »

Image Chesterton wuz rite... :tongue:
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Kim OHara
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by Kim OHara »

cooran wrote:Hello all,

Love is an unusual word.

What do we mean by ‘’love’’? Do we mean romance, lust, desire, lovingkindness, admiration, fascination – or something else?

There are many Pali words for various aspects of ‘love’.
love : (nt.) pema. (m.) sineha; sneha; anurāga. (f.) mettā. (v.t.) piyāyati; pemaṃ bandhati; mettāyati. (pp.) piyāyita; baddhapema.
http://www.budsas.org/ebud/dict-ep/dictep-l.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can look their english meanings up here:
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

with metta
Chris
Hi, Chris,
"Unusual" isn't strong enough. It is a word which is used to cover so many different emotions and relationships that it is as uselessly vague as a politician's promise.
As you point out, Pali has several words to cover the same territory - or a fair percentage of it, anyway. The ancient Greeks had at least four. And we try to make do with just one! Sigh. I have just about given up using it on the grounds that it is meaningless, although that saddens people who say they love me - and mean it - and don't get the same reassurance in return. :shrug:

But the intent of the quote in the OP is clear enough: "love affair" has a pretty specific meaning.

:namaste:
Kim
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kirk5a
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by kirk5a »

Ben wrote:For the sake of setting the cat amongst the pidgeons...
...he wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion.

-- John Le Carre
I wonder if there is any love that does.
"When one thing is practiced & pursued, ignorance is abandoned, clear knowing arises, the conceit 'I am' is abandoned, latent tendencies are uprooted, fetters are abandoned. Which one thing? Mindfulness immersed in the body." -AN 1.230
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imagemarie
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by imagemarie »

kirk5a wrote:
Ben wrote:For the sake of setting the cat amongst the pidgeons...
...he wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion.

-- John Le Carre
I wonder if there is any love that does.

There is something completely self-less in the love expressed by a dying person, that opens one's heart and makes it utterly vulnerable.
And for a while, it seems as though the love being shared has no object.

A powerful self-delusion

:anjali:
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reflection
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by reflection »

Thanks tilt :anjali:

:heart:
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LonesomeYogurt
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by LonesomeYogurt »

Oh god Chesterton's first name was Gilbert?

That's horrifying. Gilbert Keith Chesterton might be the dweebiest name I've ever heard.

But I love the quote.
Gain and loss, status and disgrace,
censure and praise, pleasure and pain:
these conditions among human beings are inconstant,
impermanent, subject to change.

Knowing this, the wise person, mindful,
ponders these changing conditions.
Desirable things don’t charm the mind,
undesirable ones bring no resistance.

His welcoming and rebelling are scattered,
gone to their end,
do not exist.
- Lokavipatti Sutta

Stuff I write about things.
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BubbaBuddhist
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by BubbaBuddhist »

Two Baudelaire quotes:
Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
Eh? Hah? Ho? Hm?

BB
Author of Redneck Buddhism: or Will You Reincarnate as Your Own Cousin?
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Ben
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Re: Let your religion . . . .

Post by Ben »

imagemarie wrote:There is something completely self-less in the love expressed by a dying person, that opens one's heart and makes it utterly vulnerable.
And for a while, it seems as though the love being shared has no object.
Says who?
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
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