Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
MH2
climber
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 08:36pm PT
|
Roughly speaking, religion attempts to answer 2 big questions:
1. Where did this all come from?
2. How should I behave while I'm here?
For question #1 cosmology and evolution provide vastly more satisfactory answers. The best religion can do is gracefully move the goal post back before the Big Bang.
Question #2 is more open and needs all the help it can get.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 08:42pm PT
|
How should I behave while I am here?
To take this question out of the abstract realm, here are two examples from real life which were used in a course in nursing school to give us an idea of how to act in certain situations.
I would be very interested if religion or spiritual oneness and love provide useful guidance. Anyone who feels they know what should be done in the following 2 cases is invited to justify their choice.
Case 1
M.K. is a 72-year old man who lives in a long-term care facility. A few years ago he suffered a stroke. He is now independently mobile in his wheelchair and cognitively intact. He has swallowing difficulties but he has a taste for ice cream. He had to be hospitalized last year for aspiration pneumonia and has been told that eating ice cream will almost certainly shorten his life. His brother and wife say that he should be given ice cream if he wants it. He is prepared to sign a waiver.
Some of the staff in the facility are unwilling to let M.K. have ice cream unless a doctor signs an order for it.
Should the doctor sign such an order?
If the doctor does, are staff justified in following it despite the health risk?
Case 2
George Burnham and Donald Mattison were patients in adjoining rooms in the rehab unit of a small medical center.
George was a 33-year-old severely retarded man who had lived in institutions since the age of three. His family had had no contact with him for over twenty years. George had been trained to feed himself and keep himself reasonably clean, but at the age of twenty-five he had suffered a cardiac arrest that left him with some paralysis and lack of bowel control. A second cardiac arrest has now left him even more dependent.
Donald Mattison, a 48-year-old businessman, active in community and church affairs, married, and the father of four, had suffered a minor stroke, which left him slightly paralyzed. In his six weeks on the rehab ward he has regained almost total use of his arm and leg. He is expected to make a full recovery.
One morning George has a third cardiac arrest. The cardiac team is there within 4 minutes but at that moment Donald also goes into arrest.
There is only one team and one crash cart. Should they go to Donald or continue with George?
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 09:16pm PT
|
Mh2-
The third big question that religion attempts to answer is what happens after we die.
Meanwhile, doctors and more often the nurses on duty are making the real life and death decisions under great time pressure and stress. They are often called upon to play God. I know because I used to work in a county nursing home and my sister was a neonatal nurse.
I think both of your cases however, are covered by existing law and ethics.
Now here's a case I encountered as a teenager working in a county nursing home. A bed ridden woman in her 80's prayed loudly from morning to night that she die that day. The only time she was quiet was when we fed her liquids.
Money being a factor, we accomplished this by holding her nose so she had to open her mouth to breathe (automatic reflex) and then sticking the long spout of a teapot into her mouth and pouring so she was forced to swallow it or choke. If she didn't want to eat, and wanted to die after a long life, should we have let her?
Personally, I came to the conclusion at the age of 16, that there are fates worse than death and we have the fundamental human right to make our own decisions in that regard.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 09:33pm PT
|
Dr. F.
They do not prove that there is a God, that you are talking to God or that you are experiencing a mystical experience
You are right on the first two counts but we do now have the technology to measure the electrical activity and location of that activity while people are having mystical experiences. I wrote a bit about this while you were gone.
Some findings. Charismatics praying and speaking in tongues use one part of their brain and quiet meditators another. Both light up their respective areas much brighter than any "normal" person ever has on those machines. Advanced Tibetan meditators display super fast brain waves indicating that they take in and process much more sensory information than the average person.
They also have the ability to transfer emotional reactions which take place in the right frontal lobes, into their left frontal lobe which deals with reason. They then use Buddhist philosophy to deal with it. They are not without emotion, nor is it repressed, it is dealt with in a rational way rather than an emotional way.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 09:58pm PT
|
Karl-
Great job of explaining a tough topic!
|
|
Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:01pm PT
|
God also gave us chocolate?
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:10pm PT
|
Ed-
You've got it. What Karl and I are talking about is using an entirely different part of our brain than the scripture quoting people. And we are explorers of the nature of mind for sure. We may choose to add a philosophy to our experiences to try to make sense of it all or just go along for the trip. In either case, certain changes take place in our personalities and from what science has been able to measure so far, in our actual brain structure.
My final contribution to all this is going to be willing my brain to science along with a list of all the strange biochemical and electrical experiences I've had, as well as their corelations to traditional theories of meditation stages. Hopefully science can then make some co-relations.
I like to think of it as doing first free ascents of my own mind.
|
|
cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:10pm PT
|
"Love? Considerably overrated. Biochemically indistinguishable from the effects of consuming large quantities of chocolate."
