As I sit here typing this I can't help but be amused at where I am in my life. The changes I have made in order to put myself where I am, sitting here now, typing this diatribe, if you had told me where I would be a year ago to the day I would have laughed in your face. Or would I? If there's anything I've learned in my forty (yes, forty) years in this flushing toilet of a world it's that you can't expect much more than change.
I've logged a fair amount of hours studying the tenets of Buddhism. I've spent a few hours studying other religions and always find them wanting. There are elements to all of them that I find interesting, but maybe it's all just academic. Once I was turned on to Buddhism by some incredibly stoned friends back in the late 80s I was seriously in no actual position to absorb the weight of what I was reading. Or maybe I was in no position to accept the simplicity of it.
What appeals the most to me about Buddhism is that it is fundamentally not a religion at all. The man who founded Buddhism (Siddhartha) was an Indian nobleman, a prince who was tired of the opulence and thus set out to discover the true meaning of life.
Instead he discovered that life has no true meaning, that it is in fact all about suffering. That's something I can get behind.
In our lives it is the path through our suffering to acceptance that is the true path and not some hyper-spiritual nonsense about salvation or the afterlife or gods or any other sort of total horseshit without value.
Basically Buddhism was intentionally never supposed to be a theistic system at all. Instead it is a collection of principles or maybe guidelines from which one can learn to appreciate what there is of value in this life and not hang so heavily on that which ties us to longing.
So many people misinterpret this to mean that we should all ditch all of our earthly possessions and live in a cave somewhere. That is exactly not the point.
Instead it is better to regard possessions as something transient and impermanent, because of course that's what things are.
Therefore, whenever you lose everything in a fire your life isn't over.
Again, people think it means you should learn to not feel loss in tragic situations and that there is a way to transcend pain.
Buddhism clearly states that there is no way to avoid pain.
All of that I get, and not only that, I work hard to insure I never forget any of it.
Beyond that I am rocking out as we speak to the album Misanthropic Generation from the band Disfear, and damn, this thing is fucking brilliant.
Take the guitarist from the Swedish death metal band At the Gates and add one of the guys from Entombed (another Swedish metal outfit) and a few other dudes and you get this insanely mighty Motorhead styled hardcore/metal crossover band that simply blows your balls off.
Right now Disfear is my path out of the suffering of life and I am eternally grateful.
So what else is new? Well, this blog is brand spanking new, and once people start getting into it and participating as posters and as commenters things should get interesting.
Look.
Don't turn into a total dickweed just because I brought up Buddhism. I'm an atheist for the record, and better still I don't really care what YOU believe as long as what you believe isn't shoved up my ass with a shovel.
If you use your brain to try and sort life out and it happens to bring a belief in god into the fray, knock yourself out. I won't be the dick about it. I should hope you'll do the same.
Okay, enough of that.
Contribute! Send posts! Send hate mail! Tell us what you love, what you hate, who you are and why. Bowl us over with your love of the written word. Kick our fucking asses with your passion for life. There's always room for more butchers on the block.
I want this to be a project that numbers of people can get behind because it's more fun that way. Lively discussion would be nice, but intelligent spirited debate is even better. Best of all is old fasioned passion. And the more topics the merrier. I want you to pass through here and always find something to talk about.
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4 comments:
To me religion pretty much has to be forced up ones ass with a shovel in order to get it. Going around shopping for the best, most affordable, best designed religion is slightly absurd. Sure, studying other religions is important and i would say even necessary to have a sound spirit, but trying on religions the way people try shoes seems crazy. I know some people do this and then find "their" religion that way, but not to me.
If your parents didnt shove a religion up your ass, then you don't have one (unless as a grown up someone really did a job on you, like say rehab or military style brainwashing). If you parents did shove a religion up your ass as a kid, then thats your religion. You can pretend to be anything else and try out all this different things, but if you were raised baptist, you'll just be a baptist trying out judaism, or a catholic trying out hinduism, or a hindu trying out protestanism. it's very hard to take of those religion colored glasses. This of course is a generalization and i'm sure there are exceptions, but to me a smarter move than trying to reject the religion that you were given, is to just adjust it to your needs, all religions leave tons of room for interpretation of their beliefs, snip a few dogmas here and there until the shirt fits.
ntlqtbb
"Getting" religion is a subject I find extremely funny given that I generally find organized religion to be the mother of all farcical conspiratorial lunacies foisted by man against man in the name of his own imagination. You know, with all due respect.
I get your point, but I have to disagree simply because it appears to oversimplify the way with which individuals find "god".
It's true enough that one should be able to adjust the given religion to your needs, so to speak, but then again, certain religions are fairly unyielding in their views on certain things, and so being raised a certain way may not be so palatable once you set off and actually become responsible for yourself in life. This alone I think is a vaild reason to jump ship.
Never mind that I find organized religion to be total claptrap, a view I have been reluctant to espouse up until the last few years or so. I think for me it comes down to admitting to myself how I actually feel on the subject.
I mean, seriously now, you shouldn't be allowed to snip dogmas as you put it (humorously I might add). If you subscribe to a systematic collection of tenets and principles, and honestly believe them to be the direct word of god, then snipping is out of the question now isn't it? So therefore, the road many seem to take is to chase a different spark in order to find a way that makes the most sense to what they believe to be right. Some may believe this quest to be guided by the hand of their "true" god. Personally I think that's retarded, but I get the idea anyway.
I must say that you took the worst part of my post and ran with it, by the way. You really ought to use your time and check out that Disfear band instead. That is the real shit.
Thanks for commenting.
Anyone else want a piece of this?
My view, John, is that religion is a man made artifice, and has little or less than little to do with "god". Therefore if it is man made, and I am one of said men, I can adjust it to my liking, if it doesnt work for me, then what good is it?
I was raised catholic and i think most "god fearing" catholics would claim that I not only have jumped ship, but that I am going straight to hell. whatever. religion serves a social purpose which is (in some, even most, cases) when you end up with waht you appropriately call "farcical conspiratorial lunacies". But to me religion has a more personal purpose, which has nothing to do with god or spirtuality or morality or any of that. And i think that purpose is related to offering a possibility of hope when no hope is to be had, just a possibility. And i think in order to really feel that possiblity, you have to first find yourself in a hopeless situation, and then you must have had your brain washed at some point to be able to muster that what they brain washed you with, might actually be possible. even if intellectually/rationally your mind says otherwise, in a hopeless situation, the intellect is pushed aside (in my experience anyways).
I hope that made sense. basically i agree with you that organized religion is claptrap, but i do thin it serves a purpose and it has nothign to do with god.
ettrxbia
straight to hell Carlos?
You are not a true Catholic or you would know you can make ammends on your death bed, just keep a priest near.
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