Turning the Page

Roadtoad · 4th October 2009, 02:22 PM

"What you do may not be very important, but it is very important that you do it."
-- Ghandi

I buy books. Lots of books. After 24 years of marriage, Peggy and I have collected several hundred. When we die, there will be enough here to supply a small library branch. I don't read them at once, but as the content and interest level strike me, so as a result, there are a few books I've purchased years ago which I've yet to read, while there's others that I've read time and again, such as a volume of essays from Ralph Waldo Emerson. (You Europeans can quit snickering now.)

I started reading Stephen Batchelor's Living With The Devil on Friday, and I'm now about halfway through the book. Given a past interest in Zen Buddhism on my part from years ago, it struck me as a worthwhile read when I bought the book. In getting going on it, with Batchelor's dense arguments, simply phrased, I find "worthwhile" might be considerably inadequate.

The past few months have been tense for Peggy and me. We've been trying to get things straightened out in our finances, and we've also found we've been trying to simplify a great deal in our already complicated lives. We've become so leveraged in both directions, a slight change in anything creates alterations around us that threaten to envelope us and everyone around us. I'm trying to hang onto a house that, should I keep it, could wind up becoming something far more destructive than I really want. We're still trying to help Matt get on his feet, and yet it's a slow, painful process. (It's not helped by certain in-laws declaring that what Matt is going through is God punishing him for varied and sundry "sins.")

Batchelor is an interesting author. He's a former Buddhist monk, born in Scotland, now living in France. Well traveled, to be sure, but it's also safe to say that he has his own baggage, as he himself admits. As an American, I'm trained to dislike him, not because he has baggage, but because his baggage is different from mine.

I'm also trained -- (and that is the word) -- to believe that we are not in the business of Empire, even though we're attempting just that in all but name. We're a democratic republic, and as such, we have no Imperial designs, even though our actions say the exact opposite. (If you can't spot the authoritarian streak in Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State, and the deeply embedded sense that once we take certain actions that we'll be able to dominate the hell out of the world, you haven't been paying attention.)

I'm well trained. Sometimes, out of the books I read, I find out just how well trained I am, and find I'm rather ashamed of that. I keep thinking I deserve better, as do the people in my life.

Batchelor has pointed out that the Devil we face, (for the Buddhist, Mara), is in reality nothing more than our own humanity. Marty Feldman once had us laughing when a character he was playing asked God, "If you didn't want us to sin, why did you make us out of meat?" Trouble is, we laughed because it was true.

What importance I have is now, and only now. That is such an infinitesimal mote in the fabric of what constitutes the eternal, I'm embarrassed to admit to the concern, even if it's my own mote. And, yet, I'm stumped as to how to release it, to eject it, to recognize that eventually, over the course of time, all that will exist of me will be temporary memory, and beyond that, dust.

Curiously, I find some odd comfort in that. I am so insignificant, that I cannot screw things up so badly that I will damage eternity, in spite of what I was taught by my parents. I'm a trucker; what will the neighbors think! Who gives a rat's ass? If they're so fixated on what I do for a living, the realy question is why are they so god-damned stupid as to place any importance on something so insignificant at all? (For that matter, why are my parents so worried about it? Perhaps they're stupid, too.)

I need to simplify. If there's salvation to be found, I'm not going to find it by complicating matters. Perhaps in the search for God, what I was really looking for wasn't a deity to take the responsibility for me, but for the means by which I could accept responsibility for myself, and while I was at it, place my self in it's appropriate unimportance. How to do that is what gets complicated.

I've gotten myself into a mess. I have responsibilities to folks here on the board, and to my family. Those aren't easily discharged. But they need to be. Beyond that, over the threshold of here and now, it's an open road. I need space for my grandkids, my tools and my books. (Or are books tools? Future debate, I suppose...) If the goal is to simplify, and ultimately lessen the damage done, whether by intent or thoughtlessness, the first step is to recognize clearly what is being done, and to function with a little less, if for no other reason than I simply cannot afford it. If this makes me less of an American, that I am becoming disinterested in gathering stuff, (or building an Empire, such as it is), I can hope it makes me more of a man.

So, where does this leave the issue of god? Probably where it's always been. You can't truly prove there is no god without conducting a thorough and exhaustive search, but you can certainly show there's little evidence for his existence based not just on the actions of "his" people, but on "his" inaction. That doesn't mean there is no salvation; it just means it doesn't mean what we want it to mean. (See what I mean?)

