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Shop: Myyco.com Golden Teacher Liquid Culture For Sale   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation
    #4816017 -

Reincarnation is an excellent impetus for pursuing a spiritual and pure life. If you didn't, in fact, you would be forced to continue on the wheel of maya (illusion). Thus, one must strive towards being completely selfless, mindful, and full of love and devotion in all deeds, in order to escape and be united with the nonduality.

HOWEVER, if reincarnation does not, in fact, exist, then we are simply part of the Tao, and anything and everything we do will ultimately make not the slightest difference, since we are still the Tao.

If this is so, one could justifiably lead any sort of life that one wanted, even a life of hedonism, and still embody the Tao entirely. Certainly some would be bent to pursue a life of spirituality, but for even the common man, there wouldn't be any impetus.

If there is no reincarnation, is there any reason one should be spiritual?


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"What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?"

"Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword"
- John Mayer

Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: dblaney]
    #4816412 -

Short answer: Yes. "Spirituality" entails more than the afterlife. A spiritual life can be led to give one direction and an impetus to drive them through life (or not). Especially when you enter the reality tunnel in which GOD, divinity is something that everything is a part of, then matters of the "spirit" become poignant here and now. I could believe in annihilation of my physical body and any semblance of "soul" at the moment of my death, utter nothingness, and still adopt a spiritual path in which I sublimate wordly desire because I recognize that desire leads to suffering. Spiritual is an adjective to define human experiences and recognitions of grace, the sublime and extra-carnal pursuits, though that is a very incomplete definition.

To get the long answer to this question, we'd need to define spirituality of course.

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: dblaney]
    #4816769 -

"if there is no reincarnation, is there any reason one should be spiritual? "

yes. i dont pursue spirituality out of hopes or fears of the afterlife. spiritual living is about the here and now, this very moment. i try to pursue a life of awareness, contemplation, peace and love because that is simply the happiest and most fufilling kind of life to lead. it allows your to rise above the stress and drama of the ego-shitgame.

Living a life of hedonism, evil or violence will not ultimatly make a differance because you are always in and of the tao (god) and will ultimatly return their, weather you live like jesus or hitler. Gods love is unconditional, and that means just that... its UNCONDITIONAL (and please dont let me hear a word from any christians who proclaim an all loving god will send you to burn in hell for eternity)

the choice to live in peace/spirituality is a selfish one.. that is its done for your own good. Its good for your mental and physical wellbeing. And as an added bonus its good for those around you.

a simple example: tommorow, spend your day splurging, spending money, eating ice cream, getting drunk and sniffing coke and then fuck a hooker.

The day after, spend your day meditating and praying and being in nature.

compare your feelings at the end of each day.

:laugh:


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Everything I post is fiction.

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Moonshoe]
    #4817095 -

Right on man! Truly those are good ways of living.


--------------------
"What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?"

"Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword"
- John Mayer

Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Viveka]
    #4817102 -

because I recognize that desire leads to suffering

This is a good point, which I failed to realize. Thanks man.


--------------------
"What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?"

"Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword"
- John Mayer

Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: dblaney]
    #4820241 -

Sure, man. Of course, we live a life of worldly pursuits so it's good to seek out the Middle Way so to speak. Hedonism becomes a more and more appealing approach in a life seemingly without purpose, but there is a fundamental flaw with that path. Hedonism, philosophically speaking, asserts that only those things that are pleasant or have pleasant consequences are instrinsically good. The problem is that indulging in things that are pleasing to the senses often leads to suffering, and pleasant consequences are usually reaped from making less than pleasant choices. Also, if the idea of what is pleasant is derived from wordly sensual pleasures, as opposed to "spiritual" (extra-carnal) goals, then the path becomes increasingly treacherous. But this has all been said, discarded and readopted a quintillion times before. Thanks for the dialogue.

