Do we need a "belief"?

Shipwrecked, we drift among the wreckage. We find a sure thing to hold on, something worth holding on to. So we lash ourselves to this.

The anchor and the rope did nothing on themselves, but together faith and belief will keep you straight.

I don't think there can be an absence of one or both. I don't think my metaphor can hold for anything less.
 
@Thomas re wei wu wei, assumed he was referring to the Gospel of Thomas, but not sure.

Thanks.
 
Thomas said:
..Is it possible to say some saints/sages have proceeded in the Way without ever asking the question 'what do I believe', but rather simply affirm 'I believe' ...
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No, of course not.
There is no "way" unless you know where you are going to :)

A Cup of Tea said:
Shipwrecked, we drift among the wreckage. We find a sure thing to hold on, something worth holding on to. So we lash ourselves to this.
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That's right. One person might latch on to one way, and another person latch on another.

@CobblersApprentice asks whether it is possible to have faith but no belief. He says that it is.
Clearly, he has faith in "his beliefs" ;)

It is gobbldigook, as far as I'm concerned
 
@Thomas ,as I drift aimlessly in my tin can, you ask what would we see (yes I used the word) but perhaps more what would we BE?

I would heartily recommend Merton's "Zen and the Birds of Appetite" for anyone interested in inter-faith dialogue, particularly Christian/Buddhist. A little goldmine. Gets beyond goggydigook or whatever. :)
 
Dedicated to @muhammad_isa , from "Ziggyology", fine holiday reading for the aspiring Cobbler:-


Both reporters detected a strange, almost mischievous air about their subject. Wild words pelted forth from his lips, mercurial sentences slip-sliding back and forth between truth and nonsense, fact and fiction, David and Ziggy. ‘I’m just a cosmic yob, I suppose,’ said Ziggy. ‘I’ve got a grasshopper mind,’ confessed David. ‘I’m not very well organised.’
 
muhammad_isa said:
There is no "way" unless you know where you are going to :)
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From "A Note To The Reader", Thomas Merton, from his loose translation of Chuang Tzu:-

For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one’s life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one’s own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home, which is God’s world. In any event, the “way” of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a “way out.” Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St. John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost.
 
CobblersApprentice said:
Does "he"? Try to follow the thread with greater attention..
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Well, do you or don't you think that it is possible to have faith without belief?
Rather than quote some passage, do you think that you could answer "yes or no"?

If the answer is "you don't know", then why quote texts from Buddhists who say that it is possible?
Faith is something that waxes and wanes. I'm not afraid of finding out that I've been wrong all along if
somebody shows me why my beliefs are incorrect. My beliefs don't remain static, although over the last 45 years,
the core belief that G-d cannot be some physical thing or being has not changed.
 
muhammad_isa said:
Well, do you or don't you think that it is possible to have faith without belief?
Rather than quote some passage, do you think that you could answer "yes or no"?

If the answer is "you don't know", then why quote texts from Buddhists who say that it is possible?
Faith is something that waxes and wanes. I'm not afraid of finding out that I've been wrong all along if
somebody shows me why my beliefs are incorrect. My beliefs don't remain static, although over the last 45 years,
the core belief that G-d cannot be some physical thing or being has not changed.
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Perhaps you could post as you see fit, and I shall post as I see fit?

As I posted previously.....

Hi, I would seem to prefer questions, while you appear to prefer definitive answers. I need Faith while questioning.


:)
 
muhammad_isa said:
Faith is something that waxes and wanes.
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Well, as you seem adverse to hearing Buddhist texts or whatever (possibly because they are mere "opinion") I'll apologise now. Here is Shinran,
one of the "fathers" of Pure Land Buddhism, who saw that we can never be sincere enough, our intentions can never be pure enough, our aspiration can never be strong enough, so all such are bestowed upon us by the grace of Amida. Shinran, who penned a Hymn which included the lines:-

My eyes being hindered by blind passions
I cannot perceive the light that grasps me
But the Great Compassion, without tiring
Illumines me always.

