Nutcrackers
What paradigms loathe
from 
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With palms together,
Good Morning All,
The trouble with paradigms is that we don't see them as we live within them. Paradigms are our ways of organizing our experiences and our history. They are essentially mythical as they give meaning to our understanding.
Religious paradigms are very ingrained as they have both the power of scriptural authority and they are cast as essential beliefs of a faith. Acceptance of the paradigm is essential in order to belong to the group.
What are some of these paradigmatic assumptions? God exists as a sentient being, He had a son (for Christians), he talks to people, people can ask him things and he answers, the world was created in a certain number of days out of nothing, and that, like Santa Claus, he keeps a tally of our sins, some get to become coal, others get to lay around singing praises for eternity, God gave certain men a set of 613 commandments to follow and others, a smaller number (and he expects us to keep them) and God places man at the center of the entire universe. There are others, of course, but these will do to give us an idea.
Paradigms begin to fail as we discover evidence of contrary paradigms: the earth does not revolve around the sun, The earth is billions of years old, it is round, and it is one among an infinite number of other planets. Early childhood paradigmatic beliefs give sway to more mature models: God is a saintly old man in the sky who loves to listen to your prayers, becomes God listens but does not always answer in the ways we think he should (this allows for those missed messages and such). And maybe he is not a bearded man living in the clouds, after all.
We find that scripture in the Judeo-Christian sense is composed by primitive peoples through time. It was not dictated to Moses on Sinai in one fell swoop no matter how loud the Orthodoxers say it was. There are at least four different voices (authors) of the Hebrew scriptures. The New Testament is a collection of tales and stories designed to make us believe God had a baby and the kid's name was Jesus. It references all sorts of miracles which were also alleged to have been performed by all sorts of gods and even Buddha. This is part of the paradigm, you see. In order for us to have faith in something or someone that thing or person must have some supernatural quality. Or so goes the paradigm.
There are other possibilities, of course: God does not exist. God exists in a way that we cannot possibly understand; and we are just here arising out of conditions and will fall away when the conditions for our existence are no longer present. Moreover, we could argue that scripture had value, its value is metaphorical and so on, or that its value is no longer useful, in fact, it has become a hindrance to true understanding.
Way back in about year 475 of the Common Era, a monk named Bodhidharma came to China from India. He sat zazen in a cave, facing a wall, for nine years the story goes, and when he taught he taught from that experience. What he taught was scripture is only a guide. The Dharma (the truth, reality, the Buddha's teachings) are outside of scripture and can be experienced directly through our practice. This was a paradigmatic shift, similar to that of Jesus of Nazareth saying essentially the same thing. These were nut crackers in person.
Yet, we human beings are what we are, a group think species, and it is very uncomfortable for us to seek our own truth for ourselves, we look to our paradigm for teaching. Books know things we don't, rabbis, monks, teachers, and priests are somehow special emissaries of God, and so on. So, we continue to perpetuate the myth. It gives us support, nurturance, and a great deal of comfort.
So, we continue to live in ignorance as defined by Buddhists. Ignorance just means living with our eyes closed to the ultimate truth of the universe, that there is no real division between things. Things exist as separate things only because we see them that way. God is not separate from us, nor are the sun, moon, stars, or anything else in infinity. This is what Buddha meant 2600 years ago when he taught everything in the universe was enlightened already and he and it and us were one. This is the paradigm of non-duality. It is the truth of Zen.
Its usefulness is that it contains only two truths which really exist as one. The truth that everything exists in relative position to everything else and that everything is one. These are simultaneous truths that form the fabric of infinity. Once beings living in relative truth open their eyes to absolute truth, they are awake. Their awakened state teaches them that all things are deeply interconnected so that to harm one thing harms all things. To assist one thing assists all things. This web of life is infinite. .
Our practice is to become our own nutcracker, walk in our own authority, and care for the universe.
Be well.
Good Morning All,
The trouble with paradigms is that we don't see them as we live within them. Paradigms are our ways of organizing our experiences and our history. They are essentially mythical as they give meaning to our understanding.
Religious paradigms are very ingrained as they have both the power of scriptural authority and they are cast as essential beliefs of a faith. Acceptance of the paradigm is essential in order to belong to the group.
What are some of these paradigmatic assumptions? God exists as a sentient being, He had a son (for Christians), he talks to people, people can ask him things and he answers, the world was created in a certain number of days out of nothing, and that, like Santa Claus, he keeps a tally of our sins, some get to become coal, others get to lay around singing praises for eternity, God gave certain men a set of 613 commandments to follow and others, a smaller number (and he expects us to keep them) and God places man at the center of the entire universe. There are others, of course, but these will do to give us an idea.
Paradigms begin to fail as we discover evidence of contrary paradigms: the earth does not revolve around the sun, The earth is billions of years old, it is round, and it is one among an infinite number of other planets. Early childhood paradigmatic beliefs give sway to more mature models: God is a saintly old man in the sky who loves to listen to your prayers, becomes God listens but does not always answer in the ways we think he should (this allows for those missed messages and such). And maybe he is not a bearded man living in the clouds, after all.
We find that scripture in the Judeo-Christian sense is composed by primitive peoples through time. It was not dictated to Moses on Sinai in one fell swoop no matter how loud the Orthodoxers say it was. There are at least four different voices (authors) of the Hebrew scriptures. The New Testament is a collection of tales and stories designed to make us believe God had a baby and the kid's name was Jesus. It references all sorts of miracles which were also alleged to have been performed by all sorts of gods and even Buddha. This is part of the paradigm, you see. In order for us to have faith in something or someone that thing or person must have some supernatural quality. Or so goes the paradigm.
There are other possibilities, of course: God does not exist. God exists in a way that we cannot possibly understand; and we are just here arising out of conditions and will fall away when the conditions for our existence are no longer present. Moreover, we could argue that scripture had value, its value is metaphorical and so on, or that its value is no longer useful, in fact, it has become a hindrance to true understanding.
Way back in about year 475 of the Common Era, a monk named Bodhidharma came to China from India. He sat zazen in a cave, facing a wall, for nine years the story goes, and when he taught he taught from that experience. What he taught was scripture is only a guide. The Dharma (the truth, reality, the Buddha's teachings) are outside of scripture and can be experienced directly through our practice. This was a paradigmatic shift, similar to that of Jesus of Nazareth saying essentially the same thing. These were nut crackers in person.
Yet, we human beings are what we are, a group think species, and it is very uncomfortable for us to seek our own truth for ourselves, we look to our paradigm for teaching. Books know things we don't, rabbis, monks, teachers, and priests are somehow special emissaries of God, and so on. So, we continue to perpetuate the myth. It gives us support, nurturance, and a great deal of comfort.
So, we continue to live in ignorance as defined by Buddhists. Ignorance just means living with our eyes closed to the ultimate truth of the universe, that there is no real division between things. Things exist as separate things only because we see them that way. God is not separate from us, nor are the sun, moon, stars, or anything else in infinity. This is what Buddha meant 2600 years ago when he taught everything in the universe was enlightened already and he and it and us were one. This is the paradigm of non-duality. It is the truth of Zen.
Its usefulness is that it contains only two truths which really exist as one. The truth that everything exists in relative position to everything else and that everything is one. These are simultaneous truths that form the fabric of infinity. Once beings living in relative truth open their eyes to absolute truth, they are awake. Their awakened state teaches them that all things are deeply interconnected so that to harm one thing harms all things. To assist one thing assists all things. This web of life is infinite. .
Our practice is to become our own nutcracker, walk in our own authority, and care for the universe.
Be well.