Freedom from Faith Options

[babu]

or how about not cluttering the mind with belief and freely exploring what is reality without constraints other than the curiousity of what may be.

Or how about nobody posted in this section of Gaudiya_repercussions and so I just couldn't let this room go unoccupied.

[0Caranaravinda0]

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.

R. Buckminster Fuller

[0madhavadasa0]

"Krishnamurti"

[Kalisurfer]

or how about not cluttering the mind with belief and freely exploring what is reality without constraints other than the curiousity of what may be.

Or how about nobody posted in this section of Gaudiya_repercussions and so I just couldn't let this room go unoccupied.

Thanks for starting this area up Babu.

I struggle with the concept of belief quite often. The struggle involves making a distinction between the internal beliefs that have come from personal realizations as opposed to those given or thrust upon me from authorities (priests, gurus, teachers, parents) throughout my life.

The beliefs that have come via personal realizations are of value to me, giving me inspiration to further explore spirituality that allows the heart to grow and giving hope in the face of the discord and strife (illness, death in the family, losing your job, having G.W. Bush re-elected, etc. ) that eventually comes along in life.

Unrealized beliefs become problematic when they are held too rigidly by individuals. This rigidity creates the air of absolute certainty in individuals and groups, which is then aired out in public as fundamentalist attitudes with total disdain for any point of view or thought that may be different. These kind of beliefs give the true believers who hold them the illusion of a position of privilege, a place where they alone rule the earth with the absolute truth. The world becomes black and white, those who disagree with the absolute truth are then deemed ‘OTHER’ or as we in KC remember, ‘Karmi’s’. Meaningful and honest discussions are obliterated by the act of ‘Preaching’ at somebody with the goal of conversion to the true and right side. Taken to the extreme, this type of belief becomes fanaticism. So this type of belief I can do without and fight against, especially when in comes up in Vaisnavism.

So I think there is a big difference in self-realized beliefs that confirm faith as opposed to the unrealized beliefs that can become in the wrong minds, faith killers.

[0Open Mind0]

As long as spirituality remains on the platform of belief, the whole thing is very shaky. As soon as one has some experiences, there is no more belief required, belief is replaced by conviction. Once I asked someone if he believes in God or not. He said with a smile, "No, I don't believe in God. I know that God exists, I have my relationship with God."

Of course, an initial faith is needed so that one starts to practice, but when after decades of practice the only thing we have is belief, there might be some problems. Experiences are like signals on the road that ensure us we are heading for the right direction.

The other tricky thing about faith is the attitude we all know, "My faith is superior than yours, my God is a nicer God than your God. My God is the best God." This concept leads to fights on smaller and larger scales. In less dangerous cases one remains on the platform of imagining oneself superior to others and stops at that point. However, sometimes people go further: "My faith is superior than yours, so I have the right to impose it on you, I have the right to tell you what to do." This is the beginning of religious fanaticism that is one of the most effective means to produce people who - getting disgusted of "holy men" killing (verbally or phisically) each other in the name of "holy principles" - turn to atheism and nihilism.

On another forum a person maintaining a webpage dedicated to atheism wrote an essay on why he is grateful to those extremely fanatical new-born Christians who often appear on forums and present their brilliant arguments beaming with wisdom and logic: "Jesus is the only way." He happily said that if it wasn't for these "preachers", there would be a lot less atheists in the world today.

[babu]

Caranaravinda, "faith" and "belief" do have a feel of being the same thing so how one defines these terms is relevant. Being who Bucky Fuller was and his distinction between the two, "faith" is that of being active in one's understanding, processing and communion with it all. Faith is very much alive as compared to belief which is very much stagnant. That was an excellent quote. Thank you.

Madhavadasa, Krishnamurti, I raise my cup.

Kalisurfer, excellent post. And to continue from where I left off at Caranaravinda's, the struggle you talk about is very much that we are not the same person from our yesterday's or even a few moments ago experience and so these personal realizations can be in a way, not our own anymore and something that we are borrowing to make up a belief system that is really not about where we are in our relationship and living with all that is and so even one's personal realizations can deaden or bring about a stagnation if one doesn't see them as a stepping stone on a journey.

I find the big mistake of understanding what are religious teachings is the making of them into belief systems when they are more about, at least the best of them imo, are about breaking the conditioning process of the mind so as one can be a heart centered being and therefore alive, awake. The mythology and stories of these traditions have a quality of a high poetics and not facts and to take them literally is to not enter into the cosmic drama of it all. It goes without saying that most of us here percieve that those who get wrapped up in the preverted "law" and "authority" understanding that arise from literal understandings are as walking corpses and yet we can feel within their hearts a young boy and a young girl yearning to be heard.

So the twist to your post, even a personal realization can become an unrealized belief when it is no longer tangible to one's process. More important than one's realizations is the process, which may not be a process in terms that can be called a process, that process that brings about personal realizations and one knows and feels so very deeply, "I am alive."

