Job

My son is reading about Job in the Bible for his intro to philosophy class. These are my thoughts.

So I read this amazing book, you can borrow it if you like, called Darwin's Dangerous Idea by the philosopher Daniel Dennett. He wrote fairly convincingly to me, that evolution explains everything, and that removes god from the narrative of creation. So what is the role of god? Press the start button, and don't do anything else? That purports to explain something? Or is god an activist god who does things? Seems unlikely because then you run into the problem of evil. The problem of evil is this: if god is omniscient and all powerful, then why is there evil? Why wouldn't an activist god stop Hitler? 

The religious answer is free will. That was the subject I studied in my intro to philosophy class. My mother said people ran out of her philosophy class when the professor trotted out atheist arguments. For me psychologically I like free will, but there's no evidence we really have it. Again, filling in the vast ignorances with ideas doesn't really make things comprehensible. Determinism seems horrible, the mind rebels. 

So to me the story of Job, he takes this successful guy and gives him huge setbacks and he's supposed to just keep believing, and I guess because he does, he eventually rewards him. There's also the story of Abraham where he's going to sacrafice his son for god, but then at the last minute god tells him not to. These are kind of dramatic parables to counter the fact that god doesn't really do anything for you and you're still supposed to believe.

Kierkegaard is famous for coining the leap of faith idea, that you just buy into the mythology, nevermind if it doesn't all make sense. That makes me think about St. John of the Cross and his idea of the dark night of the soul, when faith doesn't seem to pay off, but you believe anyway. I kind of feel that way about Buddhism, I'm grinding on studying the Dharma, meditating, being ethical and it doesn't seem to be paying off. 

I think it does pay off, and that it doesn't have to pay off, sometimes life is hard, but there are times in the spiritual life when it's particularly hard and unrewarding. So that's part of what I think about the story of Job. You do the spiritual life even if you're not getting anything because you just can't not do it. 

The "not getting anything" is an illusion anyway, because even if things aren't going your way, holding up a higher standard, you're going to have times where it's difficult, but still for me pushing through the difficulties with integrity is what it's all about. For me the spiritual life is all about shooting for almost unrealistic ideals. Being kind without any reward just because. Part of being spiritual is about becoming a limitless person.

Gods were ways humans begged for good luck, before we knew more about circumstances. That evolved into one god, monotheism. It doesn't make sense but the computer I'm writing on has a bitten apple as the logo, a reference to Adam and Eve. It's deeply woven into our culture. I read the bible for the culture, to understand Shakespeare and the Byrds. 

My spirituality allows me to be skeptical, think for myself, make huge mistakes, and I can keep trying to move towards enlightenment. I'm not sure I'll get there. The glimpses I've gotten haven't really helped me in life, I think I've screwed up more because I began to reach for more and broken down a few times. 

For me the spiritual life is about ethics, community, study, devotion and meditation, but I'm terrible at ethics, and I'm isolated and without community for the most part outside a few zoom meetings with weird people I don't understand. I did have many years of lovely sangha, that I draw memories from. 

So even without god I think the spiritual life has some questions about the dark night of the soul. 

Listening to myself

It's a hinderance of mine that I get excited about ideas. It's sense pleasure once again leading me away from the focus on my breath. I heard myself saying, "Even if I don't get enlightened, I have gained a lot from being on the path, and working to reduce the distance between myself and the Buddha." That doesn't take into account the dark night of the soul, The Silence, and the hope of seeing the transcendental pleasures of the path. Enlightenment is experience far experience to me, but at a certain point in my meditation today, I felt a little of the craziness churning in my mind, settle down just a little. I guess I feel that is worth it, though I think meditation needs to be beyond good feelings, because that's just chasing sense pleasures again. You just do it, in some ways, regardless of the reward, ignoring spiritual materialism, relinquish, a little, for a second, the endless project of chasing positive sense pleasures and pushing away negative experiences.

Dark Night of the Soul

Ingram in his Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha, talks about the "dark night" of the soul.

This is an idea from Saint John of the Cross. He talks about a time when the sensuality of spirituality wears off, and there's nothing positive that pulls one to the routines of the spiritual life. I don't know what he means by meditation, but there is also prayer and good works. It's in the dark night of the soul when the seeker is really tested. God is notorious in the Bible for testing people.

Now in Buddhism there is no creator god, so there's nobody testing the seeker, but there could be a time when the joy of dhyana is no longer available for the next phase. According to Ingram that is.I've been around a lot of people with dhyanic smiles. I'm not sure I've wallowed in the joy of the dhyanas enough to enter into the dark night of Ingram, but like most people, I have experienced a loss of the sensual joys and lost my way at times. Ingram says the only way is through it, and that you need someone to help you through it, a spiritual community, friends.

I don't pretend to know enough about Saint John of the Cross, nor do I know enough about Ingram's use of the concept, but I am interested in it, and I wonder why he has to borrow something from Christianity when Buddhism does have a rich rich history. Well, he's just trying to articulate his experience, so he's free to choose from whatever tradition he pleases.

By the way, Saint John of the Cross is really good at articulating spiritual immaturity. I need to do some translation into a more universal spirituality for it all to be useful for me, but I find it very interesting. I find myself uncomfortably described in the traits of spiritual immaturity at times.