selling our souls to get to heaven
Owe kay...
Apart from being dragged around the town by my teenage daughter to secure a bunch of tax declarations for her new found employer spurred by her attempt to quell the ubiquitous boredom that haunts teenagers when they are not elevating their heart rate to some dangerously high level, I have been working on my Kingscliff Tafe website which sits on my sevamrta site, perhaps not a good thing as it's so far down the folder tree that search engines like the lil bitty googlebot might not be able to hold their breath long enough to get down that far; perhaps a geocities account might have been a good idea.
My friend Rene seems to have done well enough in the search engines despite his kingscliff TAFE site being on his art-photo site, albeit only one folder down and Susanne's Suwa Design is doing well. I don't recall seeing Lance's site in the search engine buit that doesn't excuse the googlebot from overlooking mine. Both Sevamrta and Dezign Devil appear in the search engines and they were not whacked together with any knowledge of search engines. Oh well I guess I might be learning something.
Maybe I am not the only one who needs to learn something. One has to wonder about the people who strap a backpack full of explosives onto their back and go into a marketplace or wherever and detonate the lot, themselves included, much to the chagrin of the poor innocent bystanders, many of whom are killed or maimed.
It doesn't quite make sense to me that blowing yourself up and killing those around you is going to please God. I mean if God wanted us to do this surely He Himself would have come down to earth to demonstrate that this was the way to get real happiness. Can't recall reading anything about this kind of behaviour being anywhere in any religious scripture. I'll stand corrected if anyone out there has any proof to the contrary, and by proof I don't mean something that could be easily interpreted in any of 495 different ways according to the whims of the reader, I mean something that really, clearly points in this direction.
I am not even barely aware of the Islamic scriptures, apart from a healthy dose of Sufi books such as "The Sufis" and "Thinkers of the East" by Idriess Shah, and such immortal poetry as "The Rubyiat" by one Omar Khayyam (there appears to be a couple of ways of spelling Khyyam .. apologies to all those who spell Kayyham some other way) and the peoms of Rumi and Hafiz (oh and those great stories of Mulla Nasrudin; I've included one at the end of this post, aren't I nice?). I once read a few chapters of the Koran but it wasn't as exciting and inspiring as Sufic poetry, which was sweet and inspiring and also made a lot of sense to me.
Nevertheless, I would be interested in understanding the philosophical signifacance of blowing oneself and others (heathen, infidel, or otherwise) into tiny little bits all over the place to get something from God. Something like relief from this cruel world. I guess if I lived in such conditions as these poor suicide bombers I might be tempted to commit suicide and pretend it was to glorify God, but then I can't imagine that the result would be that I would forever-after reside in paradise, heaven, valhalla or some other equally inviting destination filled with enjoyment forever and ever and ever, amen.
I must admit that in my poor fund of knowledge, if one is not GROWING spiritually; I mean developing the heart to a stage of humility, loving and forgiveness so intense it brings tears to the eyes, then you're really kidding yourself if you think that you have some kind of spiritual advancement if your experiance is otherwise, no matter how much you might meditate, how many ikons you sell, or how many infidels you may blow to bits. Maybe you have some kind of evidence to the contrary. I'd love to read it as this kind of thinking appears to me to be like the vikings going to valhalla if they die in battle. Kool if your a viking that gets killed in battle, when you were going to war anyway but to go out and purposely destroy one's body and others too seems to me like selling your soul to the devil so that you can go to heaven: nothing short of a paradoxical connundrum.
You can contact me a my Design Devil contact page if you have any feedback on this fella.
Lots of joy to everyone
t3rry the useless waste of space.
The Nasrudin tale promised above (I got this one here); don't you just love these tales?
The Smell of Soup and the Sound of Money
A beggar was given a piece of bread, but nothing to put on it. Hoping to get something to go with his bread, he went to a nearby inn and asked for a handout. The innkeeper turned him away with nothing, but the beggar sneaked into the kitchen where he saw a large pot of soup cooking over the fire. He held his piece of bread over the steaming pot, hoping to thus capture a bit of flavor from the good-smelling vapor.
Suddenly the innkeeper seized him by the arm and accused him of stealing soup.
"I took no soup," said the beggar. "I was only smelling the vapor."
"Then you must pay for the smell," answered the innkeeper.
The poor beggar had no money, so the angry innkeeper dragged him before the qadi.
Now Nasreddin Hodja was at that time serving as qadi, and he heard the innkeeper's complaint and the beggar's explanation.
"So you demand payment for the smell of your soup?" summarized the Hodja after the hearing.
"Yes!" insisted the innkeeper.
"Then I myself will pay you," said the Hodja, "and I will pay for the smell of your soup with the sound of money."
Thus saying, the Hodja drew two coins from his pocket, rang them together loudly, put them back into his pocket, and sent the beggar and the innkeeper each on his own way.
