Tag: Buddhism
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“For All Beings”
Here, from Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, teacher and author, is a beautiful, meaningful, moving, timelessly relevant, “if only” vision of humanity at its very best. It’s also ‘religion’ at its very best. It comes from the ‘beating heart’ of Buddhism, but surely also from that of Christianity, and all other religions worthy of the name. It…
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The Non-Tribal Religion of the Future?
I stopped being a Christian minister forty years ago, and don’t now attend any church, but I’d gladly have listened to the late Bishop John Shelby Spong. And if I were to have my time over again, this is along the lines of what I’d want to say, not that it might be welcomed. Bishop…
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Heart on (heretical) Sleeve
After sharing some thoughts with a friend, I want to try to put into words what ‘religion’ means to me. It’ll make sense to some, though not perhaps to all. Joseph Campbell describes the “game of belief” that leads to a “divine seizure”, his use of the word ‘game’ (as in Wittgenstein’s philosophy) not meaning…
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Unconditional Love (i)
There was a time when I was a conservative evangelical minister, fervently believing in the complete historicity and literal factuality of the Gospels, and accepting therefore the historical, traditional, orthodox, Christian interpretation of them. I don’t regret that, because it means that I know about this way of seeing things – I’ve been there –…
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A Controversial Verse – Genesis 2:7
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”. Due possibly in part to the King James Version’s rendering of this verse, there exists the idea, (in spite of Darwin), that humans differ radically and categorically from…
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The Nativity Stories (v) Unconditional Love
I’ve been suggesting that the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke are two different stories that invite us, while enjoying what’s on the surface, to think a little more deeply. Some people might imagine that because I don’t regard these stories as historical, their meaningfulness for me must be sadly impoverished, but not so !…
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A Lesson from a Flower
Once, so we’re told, instead of giving a talk, the Buddha simply held up a flower for his listeners to contemplate. Although I’m not a buddhist, it’s my experience that buddhism has ways of seeing things that are of value, even for those who belong to a different religion or none at all. Among other…
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“There isn’t any there there” …
The ‘past’ doesn’t exist, except in our minds now. The ‘future’ doesn’t exist, except in our minds now. But ‘now’ has already gone by the time the word is said. SO, when you get ‘there’, there isn’t any ‘there’ there. ‘There’ is ‘here’, and life is ‘here’, or it’s nowhere. The picture and words are…
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The Ten Commandments
The 7th Commandment “You must not commit adultery”. On the one hand, in the Old Testament, adultery was, for men as well as women, to be avoided. If found out, they could end up being stoned to death. On the other hand, men could provide themselves with a variety of ‘escape hatches’, such as…
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