Which, of course, means our obligations change. Christianity has correctly come under fire because scripture, which had to have been written to inspire thought at one point, has now become a substitute for it. I'm finding that an atheistic view works far better, if for no other reason, I am now obligated to consider my actions before taking them rather than acting in a prescribed manner because I am under an obligation from a collection of people who are worried about what the neighbors think. It's obvious there are still those Christians who are convinced that you must think before you act, who reject the notion of a Bible being so divinely inspired, it's prescribed actions must be followed to the letter, (or at least as close to the letter as present day law will allow.) Yet one wonders why their voices are being drowned out by the bleating of evangelical extremists, and whose interests are being served by it.

If I haven't found all the answers, it's because the road is still a new one. At this point, I'm still running on gravel, folks.

In the meantime, have I mentioned Reuel Parker's design for a 36' sampan?

Cynic · 7th October 2009, 09:06 PM

Great post, RoadToad.

The older and more skeptical I get, the more envious I get of people who retain the capacity to fully embrace religion or the notion of ghosts or UFO stuff, etc. But you can never go home again. As despairing as that notion is, it has also grown more easy to see that the sweet release and relief it would be to do so comes as the cost of knowing that I'd given up, committed a form of intellectual suicide. Once we begin to identify as thinkers and skeptics, that's not a thing to take lightly.

Anyway, good luck with all that.

Mr Clingford · 8th October 2009, 02:26 AM

Is the realisation of one's smallness the development of humility? If so, then that is a good thing, the accurate estimation of who/ what one is.

Darth Rotor · 8th October 2009, 07:14 AM

Originally Posted by Roadtoad

"What you do may not be very important, but it is very important that you do it."
-- Ghandi

RT, you may be a small pebble, but you landed with great force in the lake. Your ripples have reached across the globe, influencing, for one, me. While humility is a laudable trait, your importance to Peggy, your kids, your friends, your family and your associates are, in Ghandi's words, very important.

Keep on truckin', my friend.

DR

Hux · 8th October 2009, 07:22 AM

The only devils we ever faced were our own. The only demons; our own. Hell is available to one and all and long before we die. The secret to success and contentment is being able to deal with our demons and dismiss them. I of course do not say such things are real entities; just what goes on inside the heads of intelligent beings.

Which is why I never understood how Xians believe these things are real enough to have to pray against.

Aepervius · 8th October 2009, 07:22 AM

Nice post.

just a things, though :

Quote:

several hundred

Try 1300 to 1500

.

I stopped piling them on book racks, now a day I just pile them on in corners in plastic cartes.

My biggest concern are 1) water damage (thus the plastic crate) 2) fire

Careyp74 · 8th October 2009, 07:26 AM

Originally Posted by Aepervius

Nice post.

just a things, though :

Try 1300 to 1500

.

I stopped piling them on book racks, now a day I just pile them on in corners in plastic cartes.

My biggest concern are 1) water damage (thus the plastic crate) 2) fire

I have one word for you : Kindle

No, I am not saying throw them in the fireplace, I am saying go out and get a digital reader. Not only would you save all that space, but with the Gutenberg Project, a lot of what you read could be free.

pakeha · 8th October 2009, 07:51 AM

A great OP, roadtoad.
I'm with Careyp74: kindle.
But not only kindle; donate, weed out and say goodbye.
I go through my bloated and exaggerated library once a month to cull books which reflect past interests in the hopes these unwanted volumnes could be of use to someone else.

Sometimes I end up returning the book to the shelf or pile it came from, and sometimes I manage to rid myself of it.
Amazing how difficult it can be.

