That science is supplanting some of the space mythology had is OK. We can look at the cosmic perspective in Buddhist mythology with great time spans like mahakalpa, or imagine living lives and lives, billions of being inhabiting limitless space. So many exotic creatures. You can look at pictures of space that are coming out, and think about the Mastodon living 10,000 years ago, then going extinct. Buddhism can have garuda, science can have tartagraves and axolotls. The age of information has shown us elaborate mythologies, and elaborate wildlife, helped us gaze into each other deeply and deep deep into outer space.
The upshot is life is short and you're puny in the scheme of things, and your best shot, in the Buddhist plug is to work the program of meditation, sangha, ethics, study, community and devotion. We see other solutions. There's the Hollywood star, rock stars. They often lead tragic lives of excess. We see oddballs who bomb buildings and create manifestos. The millions of people who go to work and don't cause a problem are not newsworthy, so our information distorts how much weirdness there is in the world, but does expose our need for weirdness and challenges.
You can delve into self help and maximize your potential, live your best life. Tara can help you remove the obstacles. You can study the great western philosophers and eastern philosophers. It's no shortcut as Godel proved, but is another tool in the toolbox. Psychology is more descriptive than unlocking the mysteries, but is another tool in the toolbox. You can discuss ethics. There have been a lot of amazing articulations, the idea of justice by John Rawls, the newly articulated effective altruism, which might just be slick fund raising.
There were early vegans, Amos Alcott was one in Transcendental Concord, who ate potatoes and apple sauce on his journey to England. The uncovering of the cruelty towards animals has been well documented, and it goes beyond slaughter to practices to acquire milk that aren't so nice. Peter Singer has a new essay in the Atlantic. In the past 10 years I've seen an explosion of products and a retrenching by food industries who seem to put milk or eggs into everything. There's a certain amount of corporate gaslighting to try and shake the resolve of virtue.
The amount of novels that describe possibilities, movies, music, the explosion of art after we've taken care of the material needs.
For me it's hard to know what traditionalist Buddhist are insisting on when they embrace early Buddhist mythology, but I do love mythology and what it says about us, the reflection in the mirror. Our society is undergoing great technological change and we need resources to cope and maintain our humanity.
I am getting intoxicated by technology. One prominent traditionalist complains that he's been banned and doesn't really have insight into how his non inclusive and judgemental writings impact others. Nobody contains all the truths, so it's natural for me to fear that I'm the asshole in the room. I'm getting more and more comfortable presenting myself as not omniscient. The desire to dominate and be dominated is gradually loosed for a more collaborative and democratic way of being.
Politics is a great exercise in filtering out what isn't important and focusing on your vision, and accepting you can't always win. It's like following a soccer team, there is no team that always wins, no matter how dominant teams are. As the world sport, I use it to learn geography. I was just reading about the Brazilian religion of Umbanda, which has secretized with Christianity. I've been fantasizing about Buddhist mythology syncretized with American folklore. Is Paul Bunyan Maitreya with his big ax? Is the blue ox academia?
From tortoise poking their head above water to listen to chanting on the lake, to the carp that scare me as they thrash about in the reeds, underwater of unconsciousness, to the various birds fluttering by above me, I don't know. I profoundly don't know, and am not in control of myself, and seek to connect with others.
“Mendicants, don’t fear good deeds. For ‘good deeds’ is a term for happiness, for what is likable, desirable, and agreeable. I recall undergoing for a long time the likable, desirable, and agreeable results of good deeds performed over a long time. As a result, for seven eons of the cosmos contracting and expanding I didn’t return to this world again. As the eon contracted I went to the realm of streaming radiance. As it expanded I was reborn in an empty mansion of Brahmā."
In one of his lifetimes he spent 7 years on metta.
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