In Nepal, Wanderer, seeing some sneakers and jeans:
"...wondered how many people held by the mingled Buddhism, Hinduism and animism that was the faith of their fathers." (p. 364)
(I remember a hymn: "Faith of our fathers...")
Beliefs come, go and mingle but will remain in some form as long as people are as they are. Hinduism incorporates animisms and reabsorbs Buddhism by classifying the Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu. I can imagine practicing zazen and reading the Gita in that Tibetan village.
A Chinese postgraduate student, now attending our meditation group, mentioned that, in China about 1000 AD, there was a "Three Teachings In One" movement, uniting Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Far out. I understand that Zen is a Taoist-Buddhist synthesis in any case. He also said that, in his town, there is a temple for the worship of Avalokitesvara but that it is obligatory to worship the Jade Emperor, the supreme Taoist deity, first! I would pay my respects to a local deity only as a preliminary to meditation practice.
Poul Anderson's immortals see so many gods come and go that they will wind up either as abstract monotheists or as atheists. Later, they are able to use virtual reality technology to simulate encounters with gods. The gods are our projections but the ultimate reality is not.
10 comments:
Some religions merge more easily than others. The "Religions of the Book" claim exclusive truth.
By contrast, the traditional IE paganisms were fully eclectic.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! Which is why, as a Catholic, I will have nothing to do with such syncretism, morphing together drastically different faiths.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, the classical paganisms were actually fairly similar.
The ones of the IE-speakers drew on the same source religion -- hence Jupiter and Zeus pater and Tiwaz Fader and Dyaus Pitar, the Divine Twin Horsemen, Aurora/Dawn/Ausrine, Perkunaz/Thor and so forth.
Even many of the deities with dissimilar names were the same in origin -- they'd just had the name of the God switch to one of his/her epithets.
That switching to an epithet was fairly common in early IE languages -- which is why we call bears bears (originally "the brown one") instead of something like ursus or ari (or Artorius). People were afraid naming them would call them.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Granted, the gods of the Indo-Europeans who invaded India shared the same roots as the gods of the Indo-Europeans who moved west.
Ad astra! Sean
"which is why we call bears bears (originally "the brown one") "
I wonder what we would call bears if those people had known about polar bears ;)
Kaor, Jim!
"The Terrifying White One"?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Probably we'd have two names for bears! Something like "bruin" and something like "wite".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That makes sense to me. "Terrifying white ogre of the ice."
Ad astra! Sean
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