Openmind, yes, one's faith must be active and current. One's faith is only as good as the last time you looked into the eye's of another and felt the love beam back and forth, felt joy brimming from your heart as you sat by a stream and watched those rivulets of water pass on their way to the Ocean or to watch a cat kicking and playing with its ball as it seemingly assumes the ball has a mind of its own. This is not an assumption though, the ball does have a mind of its own.

[Dhyana]

I find the big mistake of understanding what are religious teachings is the making of them into belief systems when they are more about, at least the best of them imo, are about breaking the conditioning process of the mind so as one can be a heart centered being and therefore alive, awake.

Maybe religions should have a Best Before End date.

The mythology and stories of these traditions have a quality of a high poetics and not facts and to take them literally is to not enter into the cosmic drama of it all.

A Golden Thought!!! [now, where is that flower smilie? ]

And yet, for every myth there exists an early epoch when it may be taken literally without the believer becoming out of touch with the flow of life.

It's those who come centuries later, those who know the skies aren't populated by dragons and the earth doesn't rest on four giant elephants... it's their clinging to the words, their refusal to use their powers of mind and heart in relating to the world, that plays the devil.

...I think.

[0madhavadasa0]

"or how about not cluttering the mind with belief and freely exploring what is reality without constraints other than the curiousity of what may be."

Yes, but there is an order in the Universe, which some people call God. I don´t find it reasonable that there isn´t a force that ties everything together and maintains it. I don´t know if I am clear, my English is not so well. There are a lot of things that we can not see or hear but still exist. I find it a bit limited to explore the external reality freely and not feeling what is beyond at all.

[0madhavadasa0]

Some persons can actually see and feel the presence of the Divine everywhere. It is not a belief, it is the absolute reality, as opposed to the relative reality which is temporarily manifested.

[0Open Mind0]

Yes, there is a kind of power/energy that is present everywhere, it can be experienced by anyone. However, people approach this energy in different ways, some give it a name, some don't, some try to see it as a person, some don't, etc. This is just fine. The problem begins when someone says, "My approach to this presence is better/more sublime than yours." Just like when we see people debating over which rasa is the "best"... Both parties quote their holy texts and in the end they get nowhere.

[babu]

Yes, but there is an order in the Universe, which some people call God. I don´t find it (babu's note: I think your intent would be to put the prefix "un" before reasonable) reasonable that there isn´t a force that ties everything together and maintains it.

Yes, there may be all this God or order or whatever we may call it but it may as well not exist if one has no actualization of it. The actualization and relationship of The All expressed through the self, does that need a mindset, a faith, a belief system for that to be as it appears all these thing block the manifestation of The All within the self. When one is awake, does one need all these theories about what sleep is and what it is when one is no longer asleep and gets out of bed?

[babu]

Some persons can actually see and feel the presence of the Divine everywhere.

It would then be alive and not a belief.

[Brainiac]

And yet, for every myth there exists an early epoch when it may be taken literally without the believer becoming out of touch with the flow of life.

It's those who come centuries later, those who know the skies aren't populated by dragons and the earth doesn't rest on four giant elephants... it's their clinging to the words, their refusal to use their powers of mind and heart in relating to the world, that plays the devil.

...I think.

How about developing what I refer to as a 'dual belief system'? I was brought up with all these stories and "myths" and I have tended to develop an understanding that "those sorts of things do not happen these days".

I have no problem listening to such stories and accepting that they may indeed have actually happened, yet accepting current thoughts and beliefs as valid too. A 'dual belief system' that has afforded me no real problems in life.

I think the danger occurs when there is a crossover between the two. When I was younger and more idealistic, a religious friend of mine decided to do some free thinking and wondered about the prehistoric existence of dinosaurs, stating that they cannot be denied due to the discoveries of their skeletons. I mused that such skeletons were the skeletons of the demons killed by divinities in previous yugas.

[0Oneiros0]

I think the danger occurs when there is a crossover between the two. When I was younger and more idealistic, a religious friend of mine decided to do some free thinking and wondered about the prehistoric existence of dinosaurs, stating that they cannot be denied due to the discoveries of their skeletons. I mused that such skeletons were the skeletons of the demons killed by divinities in previous yugas.

A Jewish friend of mine once told me that his rabbi had told him the bones of dinosaurs had been placed there by god when the earth was created and thus they do not disprove the Biblical account of creation.

[Dhyana]

You have formulated a real challenge, Brainiac. By "dual belief system" do you mean accepting both that those things, let's call them "mythical", have indeed happened and have indeed been quite true as facts, and that the reality surrounding you today presents a different set of facts?

The boundary between belief systems would then be one of time.

Your post made me think of another way of resolving this. Unfortunately I only have secondary sources, namely a mention of a Sankarite philosopher Sriharsa (ZrIharSa) in a book by Bharati Agehananda. Hardly a dispassionate and scholarly presentation, nevertheless the insights he attributes to Sriharsa make sense.