Apart from being dragged around the town by my teenage daughter to secure a bunch of tax declarations for her new found employer spurred by her attempt to quell the ubiquitous boredom that haunts teenagers when they are not elevating their heart rate to some dangerously high level, I have been working on my Kingscliff Tafe website which sits on my sevamrta site, perhaps not a good thing as it's so far down the folder tree that search engines like the lil bitty googlebot might not be able to hold their breath long enough to get down that far; perhaps a geocities account might have been a good idea.
My friend Rene seems to have done well enough in the search engines despite his kingscliff TAFE site being on his art-photo site, albeit only one folder down and Susanne's Suwa Design is doing well. I don't recall seeing Lance's site in the search engine buit that doesn't excuse the googlebot from overlooking mine. Both Sevamrta and Dezign Devil appear in the search engines and they were not whacked together with any knowledge of search engines. Oh well I guess I might be learning something.
Maybe I am not the only one who needs to learn something. One has to wonder about the people who strap a backpack full of explosives onto their back and go into a marketplace or wherever and detonate the lot, themselves included, much to the chagrin of the poor innocent bystanders, many of whom are killed or maimed.
It doesn't quite make sense to me that blowing yourself up and killing those around you is going to please God. I mean if God wanted us to do this surely He Himself would have come down to earth to demonstrate that this was the way to get real happiness. Can't recall reading anything about this kind of behaviour being anywhere in any religious scripture. I'll stand corrected if anyone out there has any proof to the contrary, and by proof I don't mean something that could be easily interpreted in any of 495 different ways according to the whims of the reader, I mean something that really, clearly points in this direction.
I am not even barely aware of the Islamic scriptures, apart from a healthy dose of Sufi books such as "The Sufis" and "Thinkers of the East" by Idriess Shah, and such immortal poetry as "The Rubyiat" by one Omar Khayyam (there appears to be a couple of ways of spelling Khyyam .. apologies to all those who spell Kayyham some other way) and the peoms of Rumi and Hafiz (oh and those great stories of Mulla Nasrudin; I've included one at the end of this post, aren't I nice?). I once read a few chapters of the Koran but it wasn't as exciting and inspiring as Sufic poetry, which was sweet and inspiring and also made a lot of sense to me.
Nevertheless, I would be interested in understanding the philosophical signifacance of blowing oneself and others (heathen, infidel, or otherwise) into tiny little bits all over the place to get something from God. Something like relief from this cruel world. I guess if I lived in such conditions as these poor suicide bombers I might be tempted to commit suicide and pretend it was to glorify God, but then I can't imagine that the result would be that I would forever-after reside in paradise, heaven, valhalla or some other equally inviting destination filled with enjoyment forever and ever and ever, amen.
I must admit that in my poor fund of knowledge, if one is not GROWING spiritually; I mean developing the heart to a stage of humility, loving and forgiveness so intense it brings tears to the eyes, then you're really kidding yourself if you think that you have some kind of spiritual advancement if your experiance is otherwise, no matter how much you might meditate, how many ikons you sell, or how many infidels you may blow to bits. Maybe you have some kind of evidence to the contrary. I'd love to read it as this kind of thinking appears to me to be like the vikings going to valhalla if they die in battle. Kool if your a viking that gets killed in battle, when you were going to war anyway but to go out and purposely destroy one's body and others too seems to me like selling your soul to the devil so that you can go to heaven: nothing short of a paradoxical connundrum.
You can contact me a my Design Devil contact page if you have any feedback on this fella.
Lots of joy to everyone
t3rry the useless waste of space.
The Nasrudin tale promised above (I got this one here); don't you just love these tales?
The Smell of Soup and the Sound of Money
A beggar was given a piece of bread, but nothing to put on it. Hoping to get something to go with his bread, he went to a nearby inn and asked for a handout. The innkeeper turned him away with nothing, but the beggar sneaked into the kitchen where he saw a large pot of soup cooking over the fire. He held his piece of bread over the steaming pot, hoping to thus capture a bit of flavor from the good-smelling vapor.
Suddenly the innkeeper seized him by the arm and accused him of stealing soup.
"I took no soup," said the beggar. "I was only smelling the vapor."
"Then you must pay for the smell," answered the innkeeper.
The poor beggar had no money, so the angry innkeeper dragged him before the qadi.
Now Nasreddin Hodja was at that time serving as qadi, and he heard the innkeeper's complaint and the beggar's explanation.
"So you demand payment for the smell of your soup?" summarized the Hodja after the hearing.
"Yes!" insisted the innkeeper.
"Then I myself will pay you," said the Hodja, "and I will pay for the smell of your soup with the sound of money."
Thus saying, the Hodja drew two coins from his pocket, rang them together loudly, put them back into his pocket, and sent the beggar and the innkeeper each on his own way.
posted by mr terrible | 12:24 AM
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