Up Front: The Missionary Position
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So buddhism is pro-prostitution, but anti-pimping?
It really is a strange world.
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Sounds like Buddhism and Catholicism have population increase as a common goal..
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Reading back over that, I've probably come across a little harsh on Buddhism. Those are precepts to live by, not to make other people live by. But it is one thing that more than the Abrahamic religions seem to have in common, this fascination with right sex and wrong sex.
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And not using hands?
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That was a response to a supposed incompatibility between homosexuality and Catholicism, which is why Jesus' total lack of pronouncements on homosexuality might possibly be relevant.
But the catholic church has a lot to say. And if you are going to divorce Jesus from the church whats the point.
Point taken about buddhism, I am not that well versed in the its rules. I have only encountered the western varieties of it.I think Morgan was making the observation that science agrees that spirit is intangible. Which is literally true.
I dont think the beast called science agrees then. Neuroscience tho is making inroads into explaining thissupposedly intangible called spirituality which so far looks to be a product of our minds. So maybe enmasse we should make an effort to accept this as a possibility.
Sorry I cant continue this discussion as the computer is playing up,another time
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But the catholic church has a lot to say. And if you are going to divorce Jesus from the church whats the point.
Seems to me that the central point of Christianity is loving Jesus and believing he's the son of God, and God.
So perhaps our dear friend loves teh Christ, and enjoys the sense of community or singing or whatever he gets from his church - even though their doctrine is un-christ-like, and not prima facie compatible with his sexuality.
__ I think Morgan was making the observation that science agrees that spirit is intangible. Which is literally true.__
I dont think the beast called science agrees then. Neuroscience tho is making inroads into explaining thissupposedly intangible called spirituality which so far looks to be a product of our minds. So maybe enmasse we should make an effort to accept this as a possibility.
It was a play on words.
Science, so far (and I predict: forever), says that everything about us, including love and joy and art and our sad predilections for magical thinking and invisible friends in the sky, come from the soup of chemicals in our heads. i.e. that the "spirit" doesn't really exist - at least as most people understand the word. (As more or less a synonym for "soul".)
That's all.
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I dont think the beast called science agrees then. Neuroscience tho is making inroads into explaining thissupposedly intangible called spirituality which so far looks to be a product of our minds. So maybe enmasse we should make an effort to accept this as a possibility.
In that case, I think we are using the word "spirit" to mean different things. I suspect as is often the case on PA we are in fact in vehement agreement.
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Computer playing ball now.
It was a play on words
Oh right mebbe my spirit is impoverished, Oh thats right I starved it to death.
we are in fact in vehement agreement.
So does that mean I dont get banished to kiwiblog?
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__I find a simple, fierce 'PISS OFF' will suffice.__
Yeah, 'cos there's nothing people COLLECTING FOR CHARITY deserve more than a good shouting at.If you had read the comment more carefully you'd have noticed it was about being pestered by evangelicals of various types. Not about charridy at all.
It seems to me that most religions seem to take three very distinct questions and bung them together.
How did the world get here? What happens when we die? How should we live our lives?
A threatening narrative is used to answer the first two questions[God made the world and he can unmake it again; follow a bunch of rules we just happen to have here or you'll burn forever] as a way of sort of enforcing the third.
All the questions are tied up with issues of the meaning of life but they are quite separate.
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a bunch of mostly altruistic behaviors, that are the glue that hold us, a social animal, together
As someone said upthread, I think you're talking about community.
Spirituality to me is a connection with something bigger, including the natural world and the wonder that others have talked about. That can mean different things to each of us, and I don't think there's any problem saying that - unlike relativism in other areas.
Spirituality is not religion and it is not a substitute for community, although it is often invoked as part of social enforcement mechanisms as Rob says.
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Neuroscience tho is making inroads into explaining this supposedly intangible called spirituality which so far looks to be a product of our minds
I often think about stuff of the mind. My small example being that when I was healing from my brain failure, I could hear a voice inside my head when trying to sleep at night (in itself being difficult)., I was able to finally work out,the voice was probably collected whilst in a coma and once I had worked it out, it faded away.Although, neurons were rebuilding, it felt like mind over matter therefore I didn't mind, it didn't matter :)
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Actually I can see how love might be evidence of spirituality.
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But love is very practical.
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I'd like it to be both, if that's ok.
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I seem to recall something many years ago about motorcycle maintenance..
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I was surprised by that manual having very little in it about motorcycle maintenance at all. It didn't even tell me how to fix a flat. From what I could tell, the zen way to fix a bike is just to do it, not read about it. Curious that it took hundreds of pages to say that.
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Lucrative that it took enough pages to become a book as opposed to a pamphlet. Not a bad read. Gave me a better understanding of the mythologising of the yankee boomers, the side roads, the wind in the hair, the navel gazing.
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WHAT IS BUDDHISM?
This is not an easy question to answer, because Buddhism is comprised of many systems of belief and practice, or what we call traditions. These traditions have developed in different times and different countries, and in some degree of isolation from each other. Each has developed distinctive features which to a casual observer might appear to be major differences. However, these differences are frequently merely cultural overlays, and in other cases they are only differences in emphasis or approach. All traditions in fact are underpinned by a central core of common belief and practice
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Buddhist commentators have usually construed sexual misconduct to include rape, sexual harassment, molestation of children, and unfaithfulness to one's spouse. Clearly, these manifestations of sexual misconduct can apply equally to homosexual and heterosexual behaviour.
the Dalai Lama is not the "Pope of Buddhism". his opinions on sexual proscriptions are not particularly representative of Buddhism in general.
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Sounds like Buddhism and Catholicism have population increase as a common goal..
and yet 350 million Buddhists vs 1b+ Catholics...
Buddhism, however, has plenty to say:
Buddhist sexual proscriptions ban homosexual sexual activity and heterosexual sex through orifices other than the vagina, including masturbation or other sexual activity with the hand. Buddhist proscriptions also forbid sex at certain times - such as during full and half moon days, the daytime, and during a wife's menstrual period or pregnancy - or near shrines or temples. Adultery is considered sexual misconduct, but the hiring of a female prostitute for penile-vaginal sex is not, unless one pays a third party to procure the person.
Where's this text from? Seems a little a bit of a misrepresentation.
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bingo!
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I have heard that book described as 'Zen and the Art of getting Soulful Sheilas into the Sack'.
Something about being seen with it being a good way to project an aura of sensitivity and manly practicality.
I tried reading it once. (No, not because I wanted to project an aura of etc etc.. well, I don't think so, anyway. After all this time, I'm not sure. If I was, I was deluding myself, but then one's 20s are full of such delusions. God this is getting deep.)
All I can recall now is something rather turgid and humourless. You know that line from some famous reviewer of some famous book: 'this is not a book which should be cast aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force...'
Reader, I hurled.
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I finished it. But I wouldn't say I was profoundly moved by it, despite it actually coming from every angle I could appreciate, being a motorcycle rider myself, having a long interest in Zen, having studied Western philosophy (which it was actually more about), and having written a lot of technical manuals. The bit I didn't dig about it was the endless psychological torture that was inflicted on the child in the story, and the implication that you have to go nuts to find yourself. Zen has always struck me as a much more practical and compassionate philosophy than any of that.
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What Ben said.
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to project an aura of sensitivity and manly practicality
Clearly from the days when only soft men were supoosed to read books. Hang on, not sure that's changed..
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haha, reading to learn zen ben....rich ironies.
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