File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0107, message 71


From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: "first was the word" / judeo-xian tradition & eatern philosophy
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 21:30:16 -0500


commie00 said:
> > Fifth, Marx obviously has no concept of spiritualism, of disembodied
> spirit,
> > nor does he start from the idea that "First was the Word" (which the Tao
> Te
> > Ch'ing also starts from, btw.)
>
> well, i guess "the way that can be named is not the eternal way" is sorta
> like that, and some of the other stuff about the way existing before the
> multitude of things... but i've always read this (along with the
> materalist-taoist school) as more scientific than "spiritual". esp since
> "way" implies movement, and the tao te ching says over and over again that
> everyhing is in constant flux, nothing is permenent.

Which only reinforces Marx's point that idealism always did a better job of
expressing the active side of humanity, even if it does so idealistically.
After all, Hegel was no mechanist!  Everything in Hegel is development,
process and movement, dialectical movement even.

> so, i guess from my perspective in the beginings of the 21st century, is
see
> this business merely as an early rendition of what the whole of the new
> physics (qunatum mechanics, complexity theory, chaos theory, pattern
theory,
> etc.) is getting at. plus, since i first rad it whenever, the tao te ching
> laways seemed to me to de describing the big bang theory.

Don't get me wrong, I am an old fan of the Tao Te Ch'ing in many ways.  It
was a sourcebook of survival when I was younger and i am still very much of
the opinion that non-Western philosophy does not get treated with nearly
enough seriousness.  As for the Big Bang, well, maybe that's comparing apple
and oranges, eh?

> interestingly, some of the new physics stuff discusses now only the
universe
> expanding, but also contracting... so if all matter came from something
> smaller than a pinpoint reaching critical mass, and then eventually
> contracts to that same pin point (black holes?), what's to say that it
won't
> reach critical mass again and again and again and again... etc. and this
> movement, this eternal flux, could be understood as an aspect of an
immenent
> way (tao).

Well, the Big Bang is most certainly a theory.  Hannes Alfven has done some
very interesting, if thick, work on a plasma notion of the universe which is
radically at odds with the Big Bang, and he is not alone (although Big Bang
works so much better with Big Science and Big Budgets and even can be
absorbed by creationists.)  Then again, the creationists also try to claim
Stephen J. Gould as supporting their position, so I can't say i take my own
point too seriously...

> blah de blah de blah....
>
> as to sharon's question about the differences between the judeo-xian
> tadition and eastern thought in general... the primary one could be
> undersootd, as fabian noted, as god. taoism, buddism and sects of hinduism
> are atheistic. and tho some sects of taoism have, as chris noted, moved in
> strange directions, given the atheism of their principals texts, the bulk
of
> taoists view that stuff (just as the atheist hindus do) as symbolism, and
> nothing more, if they even pay any attention to it at all.
>
> anyway... this rejection of a notion of god, and a notion of some kind of
> essential soul (essential person) does away with transcendental notions.
> even tho buddism has the notion of "enlightenment", most sects of buddhism
> are pretty clear that "enlightenment" is where practice actually begins,
and
> that you can become unenlightened just as easily as you became
enlightened.
>
> as to notions of reincarnation, in all three reincarnation is generally
> viewed as, in the buddhas words "one candle lighting a thousand others".
> which, as i've heard more than one buddhist priest of various sects
> sexplain,
Your Freudian slip is showing :)

 means nothing more than the fact of *physical* energy feeding
> life. when you die, that which was "you" literally goes on to create other
> lives by being in some sense food.
>
> (i actually heard one buddhist priest explain the occurance of past life
> memories to be merely the transfer of signals along the pathways of
physical
> energy, no different than a radio signal or cabel tv. that there was
nothing
> really in it, except that people were just picking up the memories of
other
> people thru physical means. i'm skeptical, but this is by far a better
> explination that i've heard from new age types.)

Well, as I said, we would have to talk to a lot of people.  I know Buddhists
who claim that they can take pictures from the heart which always come out
because the Spirit directs the camera...  Na Miyo Renge Kyo...

Cheers,
Chris



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