Theos-Talk Archives (August 1996 Message tl00540)

>"Strangle thy sins" - this seems to give "sins" a kind of objective
>existence of their own.  But the word(s) from scripture which have been
>rendered "sin" and then redefined by dogmatic theology mean nothing more
>than "missing the target" or "getting it wrong."  You can break the
>arrow, and you can destroy the target, but you can't strangle the aim -
>you can only try to correct it.  So let's mend, not strangle.
>
>"Kill thy desires" - makes no sense at all,  for if you want to do this,
>you must set up a desire to kill your desires, which is absurd!
>
>Alan

Yes it does seem like a dog (or dragon) chasing it tail.  But this is supposed
the very cause of suffering (according to Buddhism) that desire can only desire
more, it can never be fullfilled once and for all, but only satiated and
placated temporarily and HPB suggests that this placation makes it grow ever
larger.

The notion of sin, is not a pretty one.  We have all discussed at length on
theos-l and read elsewhere the big problem of "does evil exist in itself or as
only a diminution of the GOOD."  Sin as missin the mark suggest just not being
good enough, but getting better with practice.  Evil can be seen as the very
essence of self-centered desire at the expense of the larger GOOD.  It feeds
like a parasite and converts GOOD to itself in the way vampires in myth spread
vampirism and the way the HIV retrovirus converts helpful human immune cells to
replicants of itself which eventually destroy the good host.  The evil is spread
covertly, indirectly and is never productive of anything but itself.

Some has seen HIV as a metaphor for evil and an almost diabolic ability to
evolve and mutate ahead of attempts to stop it by more advanced (?!) beings
(humans).  A certain stubborness seems to exist in evil it seems to always be
there in the shadow, as shadow to make the light visible as "information". Where
there is life there is information and the entropy that tells us there is
entropy by giving us the arrow of time.  Entropy is the measurement of
information.  (wow, I popped back into that old systems stuff without planning
too) Non-dualism seems to suggest that there is no radical difference in the
shadow and the light, they are the maya produced by our limited mind that
discriminate and creates dualisms.  This is small comfort to one who is
suffering from a disease, yet it suggests that suffering may force an awareness
of  transcendence that may be brought to importance  only by suffering.  Without
desire their would be no movement, no evolution, no dualism.

I am remembering that Maya means not illusion, but "to measure, to cut, to
discriminate, to dualize as me and not-me.  To measure the measurer, to have the
mirror look at itself.  Zen seeks to achieve just such breakthroughs. And the
subatomic model seems to present the same form of the looker affecting the
looked at because they are not two things, but the snake  looking at its tail.

Namaste

Keith Price
Keith Price