4th October 2009, 02:22 PM	#1
Roadtoad Bufo Caminus Inedibilis Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Looking for a decent Taco... Posts: 11,882	Turning the Page "What you do may not be very important, but it is very important that you do it." -- Ghandi I buy books. Lots of books. After 24 years of marriage, Peggy and I have collected several hundred. When we die, there will be enough here to supply a small library branch. I don't read them at once, but as the content and interest level strike me, so as a result, there are a few books I've purchased years ago which I've yet to read, while there's others that I've read time and again, such as a volume of essays from Ralph Waldo Emerson. (You Europeans can quit snickering now.) I started reading Stephen Batchelor's Living With The Devil on Friday, and I'm now about halfway through the book. Given a past interest in Zen Buddhism on my part from years ago, it struck me as a worthwhile read when I bought the book. In getting going on it, with Batchelor's dense arguments, simply phrased, I find "worthwhile" might be considerably inadequate. The past few months have been tense for Peggy and me. We've been trying to get things straightened out in our finances, and we've also found we've been trying to simplify a great deal in our already complicated lives. We've become so leveraged in both directions, a slight change in anything creates alterations around us that threaten to envelope us and everyone around us. I'm trying to hang onto a house that, should I keep it, could wind up becoming something far more destructive than I really want. We're still trying to help Matt get on his feet, and yet it's a slow, painful process. (It's not helped by certain in-laws declaring that what Matt is going through is God punishing him for varied and sundry "sins.") Batchelor is an interesting author. He's a former Buddhist monk, born in Scotland, now living in France. Well traveled, to be sure, but it's also safe to say that he has his own baggage, as he himself admits. As an American, I'm trained to dislike him, not because he has baggage, but because his baggage is different from mine. I'm also trained -- (and that is the word) -- to believe that we are not in the business of Empire, even though we're attempting just that in all but name. We're a democratic republic, and as such, we have no Imperial designs, even though our actions say the exact opposite. (If you can't spot the authoritarian streak in Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State, and the deeply embedded sense that once we take certain actions that we'll be able to dominate the hell out of the world, you haven't been paying attention.) I'm well trained. Sometimes, out of the books I read, I find out just how well trained I am, and find I'm rather ashamed of that. I keep thinking I deserve better, as do the people in my life. Batchelor has pointed out that the Devil we face, (for the Buddhist, Mara), is in reality nothing more than our own humanity. Marty Feldman once had us laughing when a character he was playing asked God, "If you didn't want us to sin, why did you make us out of meat?" Trouble is, we laughed because it was true. What importance I have is now, and only now. That is such an infinitesimal mote in the fabric of what constitutes the eternal, I'm embarrassed to admit to the concern, even if it's my own mote. And, yet, I'm stumped as to how to release it, to eject it, to recognize that eventually, over the course of time, all that will exist of me will be temporary memory, and beyond that, dust. Curiously, I find some odd comfort in that. I am so insignificant, that I cannot screw things up so badly that I will damage eternity, in spite of what I was taught by my parents. I'm a trucker; what will the neighbors think! Who gives a rat's ass? If they're so fixated on what I do for a living, the realy question is why are they so god-damned stupid as to place any importance on something so insignificant at all? (For that matter, why are my parents so worried about it? Perhaps they're stupid, too.) I need to simplify. If there's salvation to be found, I'm not going to find it by complicating matters. Perhaps in the search for God, what I was really looking for wasn't a deity to take the responsibility for me, but for the means by which I could accept responsibility for myself, and while I was at it, place my self in it's appropriate unimportance. How to do that is what gets complicated. I've gotten myself into a mess. I have responsibilities to folks here on the board, and to my family. Those aren't easily discharged. But they need to be. Beyond that, over the threshold of here and now, it's an open road. I need space for my grandkids, my tools and my books. (Or are books tools? Future debate, I suppose...) If the goal is to simplify, and ultimately lessen the damage done, whether by intent or thoughtlessness, the first step is to recognize clearly what is being done, and to function with a little less, if for no other reason than I simply cannot afford it. If this makes me less of an American, that I am becoming disinterested in gathering stuff, (or building an Empire, such as it is), I can hope it makes me more of a man. So, where does this leave the issue of god? Probably where it's always been. You can't truly prove there is no god without conducting a thorough and exhaustive search, but you can certainly show there's little evidence for his existence based not just on the actions of "his" people, but on "his" inaction. That doesn't mean there is no salvation; it just means it doesn't mean what we want it to mean. (See what I mean?) Which, of course, means our obligations change. Christianity has correctly come under fire because scripture, which had to have been written to inspire thought at one point, has now become a substitute for it. I'm finding that an atheistic view works far better, if for no other reason, I am now obligated to consider my actions before taking them rather than acting in a prescribed manner because I am under an obligation from a collection of people who are worried about what the neighbors think. It's obvious there are still those Christians who are convinced that you must think before you act, who reject the notion of a Bible being so divinely inspired, it's prescribed actions must be followed to the letter, (or at least as close to the letter as present day law will allow.) Yet one wonders why their voices are being drowned out by the bleating of evangelical extremists, and whose interests are being served by it. If I haven't found all the answers, it's because the road is still a new one. At this point, I'm still running on gravel, folks. In the meantime, have I mentioned Reuel Parker's design for a 36' sampan?
	__________________ "I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves." Harriet Tubman "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." Frederick Douglass "Power corrupts. Absolute power... is pretty cool, actually." BPSCG My blog.

