Joseph Campbell makes the point that religious expression manifests itself in one of two ways: wonder, and self-salvation.
Wonder- seeing the world with eyes brightly-wide.
Self-salvation- a sense of having done something wrong and feeling a need to atone.

In Varanasi, I'm reading "The Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist" that my friend Bloch gave to me before I left. I can understand his hunger for figuring "it" out, but I really, really can't say, as he does, that I have never experienced contentment.
I can say, without reservation, that I have never been down for long.
Am I wrong in assuming that most people feel the same way?
Though being happy, or not, doesn't seem to relieve the itch to think about what we exist for.
To scratch or not to scratch, that's the question, isn't it?
I suppose that one can just wait life out.
It will end, after all.
But what's the fun of that?
I happen to be sitting poolside at the Taj Hotel in Varanasi, munching on a veggie burger and buddha's dictum that "all life is suffering".

I don't know if, as Batchelor says, "by removing death's finality, you deprive it of its greatest power" but it bears thinking about.

The blind cow,
With the man's hand on its hump
Moves through the blaring horns

Campbell spells out the extraordinarily complex cosmology of the early Hindus and Jains, and calls it evidently mythological and not realistic. And, of course, that seems reasonable, but it doesn't explain why ancient India felt the need to have such a theology of such stupendous proportions, needing billions of lifetimes and countless billions more of universes, to satisfy a need that the Greeks managed so much more simply.
Is all just rigamarole?
Or is Hinduism so old and complex because the world really is that old, and that complex, and so conceiving of all creation must needs be equally ambitious?

When I ask Hindus as to why the complexity, they all say that if they hadn't been born a Hindu, they wouldn't understand it either.
It is what it is.
The more, the better.
Almost as if Hinduism were the grandest of mazes. And being lost within it induces religious awakening.
A blowing of the mind.
There is no A to B to C and etc., but rather a million As to a million Bs from every A, then a million Cs from every previous B, and so on and so on.
As if the point is, that there is no one point possible. And just try to find one!
Imagine a corn field maze the size of the universe.
Rather than make sense, inspire non-sense?

The Greeks got it all done from Mt. Olympus.

I know that I'm not the first to notice this: that
-Mahavira. The Jain saint,
-Buddha,
-Aeschylus, the Greek tragedian,
- Confucius,
- And finally, Zoroaster, according to Joseph Campbell, the link between East and West,
all lived within a few years of 500 B. C.
Something in the water?

Campbell, in "Creative Mythology" proposes that we humans now bring about our own personal myths, as if this were different from any other time. Maybe we have always done this and some myths simply were adopted by the masses, who found it too much trouble to invent their own.
Possibly we are in a time of upheaval and new myth- making, as we were in 500 B.C.

Seen on a temple wall in Delhi:

Attharva Veda
God is One.
He (sic.) is Omnipresent
Omnipotent
Omniscient
and the Creator of the Whole Universe.

I suppose it's possible.

Air
Thick with dust
Of Buddha.


Joseph Campbell makes the point that religious expression manifests itself in one of two ways: wonder, and self-salvation.
Wonder- seeing the world with eyes brightly-wide.
Self-salvation- a sense of having done something wrong and feeling a need to atone.

In Varanasi, I'm reading "The Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist" that my friend Bloch gave to me before I left. I can understand his hunger for figuring "it" out, but I really, really can't say, as he does, that I have never experienced contentment.
I can say, without reservation, that I have never been down for long.
Am I wrong in assuming that most people feel the same way?
Though being happy, or not, doesn't seem to relieve the itch to think about what we exist for.
To scratch or not to scratch, that's the question, isn't it?
I suppose that one can just wait life out.
It will end, after all.
But what's the fun of that?
I happen to be sitting poolside at the Taj Hotel in Varanasi, munching on a veggie burger and buddha's dictum that "all life is suffering".

I don't know if, as Batchelor says, "by removing death's finality, you deprive it of its greatest power" but it bears thinking about.

The blind cow,
With the man's hand on its hump
Moves through the blaring horns

Campbell spells out the extraordinarily complex cosmology of the early Hindus and Jains, and calls it evidently mythological and not realistic. And, of course, that seems reasonable, but it doesn't explain why ancient India felt the need to have such a theology of such stupendous proportions, needing billions of lifetimes and countless billions more of universes, to satisfy a need that the Greeks managed so much more simply.
Is all just rigamarole?
Or is Hinduism so old and complex because the world really is that old, and that complex, and so conceiving of all creation must needs be equally ambitious?

When I ask Hindus as to why the complexity, they all say that if they hadn't been born a Hindu, they wouldn't understand it either.
It is what it is.
The more, the better.
Almost as if Hinduism were the grandest of mazes. And being lost within it induces religious awakening.
A blowing of the mind.
There is no A to B to C and etc., but rather a million As to a million Bs from every A, then a million Cs from every previous B, and so on and so on.
As if the point is, that there is no one point possible. And just try to find one!
Imagine a corn field maze the size of the universe.
Rather than make sense, inspire non-sense?

The Greeks got it all done from Mt. Olympus.

I know that I'm not the first to notice this: that
-Mahavira. The Jain saint,
-Buddha,
-Aeschylus, the Greek tragedian,
- Confucius,
- And finally, Zoroaster, according to Joseph Campbell, the link between East and West,
all lived within a few years of 500 B. C.
Something in the water?

Campbell, in "Creative Mythology" proposes that we humans now bring about our own personal myths, as if this were different from any other time. Maybe we have always done this and some myths simply were adopted by the masses, who found it too much trouble to invent their own.
Possibly we are in a time of upheaval and new myth- making, as we were in 500 B.C.

Seen on a temple wall in Delhi:

Attharva Veda
God is One.
He (sic.) is Omnipresent
Omnipotent
Omniscient
and the Creator of the Whole Universe.

I suppose it's possible.

Air
Thick with dust
Of Buddha.


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