So when your faith wanes.............:)

EDIT:- it is known as the "easy way", yet few there be who find it.
 
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CobblersApprentice said:
..Hi, I would seem to prefer questions, while you appear to prefer definitive answers. I need Faith while questioning.
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Most surely. I have a scientific type of mind. ie. an enquiring one
If scientists just posed questions but didn't establish answers, there would be no scientific progress :)

As you say .. each to their own
 
CobblersApprentice said:
Yet when mind is not concepts, but fence-posts and tiles?
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You completely lost me!

muhammad_isa said:
Most surely. I have a scientific type of mind. ie. an enquiring one
If scientists just posed questions but didn't establish answers, there would be no scientific progress :)

As you say .. each to their own
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That's a missue of the term. To formulate questions is indeed something something most of us here enjoy. There is a verying degree in when we feel we can say something with a measure of confidence.

You feel confident in the things you say to a greater degree than the Apprentice and myself. Very normal. But when you write that you have "a scientific mind" in comparison to the one you are addressing, you come of as a bit of a twat.

No hard feelings, we all do at times.
 
Aside from your theological acumen, you have repeatedly remarked, using the word "physical" and of course that would be in contradistinction to metaphysics...but that is indeed the purport of your passing mention of [what is] physical.

Physical is the mundane versus the metaphysical.

Yes, metaphysics ---meta means higher ...

Can you expand on your use of what is the nature of the physical?

That being a common denominator, can you say more about what you understand to be Physical Laws of creation?

muhammad_isa said:
some physical thing or being
Click to expand...


You might draw from this thread:
https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/14276/
 
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muhammad_isa said:
Most surely. I have a scientific type of mind. ie. an enquiring one
If scientists just posed questions but didn't establish answers, there would be no scientific progress :)

As you say .. each to their own
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I am afraid that you are mixing apples an oranges. I have actually lost count of the "popular science" books that I have read. My interest in cosmology and the advancement of our knowledge of our universe has been with me ever since reading "The Sleepwalkers" by Arthur Koestler in my early twenties.

Your world of either/or should surely yield to that of both/and?

:)
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
You completely lost me!
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Sorry, just one of the associations my mind of goggledegook makes.

"Yet when mind is not concepts, but fence-posts and tiles?"

I associated the above words (of Dogen) with my post on the Dogen thread:-

That the self advances
And confirms ten thousand things
Is called delusion;
That the ten thousand things
Advance and confirm the self
Is called enlightenment.

Dogen (1200-1253)

Which I associated with:-

The above are some words of Dogen I have pondered often. I got a glimpse of daylight when I associated them with the following, which I quoted on the Grace thread.........which I opened because of encouragement from @Thomas and @StevePame , and which I had looked up - after a lapse - because of a jog from @Thomas again! Such is the world, where we all learn from each other and often lean on each other.......

Pallis speaks of the Buddhist Icon of "touching the earth". The Buddha is seated on a lotus on the waters, where the waters symbolise existence with all its teeming possibilities. The Buddha shows the true nature of existence. His right hand points downward to touch the earth, his other supports a begging bowl which symbolises the acceptance of the gift - grace.


In the two gestures of the Buddha the whole programme of our spiritual exigencies is summed up......an active attitude towards the world and a passive attitude towards heaven. The ignorant person does the exact opposite - passively accepting the world and resisting grace, gift and heaven. (Pallis, from "Is there room for grace in Buddhism?")

Which I associated with the words of another zen guy who said that if "mind existed only in our skull, how could joy exist?"

Which I associated with a discussion I had with @Ahanu concerning "meaning" not being restricted to the human mind but was intrinsic to our Cosmos.
 
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I must admit, I never anticipated wi-fi reaching the back streets of Liverpool.......:)
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
ok! I got you now, I can just hold one thread in my head at a time!
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Often I have found it difficult to understand just one individual post by another member, especially if it involves something new to me, or involves "logic". But with ideas familiar to me I just make almost instant associations, chains of associations, each illuminating each, offering glimpses.
 
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