If everything is a facet of God, then this should include:
"...death, ruin, sorrow. But [the Gwydiona] didn't say much, or seem to think much, about that side of reality. [Tolteca] remembered that their arts and literature, like their daily lives, were mostly sunny, cheerful..." (p. 582)
I have read something else very like that recently. I do not seek out these parallels but they come to me.
We’re told it’s June, specifically June 10. This is the fourth of the five Bond books published so far to take place in the summer months. Is summer the best time for secret agent work? Fleming wrote all of the Bond books at Goldeneye in Jamaica, where he went every year to escape the cold London winters. “The sun is always shining in my books,” Fleming once said.
-copied from here.
And:
"...the endless summer drew on into September.
"In my memory of those days the sun is always shining...
"It surely must have rained... there must have been clouds in our private skies, but if there were I can't remember them."
-Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved Me (London, 1980), three, p. 34.
However, Fleming also shows us plenty of death! - whereas the Gwydiona are concealing something from themselves.
The Gwydiona dancer, Elfavy, compares the Lochlanna soldier, Raven, to a storm, in other words to something that does exist, thus is part of God, but also is difficult to live with.
"'He lives with the Night Faces. All the time. I can't even bear to think of that, but he endures it.'" (pp. 584-585)
In "just sitting" meditation, we "sit with" whatever comes up, which can be ghastly, our past wrong actions and their consequences, but we do not seek out or dwell on ghastliness. Also, one step on the Buddhist Eightfold Path is "right means of livelihood," which surely excludes making killing a profession. There are differences of opinion, of course...
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
No, not all things are parts or facets of God. Because things like suns, planets, trees, etc., are not God. They are creations of God, acting thru the natural laws He instituted at the beginning of the universe.
I remember being disappointed by THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. Because the villains Bond confronted were merely American gangsters and criminals.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
This post did not state that all things are facets of God. It began, "if everything is a facet of God..." The post was first paraphrasing, then summarizing, Tolteca's reflection on the implications of Gwydiona philosophy: "If..."
This word, "God," is becoming tiresome. I fully agree that, in the Biblical sense of "God," suns, planets etc are creations of God, not parts of God. However, some real people and also some fictional people, including in this case the Gwydiona, apply the word "God" to the transcendent reality, the object of numinous and mystical experience, while at the same time believing that this reality transcends all persons and therefore is not itself a person.
Surely we can cope with a word being used in different, although related, senses? That is how language evolves. We can make clear what we mean by a word. We can also take into account that some people use that same word in a different sense, however confusing this can make things some, but not necessarily all, of the time.
But we should not just keep using a word, especially an important word like this, in just one sense and assume that everyone else is using it in that one sense. "Facets of God" means facets of the single all-encompassing reality, not facets of ""God" as that word is used by the author of GENESIS.
In medieval cosmology, the sun was a planet and Earth was not. Since then, the meaning of "planet" has changed. I really do know someone who thinks that Earth either is or is not a "planet" in some absolute sense. Therefore, it is wrong to say that, in the Middle Ages, earth was not a planet!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But it was the Gwydiona I had in mind as regards ideas like things being "facets" of God, not you. What I am objecting to is "broadening" the word "God" to mean some kind of vague, amorphous "...transcendent reality, the object of of numinous and mystical experience," while also denying God is truly a Being, a Person. It does not make sense to believe in God while denying He is a Being.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Words get broadened. I object to the Gwydiona calling their insanity "God."
Ultimate reality is real, not vague or amorphous.
It does not make sense to believe in God as a Being while denying that He is a Being. That is a tautology. To use the word "God" as some mystics do is not to believe in God in that sense.
Paul.
(A professional theologian would discuss these ideas, not dismiss them as quickly as possible.)
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