Ritual sacrifice of animals was part of the shared cultural heritage of pretty much all of humanity, I think. Maybe it arose.......
Animals, including often the human animal! There was also a book once, dealing more with explicit
myth, that related the stories of about 16 crucified "saviours". Where
did this idea come from, what was the intent and purpose and belief/s behind it?
Maybe, if we decide, and come to conclusions, we find out about
ourselves? Where our own "allegiances" are. (Not that we do not seek the "facts" that support them)
So maybe the human animal simply believes that there is a
price to be paid for everything. But that, in fact, there is not. By the "price" being paid by another, in fact by Reality itself, we can be relieved of any sense of obligation. Alas,
as if! We seem determined to pay a price to "justify" ourselves.
I relate this to the ubiquitous sense of
paradox at the heart of all reality and the way so much turns back into its opposite at the furthest extremes.
Thomas Merton was once asked to contribute to a book about "success" and offered the following:-
If I have a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success......if you are too obsessed with success you will forget how to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.
Having posted this on another Forum, someone said that his view of Merton was diminished by such an outburst! Well, each to their own, but in my view this poster was missing the fundamental nature of all life, its paradoxical heart and thus missing the point that for all intents and purposes Merton was
indeed a success!!
As I see it, all we truly need we already have; gift, grace. The task (if it can be called that) is
realisation rather than a progressive
attainment - any sense of the latter bringing with it the mind of the "pharisee", of judgement of others as not having put in the effort like ourselves.
In "A Study of Chuang Tzu" - the introduction to Merton's very loose "translation" of the Chinese Sage - Thomas Merton goes into detail of the various paradoxes, like happiness coming from doing absolutely nothing to seek it. Well worth a read.
Anyway, I feel I have waffled enough. Later we are to be invaded by grandchildren, who keep us on our toes. At 7 and 5 they will stand for no nonsense.
