The way the overwhelming majority of people interperet things, even the core beliefs of any system, is quite often flawed. Even the revelations they themselves have will continue to be coloured by the experiences they define themselves with.
Take the Buddhist tenet: 'Life is suffering.'
But I also want you to consider this: 'Wonder of wonders, I and all other beings simultaneously achieve the way, but because of backward understanding fail to realise it.'
Not the only translation I've found for the moment of Buddha's awakening, but this one has stayed with me for over ten years.
Now given the small amount of practicing Buddhists who actually HAVE attained the way, and of those number, how many are speaking in a means and a manner that is accessible to you? So how likely is it that those who speak about the 'suffering on the way' are speaking through backward understanding?
I am like you in that I disagree with the idea that life is suffering. I can't argue with the idea that suffering is ultimately unavoidable, but I do not and will never believe that because of that, that I should resign myself to suffer whenever the clouds gather on the horizon, that I should not try to minimise the impact of or presense of suffering in my world, or that I cannot overcome sources of suffering or the result of said forces. But you would be surprised how many people ultimately ascribe to the idea of learned helplessness as a spiritual ideal, and they read all kinds of holy books and come in all shapes and sizes.
But that does not invalidate what we take away from the things which call to us. No, we shouldn't just cherry-pick the tenets which validate the way we are, and discard the ones which ask us to change or critically examine ourselves. But this is about something else entirely.
I don't know if there is a belief system out there that will be a perfect fit for you, but it sounds to me that you need a community more than you need a new belief system, and one whose goal is your spiritual health and happiness more than the correctness of your beliefs according to (what is ultimately) an abitrary standard.
Even one person sometimes is all it takes. One good friend to share your epiphanies with, and be a sounding board for you as your form your own ideas. It can be quite difficult I know, to hold onto something as true, even when you know it in your bones, when you feel like the only one who believes it. I know what that's like. . .
I was born knowing, like you, that empathy and kindness are natural things, that there is a goodness to life that can never be destroyed, and among my earliest memories there is one where I am disagreeing (in the manner of a two-year-old) with my Sunday School teacher that I, and all other people, are weak in the face of the creator.
In one breath you know that's wrong, even when it hurts to say it. But experience has taught me that the hurt and frustration and impotence I feel at times are not always the result of fear and desire. They are also the song of my bones, disagreeing with, refusing the entire world if they must, that the suffering I go through is natural, that it is necessary, and that it is unavoidable. Now if I'd accepted that at all in any way, then it wouldn't hurt so much.
I wish I could spend the next seven hours just typing, typing, typing. But, duty calls (no, not that one), and I must answer.
{{{{{{{{oot}}}}}}}} |
