QUOTE(Eternal_Bliss @ Oct 6 2006, 04:05 AM)
IT seems to me U ARE too preocupied by ur own Ideas to understand others.......UR cup of the mind is already full so U cannot take any more( no wonder !!!!!)
This sounds like the words of someone looking for a convert rather than a discussion. If this is your outreach program then you are right I am not an easy mark for you to achieve your numerical goal. Indeed, I am not a blank slate on which you can write, I am a scientist, philosopher and theologian with a masters from a theological seminary and a masters in physics, which just means that I have studied a lot of ideas from a lot of different people and I have been thinking about these things a lot. Do I understand everything? Of course not.
Discussion provides the opportunity for learning new things, but with someone like me it is a back and forth exchange. If you require a blank slate, there is always your children, but the challenge here is to see if you can make your ideas understood to people who already have a different way of thinking. There is always a question of context. Are your ideas too alien to be of any meaning to me or is some of what you say applicable in a different context. It is the idea of discussion that instead of just talking
at people we talk back and forth. Everyone is the speaker and everyone is the audience.
Besides there is always the chance that participants in a discussion like this will have ideas that are uniquely their own. I think that the possible ideas are infinite. So no matter what I may have already studied there is always the chance of meeting someone who does not simply parrot what they have read or been taught.
QUOTE(Eternal_Bliss @ Oct 6 2006, 04:05 AM)
AND regarding the world as a PRISION who said this world is one. I rather wanted to mean the world as a oppurtinity or a door which GOD has given us to unite with the HIM.....and I didnt say that u dont have to participate completly in the EVENTS around U to find SALVATION.......U have to rather help the ppl around u TO SEEK GOD...
Prison (suffering) or illusion (maya), it does not really matter, the point is that the world is viewed as something to escape from, and that still sounds like a denial of its beauty and value, which lessens what one can learn from it. You seem to believe in many paths as the Buddhists do, but if so each must find the one path that works for him. I can only speak of the path which I can see and understand.
Look Christianity too has its own forms of denial and a huge blind spot when it comes to seeing the value of the natural world. It is so focused on the question of good and evil in human thought and behavior that it completely ignores the natural world, leaving the door open for its abuse and destruction. It has taken time for the Western world to realize the cliff which it is quickly approaching, when the earth will only recover after the human race is extinct.
QUOTE(Eternal_Bliss @ Oct 6 2006, 04:05 AM)
to some of the ppl in this world, ideas which are alien to them are EVIL and DEMONIC and those of their own are TRUE which I find hard to understand. FOR THEM either the things in the world is BLACK or WHITE no GREY SHADES for them
I see that you are disturbed by my subtle comparison of the way that Hinduism views the world and the way that I think Lucifer and his demons view the world. But I did not really mean imply that Hinduism is demonic. I meant only exactly and no more than what I said, that
I cannot see it that way. I absolutely believe in religious freedom and I rejoice and embrace diversity in human thought and practice. For me even the shades of gray are too restrictive, I need the whole spectrum. Shades of gray still imply an absolute standard of good and bad by which you can judge all things, but in a full color spectrum you can see that some things are just different and neither better nor worse.
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