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Posted by Butcho
on 3/19/2010, 10:01 pm, in reply to "Luther and wu wei"
71.28.137.x
--Previous Message--
: Martin Luther: "All have sinned and are
: justified freely, without their own works
: and merits."
:
: I think we can find some "apophatic
: value" in this, maybe even a lot. The
: sin part is not too useful to me. I cannot
: sense anything that I could coherently
: characterize as "sin." Sin from
: one perspective might we goodness from
: another.
:
: "Justified" is useful, I take it
: to mean "worthy." It is my sense
: that a person can realize her/himself to be
: worthy, without having to have done anything
: good. (And in fact I cannot find anything to
: characterize as coherently "good."
: It might be good from one point of view, and
: not another.)
:
: “without their own works and merits” is
: quite significant.
:
: If a person has the realization that she/he
: is unconditionally worthy, she/he will
: experience mystical ecstasy. As a
: side-effect, she will treat the rest of us
: very nicely. But if she thinks she needs to
: be good, in order to be a worthy being, she
: will not (according to this model) realize
: mystical ecstasy. The irony: She treats us
: worse when she thinks that to be worthy, she
: has to treat us well.
:
:
rat,
Sin is doing something even though you know you shouldn't.
Nearly everyone has sinned. I know I have.
The trick is not to not ever sin. The trick is to quit repeating the same old sin over and over again. To be liberated from one's poor choices so that one is not against oneself. We either tame our passions, or they imprison us. It is all a part of growing up, of maturing, of becoming an adult.
There is only one thing that is not a thing that is perfect as it is. The whole. As long as we think in such a way that divides us from the whole then we have for all intents and purposes sinned against heaven and earth, against our Self, against the whole.
To think that what is true of the whole is true of the individual is to elevate the individual to the place of God for lack of a better word. I am the Whole, I am perfect, just as I am. Pride. Pride cometh before a Fall.
Humility is called for. Not pride. It is through becoming less that we become more. It is through trying to become more that we become less. To say that we do not or have not ever sinned is to make the most rash statement a human being can make. Unless that person is a great sage, a sage of the highest possible rank. But who is ready to make such a claim about him or herself? Certainly not me. What about you rat? Are you a great sage, the kind that only comes along once in a millennium? Are you ready to make such a claim?
In privileging the double-walk you have done the one thing that you claim not to do. Shown privilege to one thing over another. It does no good to write a disclaimer stating that your privileging may not be "the" privileging for all people. You have chosen to live your life a certain way. To one way of life over another. And I agree with you. No need to apologize. At the end of the day we all must privilege something. And it is only hubris that would allow anyone to claim the privilege of the whole. I am perfect so I don't have to choose. I don't have to do anything. I'm perfect just the way I am. Right. To suggest nothing has to be privileged is an infinite regression. IR's are not practical. And the Taoist is practical if the Taoist is anything at all. "Shit or get off the pot". Zhuangzi Twozi.
If I just said something please someone let me know. If not then consider the source and be gentle with me for I have had a hard life.
Mountain Life
Life's a dream, and I'm over sixty.
This ridge, this hermitage-they suit me.
I eat when I'm hungry, sleep when I'm tired,
And no one knows if I'm Tom, Dick, or Harry.
Baekoon Kyunghan (1299-1375)
Butcho
376
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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