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Viveka]
    #4820260 -

If you believe in the reincarnation.. wouldn't then, this be the afterlife? :P

"life after life, the cycle's of deaths/births?"
... :P


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Disclaimer!?

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Gomp]
    #4820293 -

there's always a good reason to be better than you already are
i.e. to transcend yourself
i.e. to be spiritually oriented.

eg in bed with a hangover, hmm.. maybe some advil.
already some improvement to this spiritual act.


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:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: redgreenvines]
    #4820358 -

argot.


:smile:

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Gomp]
    #4821596 -

An Atheist once told me, "If your life is going to have any meaning, then you will have to put it there." I think that makes a great deal of sense. A life given over to extremes of Hedonism, and selfishness, can only result in suffering. However, if you practice your Hedonism moderately, & at no one else's expense, then you most certainly will get to enjoy it a whole lot more.

Do you remember the story of the teacher & the jar? The teacher had a big wide-mouthed jar, plus three sacks. The first sack held big rocks, the 2nd little rocks, and the 3rd contained sand. The teacher put the big rocks into the jar. "Is it full?", the teacher asked. Then the teacher poured in the little rocks which fit in around the big rocks. "Is it full?", the teacher asked. Then the teacher poured in the sand, which fit in around everything else in the jar.

The teacher said, "The big rocks are the most important things in life. The little rocks are all the tasks we have to deal with in life. The sand is all the mundane & unimportant things. If you begin by filling your jar with sand, there will be no room for your tasks, nor for anything important. What do you want to fill your jar with?"


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The Soul exists simultaneously throughout all of Time.
The Ego merely exists now.

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: jcldragon]
    #4823139 -

of course there could still be benefits of beign spiritual as it improves your life while youre alive, however the major difference would be there would be no penalty for living a completely selfish life. there would be no difference between living a fairy moral life and being hitler, youd both end up the same.

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Viveka]
    #4824773 -

A past thread of mine on Hedonism:

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4300784/page/0/fpart/1/vc/1

When the "pleasures" involved in a Hedonistic lifestyle are chosen by a healthy, spiritual being, they are not anti-spiritual.

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Veritas]
    #4825035 -

veritas, hedonism was what lead me into spirituality because i found spiritual bliss was the best, most fullfulling pleasure of them all. however when most people use the word hedonism today they generally use it to mean the pursuit of pleasure at the expense of other things. for example who would be considered more of a hedonist, someone living a good life, fullfilling all their obligations and giving to others or a cocaine addict? even if the person living the good life was infinitely happier than the cocaine addict, the cocaine addict would be considered the hedonist. to me it seems people use to the word hedonism to mean pursuing the lower urges (pleasure now at the expense of pain and misery later). i just skimmed over your other thread on hedonism and it seems the same point came up there so this post is probably unecessary. i still think that you should clarify your definition of hedonism though because many people understand it to mean "the unbridled indulgence in every kind of pleasure, " to quote ped from your other thread.

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Deviate]
    #4825079 -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism

Wiki does a much better job of exploring theories of Hedonism than I can manage in the ten minutes before my lunch break. :grin:

Suffice it to say, Hedonism has gotten a bad rap.  None of the main hedonistic belief systems supports the "unbridled indulgence" attributed to them by Puritanical religious opponents.

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Re: Spirituality in the Absence of Reincarnation [Re: Veritas]
    #4825509 -

We all intuitively long for eternal Bliss because there is only so much in a glass of water to quench our thirst. We may find distractions along the way, but the more we get distracted the thirstier we get. Suffering eventually becomes so unbearable that we know that is time to change. We change and change and change and change till we intuitively know that distractions are not the way. Our search then changes from an external to an internal one. All paths really lead to the same destination, it's just a matter of time.


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"It is never a question of belief; the only scientific attitude one can take on any subject is whether it is true. The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. The cosmos would be fairly chaotic if its laws could not operate without the sanction of human belief." -- Sri Yukteswar

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