7th October 2009, 09:06 PM	#2
Cynic Graduate Poster Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Posts: 1,060	Great post, RoadToad. The older and more skeptical I get, the more envious I get of people who retain the capacity to fully embrace religion or the notion of ghosts or UFO stuff, etc. But you can never go home again. As despairing as that notion is, it has also grown more easy to see that the sweet release and relief it would be to do so comes as the cost of knowing that I'd given up, committed a form of intellectual suicide. Once we begin to identify as thinkers and skeptics, that's not a thing to take lightly. Anyway, good luck with all that.
	__________________ The slackjaw gaze of true profanity feels more like surrender than defeat -- if culture is the curse of the thinking class. -- Neil Peart

8th October 2009, 02:26 AM	#3
Mr Clingford Graduate Poster Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: UK Posts: 1,354	Is the realisation of one's smallness the development of humility? If so, then that is a good thing, the accurate estimation of who/ what one is.
	__________________ God is my copilot. But we crashed into a mountain and I had to eat him.

8th October 2009, 07:14 AM	#4
Darth Rotor Salted Sith Cynic Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rat cheer Posts: 26,802	Originally Posted by Roadtoad "What you do may not be very important, but it is very important that you do it." -- Ghandi RT, you may be a small pebble, but you landed with great force in the lake. Your ripples have reached across the globe, influencing, for one, me. While humility is a laudable trait, your importance to Peggy, your kids, your friends, your family and your associates are, in Ghandi's words, very important. Keep on truckin', my friend. DR
	__________________ Helicopters don't so much fly as beat the air into submission. "Jesus wept, but did He laugh?"--F.H. Buckley____"There is some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth ... His mirth." --Chesterton____"Atheism is no safeguard against stupidity."--The Atheist____If the barbarian in us is excised, so is our humanity."--D'rok____ "Your onus is aimed in the wrong direction." -- Cleon

8th October 2009, 07:22 AM	#5
Hux Graduate Poster Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 1,064	The only devils we ever faced were our own. The only demons; our own. Hell is available to one and all and long before we die. The secret to success and contentment is being able to deal with our demons and dismiss them. I of course do not say such things are real entities; just what goes on inside the heads of intelligent beings. Which is why I never understood how Xians believe these things are real enough to have to pray against.
Hux Graduate Poster Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 1,064

8th October 2009, 07:22 AM	#6
Aepervius Graduate Poster Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 1,391	Nice post. just a things, though : Quote: several hundred Try 1300 to 1500 . I stopped piling them on book racks, now a day I just pile them on in corners in plastic cartes. My biggest concern are 1) water damage (thus the plastic crate) 2) fire
	__________________ Omnes Blessant Ultima necat One doesn't necessarily need evidence to back up arguments. Interresting Ian own's words. Plus that is an old skeptic game, to ask for evidence. Historian's take on skepticism

8th October 2009, 07:26 AM	#7
Careyp74 Graduate Poster Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Trevose, PA Posts: 1,656	Originally Posted by Aepervius Nice post. just a things, though : Try 1300 to 1500 . I stopped piling them on book racks, now a day I just pile them on in corners in plastic cartes. My biggest concern are 1) water damage (thus the plastic crate) 2) fire I have one word for you : Kindle No, I am not saying throw them in the fireplace, I am saying go out and get a digital reader. Not only would you save all that space, but with the Gutenberg Project, a lot of what you read could be free.

8th October 2009, 07:51 AM	#8
pakeha Illuminator Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 3,099	A great OP, roadtoad. I'm with Careyp74: kindle. But not only kindle; donate, weed out and say goodbye. I go through my bloated and exaggerated library once a month to cull books which reflect past interests in the hopes these unwanted volumnes could be of use to someone else. Sometimes I end up returning the book to the shelf or pile it came from, and sometimes I manage to rid myself of it. Amazing how difficult it can be.
pakeha Illuminator Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 3,099