 Al Pacino ("John Milton") The Devil's Advocate
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:17pm PT
|
Religion doesn't try to get it right or seek to shed light on what things are.
The primary service of religion is to reconcile you to all the sh*t that's going to happen to you in this life.
What Religion does is to create the illusion of sense and purpose out of our pathetically finite, sorrowful and purposeless existence.
The many Religions of the world all seek to do this same thing, to remove any anxiety about our coming oblivion through myths that essentially tell us everything will be fine if we just stick to a particular plan... the by products of religion include moral codes, belief systems, ritual and tradition (the illusion of permanence) that ensure our salvation and our souls continued existence.
Mystical experience is the comforting illusion of benevolent powers beyond the forms of sensibility.
It's very real, I'm sure, to those participating. The world is a scary place and mystical encounters are virtually all reassuring. Isn't it interesting that all religions propose the positive, that death is but a veil to another existence? We humans are masters of self delusion!
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:25pm PT
|
We humans are masters of self delusion!
You just confirmed you are deluded ....
|
|
cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:27pm PT
|
The world is a scary place and mystical encounters are virtually all reassuring.
The Bardo Thodol doesn't pull any punches in that regard, though. Terrifying stuff is par for the course there. A lot of shamanic mystic reveries are pretty horrific, too, but they're not easily packaged for modern mass consumption either.
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:31pm PT
|
Yes, and awareness is where true enlightenment begins.
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:38pm PT
|
The terror or horror of shamanic experience is almost always a function of penetrating the sublime.
In that process fear and anxiety are exhausted and the individual shaman is strengthened... made more powerful.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:40pm PT
|
No one who has stuck with meditation for any length of time will tell you that it's all love and light. The whole purpose of it is to clear the repressed ugly stuff out, which isn't so easy.
The Bardo Thodul, or Tibetan Book of the Dead is to guide you in the best possible way in case you haven't dealt with it before you die.
Religion is one thing, spiritual practice is another.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:42pm PT
|
Religion is one thing, spiritual practice is another.
Very Good
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 10:50pm PT
|
The TBD is like any other religious text: it is a guide to something better than the experience we know as life. It offers a release from sorrow as does the Christian bible or the Koran or EBTD. Spiritual practice and ritual are simply a way of making the myth more real. The myth of salvation is validated by the ritual spiritual experience. It completes the delusion.
|
|
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 11:06pm PT
|
Religious people certainly often struggle because religion tells them one thing and their human nature and desire pull them another way.
People can deal with that conflict in healthy and unhealthy ways, as we may have seen. Denial is a common pitfall and the root of some abuse.
Mysticism might be prone to it's own delusions, but is by no means easy. Shirking fear will stop you in your tracks in mysticism.
Paul might consider that Religion might give people comfort about death but those faiths that believe in Karma and Reincarnation expect no free lunch and don't relish the prospect of coming back into a helpless undeveloped state and doing life after life over again, learning every unlearnt lesson and paying back debts from other lives. Only the Christians and Muslims think of the afterlife as the instant permanent bliss zone for the faithful.
Fact is, Religion and even Spirituality have different roles in the minds of every person. Some latch on to the social connection, some to feeling righteous and justified, some to Love, some to ease common human self-loathing or to complement it. Some seek to kill the pain. Then some have had a taste of grace and seek more of that Light.
No matter what ideas of Religion and Spirituality are in your mind, your real Spirituality, which EVERYBODY has, is the everyday state of your heart and mind, how Love is with you. That can expand and deepen with or without thought of God but Spirit is nonetheless present.
Not some Spirit that is separate and angry with you, judging you and putting obstacles in your path, but something intimately close and all accepting. To know it even a bit is to Love it. The God we hate is just our concept of God. Everybody Loves Love, even when we struggle about it
Peace
Karl
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 11:13pm PT
|
The TBD does not offer a release from sorrow. It offers a way to make the right decisions at the time of your death so that you end up again in a good place to keep on improving yourself in your next life.
Unless you have a major biochemical imbalance as the result of genetics, happiness is a choice. I found the first step in the process was to stop reading the existentialists.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 11:23pm PT
|
Aaaaah! If only it were that easy!
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
|
Dec 21, 2009 - 11:31pm PT
|
Meanwhile, I'd like to go back to something jstan asked a few pages back.
Now we have heard testimony in this thread from persons who have had personal experiences that led them to god.
Are they mystics?
As best I can understand, they had a mystical experience but then tried to explain it or give it meaning with left brain verbal interpretations of a quite literal kind.Thus they are not mystics.
I must admit, that's what puzzles me about them. How do you have a living experience and then bind it all up in literalism? Of course people like me frustrate people like them in the opposite direction. I'm familiar with their scriptures, yet have come to entirely different conclusions about their meaning.
Interesting no?
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!