• Nikolas
    205
    The best we can do is go against the flow and ACT with the greatest skill possible.
    — Nikolas

    If you are going against the flow, you'll end up just like the salmon.
    synthesis

    Malcolm Muggeridge said: “Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”

    The salmon fights the stream to escape Plato's cave and return to its origin. The dead fish follow the flow to deteriorate into the sea. The world needs more of the awakening salmon influence than the dead fish influence in order to avoid sinking into the sea.
  • d Luke
    15

    I wish I could take credit for but these ideas are thousands of years old.synthesis
    Okay. This then makes me think of the non-intellectual, God, or Absolute as a possession. By possession I mean even the non-intellectual or incomprehensible is a part of the human world, an idea in the mind, not the world or mind of the Absolute. For instance, can the Absolute say anything is non-intellectual? Does the Absolute call anything else Absolute? What I am trying to understand is if we see the Absolute as in or coming from our limited minds, what makes it something different from a very human thing, not transcendental? What makes this leap of faith to the Absolute different from an escape or invalid reversal of the non-intellectual?
    .
  • synthesis
    933
    You are trying to intellectualize something that you cannot. I would suggest that you read something like, "Tao Te Ching," by Lao Tsu, or perhaps, "Leaves of Grass," by Walt Whitman, as these are two books are critically acclaimed "attempts" at intellectualizing the non-intellectual.

    At some point, though, you either have faith that this is case, or you do what 99.999...% of everybody does and just dismiss it.
  • d Luke
    15
    Don't misunderstand me. I am all for a leap of faith. But faith is trust in or believing in something. So if I have faith in something I cannot intellectualize, that is the same as having faith in a non-thing (nothing). It seems there should be an object to my faith. Though there might be a lack of bridges so that I have to leap, at least I should understand there is another side I can land on and that this other side can handle me jumping on it and won't crumble. In other words, I dare risk the chance of having faith in the wrong Absolute. At any time I could deny intellectualization and transcend this non-intellectualization as the Absolute. Thus, the Absolute becomes anything I cannot think of.
  • synthesis
    933
    It seems to me (from my experience) that people are drawn to search this from a profound life experience (generally, a negative one). When the usual answers do not suffice, then one starts searching for alternatives. That was certainly the case for me.

    I was on a four year long ultra-intensive philosophical journey (after the death of my son) and I simply reached the end where the words provided me with nothing. A friend on a car group on the very early internet introduced me to Zen and I took to it immediately. I was ready because I was incredibly burned-out intellectually.

    Perhaps people just need to be ready to accept the possibility that such a thing might "exist." I don't know (and cannot know). What I do know is what it has allowed me to do and how it profoundly changed my life.
  • d Luke
    15
    Thanks for sharing your story. And sorry to hear about your son. I agree, people should one day be ready to accept the possibility that such a thing might exist. I think we all at some time search for something that not only makes sense but is life-changing.
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