"It was Sriharsa indeed, as well as some more recent Hindu thinkers, who devised what I would call an interior critique -- a critical attitude which does not idsqualify its holder from being orthodox. Among the Buddhists, such has been the attitude of one of their greatest teachers, Nagarjuna. With them, this attitude fortunately became the normal. Not so with the Hindus: Sriharsa and the later thinkers were exceptions and are not really accepted as exemplars in Hindu scholasticism. [...]

Here is a set of canonical doctrines, which cannot be impugned without forfeiting Hinduhood. But they can be freely interpreted. And if interpretation does not suffice to make a doctrine discursively acceptable or at least plausible, then let us regard this doctrine as appertaining only to the innermost world of yoga, of meditation, and as having no bearing on our natural world. [...] I accept the doctrine non-discursively, as having a purely private, incommunicable validity. But I do not assign discursive validity to it." (The Ochre Robe, by Bharati Agehananda)

In this quote, the boundary between the two belief systems is drawn between the "outer" world as perceived by the senses, and the inner world of meditation and divine vision.

[angrezi]

A Jewish friend of mine once told me that his rabbi had told him the bones of dinosaurs had been placed there by god when the earth was created and thus they do not disprove the Biblical account of creation.

Everybody in America knows this. God wanted us to have gasoline, therefore he made dinosaurs and later killed them to ferment into petrol.

[angrezi]

Here is a set of canonical doctrines, which cannot be impugned without forfeiting Hinduhood. But they can be freely interpreted. And if interpretation does not suffice to make a doctrine discursively acceptable or at least plausible, then let us regard this doctrine as appertaining only to the innermost world of yoga, of meditation, and as having no bearing on our natural world. [...] I accept the doctrine non-discursively, as having a purely private, incommunicable validity. But I do not assign discursive validity to it." (The Ochre Robe, by Bharati Agehananda)
.

Indeed. Agehananda evidently had little problem adapating to whatever world was most interesting at the moment . Or so his reputation goes...

[Brainiac]

You have formulated a real challenge, Brainiac. By "dual belief system" do you mean accepting both that those things, let's call them "mythical", have indeed happened and have indeed been quite true as facts, and that the reality surrounding you today presents a different set of facts?

The boundary between belief systems would then be one of time.

Yes exactly. I have always had the understanding that such events happened in the "old times" and rarely happen these days if not at all. These events may have fitted under the logic and socilogy of those times and the peope of that time would have had no problem accepting it too. Now that we have come a long way, the rules have changed and we need to evaluate the past, but that doesn't mean we have to discard everything. Thus, the development of a dual-belief system may help. I have practical experience of this now that I have gone back to university to study psychology. I am often faced with problems that can be easily explained away as karma and whatnot, but I have to be aware that my peers and lecturers are not just unfamiliar with such ideas but may also be scornful.

It can be a struggle at times but mostly it is just 'innovative' vis-a-vis the dinosaur example I gave earlier. I find that keeping a dual-belief system allows one to keep one's faith in such metaphysical realities while living and working in today's largely unbelieving world.

In this quote, the boundary between the two belief systems is drawn between the "outer" world as perceived by the senses, and the inner world of meditation and divine vision.

I was just about to bring that point up. Let's just say for a minute that there are some perfected gurus in Vrndavana (like, say, Madrasi Baba) who have achieved perfection and can see Radha-Krsna at every moment. This is great for them, but the rest of us cannot see. Who is deluded here? These souls are walking around in another world while simultaneously being present here.

This is a contemporary scenario, but what if the events of the past were similarly inaccessible to the public at large? Take the example of Krishna's showing the Visvarupa to Arjuna; no one else at Kurukshetra could see it except Arjuna who had apparently been granted divine vision. So what if all those 'myths' happened and yet did not happen? What if, even in those days, spiritual experience was limited to those who had the vision to see them?

[0Srijiva0]

QUOTE(madhavadasa @ Mar 7 2005, 03:02 PM)
Some persons can actually see and feel the presence of the Divine everywhere.

*It would then be alive and not a belief.

If I did not have God revealed to me by way of the vedas, Acaryas, masters & what-have-yous I would admire the next best thing in my mind to God...& that is music. I have oftn felt, as a musician, while engaged in playing, it is not me who is playing the music, but the music is playing me in order to manifest. I tend to look at individual songs and or meldies to be living entities & the musician is a channel, a medium by which the music can descend down to our level to try and aspire us to transcend up to its level.

I have had experiences while playing where my friend I I would be improving and we would play the sme thing...like we both could feel how the song goes and we both would channel it thru. ...in syncnicities

[Chanahari]

"Dual belief system" (or even more than dual...) - for me, it sounds a bit like doublethink from 1984, but the fault may be in me. I'm a materialist at heart.