Death, darkness, and human fallacy
It is strange to think how many people have died over the years. It is some huge amount, I would imagine. Trillions, quadrillions, God knows how many. And then you think of how many of those people that died, how many wives or husbands or families cried over their death. How many thousands of tears were shed over how many trillions of deaths. And maybe that's the one permanent thing in our existance- sorrow. Happiness and sadness are fleeting individual emotions, but through the world, I believe the dominance would shift towards sadness and despair. I think it always has.
At the Hospice event I attended tonight, there was a priest, a rabbi, and a pastor (no, this is not some lame beginning of a joke), who spoke to us about the triumph of light over dark, of life over death, of happiness over sadness. But I believe that is a delusion. In the end, death wins always. The night will come when the sun finally runs out, and if nothing else, a neutral emotion where sadness or happiness should be will win out. It is not a bad thing, to have darkness win. It is only natural order. And perhaps, this is where the fallacy and the allure of religion factors in. Perhaps religion is what people create when they feel the darkness gliding through the world at night, when their loved one dies, when they are always crying. Perhaps religion is the antithesis of the natural order- a forcible fallacy that we perpetuate in order to convince ourselves that some abstract "good" will win in the end. And I think it shows how many people hurt, how many people are scared, by the dominance of religion. It is comforting to think that someday all the wrongs will be righted, all the darkness will be banished, and death will be abolished. Isn't that what the Christian view of heaven represents? A city of light, of happiness, of immortality. I have also noticed that this is most common in the western, Judeo-Christian religions. Often in the East the ideas of negative immortality surface- Nirvana, becoming one with the natural order. This makes more sense to me. When I'm coerced into going to church, I feel somehow that we're going the wrong way, that the whole congregation is fighting against the tide. We constantly remind ourselves that we cannot sin, that we must strive for wholesome goodness. Our whole point is to refine ourselves to be 'good' where the ideas of the East strive not for 'good' but for acceptance, for understanding.
Can you imagine a world without darkness? Darkness is what defines what we see, silence defines what we hear. Death defines life and sadness defines happiness. A world of only light, of only happiness and joyous noise and immortals- it is a world of no contrasts and of no definition. It has no point in existing. And ultimately that is where Buddhism and Daoism make more sense to me- the idea that everything has a balance and that neither side is right or wrong. Light with dark, happiness with sadness, and life with death. Judeo-Christian teachings of good and evil are ultimately artificial human creations with no link to the natural world and therefore no relevancy.
We are all immortal and we are all dust. We are lightness and we are darkness. We are jubilant and we are despair. We are not good and we are not evil.
We simply are.
At the Hospice event I attended tonight, there was a priest, a rabbi, and a pastor (no, this is not some lame beginning of a joke), who spoke to us about the triumph of light over dark, of life over death, of happiness over sadness. But I believe that is a delusion. In the end, death wins always. The night will come when the sun finally runs out, and if nothing else, a neutral emotion where sadness or happiness should be will win out. It is not a bad thing, to have darkness win. It is only natural order. And perhaps, this is where the fallacy and the allure of religion factors in. Perhaps religion is what people create when they feel the darkness gliding through the world at night, when their loved one dies, when they are always crying. Perhaps religion is the antithesis of the natural order- a forcible fallacy that we perpetuate in order to convince ourselves that some abstract "good" will win in the end. And I think it shows how many people hurt, how many people are scared, by the dominance of religion. It is comforting to think that someday all the wrongs will be righted, all the darkness will be banished, and death will be abolished. Isn't that what the Christian view of heaven represents? A city of light, of happiness, of immortality. I have also noticed that this is most common in the western, Judeo-Christian religions. Often in the East the ideas of negative immortality surface- Nirvana, becoming one with the natural order. This makes more sense to me. When I'm coerced into going to church, I feel somehow that we're going the wrong way, that the whole congregation is fighting against the tide. We constantly remind ourselves that we cannot sin, that we must strive for wholesome goodness. Our whole point is to refine ourselves to be 'good' where the ideas of the East strive not for 'good' but for acceptance, for understanding.
Can you imagine a world without darkness? Darkness is what defines what we see, silence defines what we hear. Death defines life and sadness defines happiness. A world of only light, of only happiness and joyous noise and immortals- it is a world of no contrasts and of no definition. It has no point in existing. And ultimately that is where Buddhism and Daoism make more sense to me- the idea that everything has a balance and that neither side is right or wrong. Light with dark, happiness with sadness, and life with death. Judeo-Christian teachings of good and evil are ultimately artificial human creations with no link to the natural world and therefore no relevancy.
We are all immortal and we are all dust. We are lightness and we are darkness. We are jubilant and we are despair. We are not good and we are not evil.
We simply are.
posted by Aermethys at 11:32 PM
1 Comments:
I think you have something here. It does indeed make sense, that everything comes to death in the end. And I belive, that the entire point of existing is feeling emotions: great sadness, euphoric bliss, despair...they are equally important. The thing I have found to be most important is how you deal with them. I think no one has an excuse to be depressed, as it serves no purpose. Feeling despair, depression, great sadness does serve a purpose. To a point. I think feeling emotion teaches you about yourself and the world around you, and I say, let sadness exist. It is not evil. But do not let it run your life, because everything exists in pairs, and pair your sadness with delight. Find happyness in everything. A hug from a friend, the color of the sky, a song you havent heard before, a color you've never seen....
I belive i have finished my rant. I appologize for smudging your beautiful page. A point was well made.
namaste.
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