believe me, i am absolutely willing to have God say, "this is why you are wrong", although i have no reason to think i would be in any state to talk philosophy if God were to be present. i am willing to say that there was a "good" reason behind all the things that appear "bad" to us now, although using the word "necessary" in place of "good" is not part of my current belief system. I am saying, if God is nothing but the biggest gorilla in the jungle and rules out of power and not love, i would of course out of fear do whatever was necessary at the time i was given that information, but by then i doubt . i am even willing to say God could ask me personally to give up my ideas of goodness and present to me as pure power only, in order to force me to let go of my boundaries of thought, if that is what is necessary - again, it isn't up to me to set how things ARE, BUT it IS up to me to choose within my mental limits, and not pretend i am someone else, otherwise i will be so full of doubt i might as well just give up thinking at all.
Again, I think that in some schools of Hinduism, they have a rather fancy solution to this kind of problem too:
For one, there is karma and reincarnation, practically doing away with the problem of evil as we are used to it in the West.
Then they have the concept that time is cyclical, and that there is no eternal damnation. That does away with a good portion of our other concerns.
For three, they have several conceptions of God and how an individual human can relate to God. This can briefly be explained on the examples of two kinds of devotion of two women. One is Queen Kunti who thinks of God as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the One from which everything else emanates; what she feels for God are awe and reverence. The other is Mother Yasoda, a foster mother of an incarnation of God. Mother Yasoda doesn't know her foster son is the Supreme Personality of Godhead; she thinks she is merely dealing with a dear child that has been entrusted into her care and she loves him unconditionally.
The idea is that a person cannot simultaneously know God to be the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but also love God in an intimate way.
In mainstream Christianity, one tries to have all those feelings for one conception of God. I think this is where Christianity is lacking.
The God who rules the Universe - that is the God for whom one has awe and reverence. I think awe and reverence are mutually exclusive with feelings of intimate love.
Maybe he was just saying, we need to part with the reasonable idea that humans can't manage doing things well enough to justify their salvation or some such thing, which would fit in with him trying to get past an obsession with sin.
But what do humans need salvation from?
God's wrath?
Or their own sins, in the sense that sinning is making their lives hard, in the here and now?
?
I've never been able to relate to this idea of salvation or that there is a need for it. I've never liked the image of God as implied by the idea of salvation. To me, the mainstream idea of salvation just strengthens the conviction that God is a terrible being whose wrath we must try to avoid, or suffer the consequences forever. And I don't want to think about God that way.
This concept of maya deserves some discussion. It is similar to saying a play is "false", it may be more true than some part of a person's life, but then again the person has value as more than just a diamond in a net of zillions of entities, because we make it so. In that way the human play is more real than the essences or whatever is behind the cosmic play. I think we have to realize our limitations or we run the risk of pretending this place doesn't matter, because some other place is the "real" thing.
Actually, I think what primarily deserves discussion are ideas about evangelizing and conversion.
Interestingly, in traditional Buddhism, a Buddhist practitioner is not supposed to teach, unless so invited by the person seeking instruction. There is no notion of evangelizing as such in traditional Buddhism - evangelizing where someone would make a point of talking about spiritual/religious topics to people who are not members of the same religion he is, especially without those people inviting him to do so.
I've also heard that in traditional Hinduism, evangelizing and conversion were anathema, and that it was only after the arrival of Christian missionaries that some Hindu teachers unilaterally began to preach to people outside of their own congregations.
I think that the circumstances in which we hear of an idea have a lot to do with how we will think about it, how we will experience it.
The way people from different cultures think of maya is a good example: In traditional Eastern cultures, they don't associate the idea of maya with notions that this life is not real or that it is worthless; Westerners, however, tend to see it that way.
I think this is because we tend to be exposed to the idea of maya in a very limited way, not understanding its complexity and how it ties in with other ideas, and also because the people from which we hear about it or the circumstances in which we hear about it aren't all that palatable.
I just said maybe reincarnation is the pov of an enlightened being talking about their present and future instead of their present and future lives, and i wasn't convinced by that link you gave that actual biological reincarnation is necessarily a reality, and asked for an explanation of that idea that biological reincarnation is a must, as referenced by the holy texts, or whatever. But like i said, it is just an idea I had that struck me as interesting.
The Buddhists probably have a different notion of what is "real" and how to think about "reality" than you do ... Without considering that, and a number of other things, there is likely going to be misunderstanding, due to not enough context and due to unaddressed differences in some basic categories.
as Hegel said, "Oh God! Why did you curse me to be a philosopher?". Dostoevsky in "notes from the underground" talking about a man with "over-acute consciousness" and the travail of it. I am sure it isn't all peaceful for people like Descartes either.
Maybe Descartes himself wasn't all that peaceful either. But he was willing to submit to the doctrine of the Catholic Church and declared himself an ardent believer.
I am quite sure it is impossible to arrive at that firm position merely by philosophical speculation.
When it is not clear what the "self" is, or when the notion of "self" is itself what is being under scrutiny, "trusting oneself" becomes a tricky concept.
i see the difficulty more in finding a goal that is seen as attainable, and worthy. If i asked you what would be a worthy goal, couldn't you tell me easily? It seems the problem lies in finding one that lies within your power (in your perception).
i think it is better to ask, what will lead to the most fulfilling happiness and sadness, with a reasonable amount of pain and suffering, and not "how to experience happiness only", although i am sure you are too sophisticated to mean that when you say true happiness.
Well, if you look at the world, it can be quite confusing: Often, the people who are manipulative, unethical are the ones that get ahead in life, without suffering any adverse consequences. And one wonders whether perhaps one ought to overhaul one's notions of "ethical."
Also, people who are strict materialists, believing that this one life is all there is and that all is over after this one is over - they seem to have things relatively easy, have a lot of confidence.
Is it worthy to look for a happiness that would not change, not deteriorate, that would last? Some would say that it is not worthy, that there is no such happiness to begin with.
Although, arguably, it is only this lasting kind of happiness that we look for whenever we look for happiness - even when we try to find it in impermanent things and even when we rationalize it away as impossible.
