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There’s nothing inconceivable about what isn’t there, and so it’s called the greater or the underlying or the essential or the absolute. It can easily be called any of these easy things, but it can’t be called inconceivable because it isn’t there. There’s nothing more inconceivable than what’s...

Hi y’all. Recently I started reading the New Testament in Spanish as part of my continuing sporadic efforts to improve myself in that language. And it worked well for a while. Being in a second language allowed me a certain distance from the text. But eventually I couldn’t help but be drawn...

The original names of the four cousins were Fred, George, Dave & Leo and they hailed from the four intermediate points of the compass, northeast, northwest, southeast & southwest. But in advanced age each converted to a strictly southern discipline and each made such rapid progress that they...

they chanted God God God until God vanished they chanted Dharma Dharma Dharma until Dharma vanished but neither God nor Dharma vanished into nowhere but into what was there and many words, objects & beings were there mountains & seas rivers & woods & plains and tiny animals with long names and...

Here's a tidy summary of the many sides to the debate on the relationship between pluralism and Islam: http://www.islamuswest.org/IslamAndElections_06.html I put it here because I think it's important for everyone to see. Also, I would like to make a plea. This forum at present appears to be...

It gets done through side entrances, lost hallways, in the interstices, unscheduled, after hours, after the priests, the monks, the Brahmins, the virgins, the beadles with Elvis have left the great building, gone home, and the stained glass & painted walls are at their best, unspoiled by...

There was a link posted by someone earlier today to a PBS documentary on Islam. I’m not sure what happened to the post, but I’ve looked at the documentary and it’s quite moving and well done. It focuses quite narrowly on the life of the prophet (peace be upon him) with a parallel look at...

But whoever does not truly have God within themselves, but must constantly receive him in one external thing after another, seeking God in Diverse ways, whether by particular works, people or places, such a person does not possess God. The least thing can impede them, for they do not have God...

Here's an interesting article on pluralism from a Christian perspective. Uses some technical vocabulary in spots, but worth the read. http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=914

I take relativism and absolutism as dangerous extremes. But there is a middle ground, one particularly indigenous to the United States: it's called pluralism. Pluralism doesn't deny that there may be such things as absolutes or near absolutes – in fact, one might say that since fundamentally...

My back, my lower back hurts as I walk, and my hip hurts and a pain in my kidney (on the left) connects the dots. And my feet hurt (with arches never to rise again), and my knees they really hurt, with the cartilage wasted, and bone click-clacking on bone like dampened fire sticks. And I think...

At every moment, you’re with power, or against it. Or you’re with power, and against it, at every moment. Or you’re with power on some days, and against it on others. Or you’re with power day after day, but wish you weren’t. Or day after day you’re against power, but wish you had some. Or power...

Dust You were right, from the beginning, with no coaching, no language, really with no parents, who were elsewhere on dream missions, who were mumbling to themselves over boiling pots of shrunken heads, over ill-shapen spears and in twilight. You were right as you...

On his way to Canaan, Abram paused at a modest strip mall (7x7 stores) just outside Babylon. He met an Indian there, over lunch at the food court. They shared a table. Abram settled on the spicy Thai salad with pork dumplings, and the Indian, a little frail from excessive fasting, invoked a...

In several sources on Tibetan Buddhism - one a book on the Heart Sutra by the Dali Lama - I've come across the idea of a more or less eternal continuum of mind (whether unitary or pluralist I'm not sure), and connected with this the idea of mind being independent of the other aggregates because...