Sharing Your Religion

Convictions, morals, other societies and religions.
obnoxion
Posts: 1806
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 7:59 pm

Re: Sharing Your Religion

Post by obnoxion »

Smaragd wrote: Sun Mar 29, 2020 8:49 pm Very interesting points and beautiful notions from everyone. The reasons that lead me to these questions were that I personally see my own religion so connected to others that it is hard to call it my own. Yet there’s some hardship connecting the two sides in the most powerful way possible and the questions seems like they could be helpful to think about when creating, and participating in, joined practices. What notions could be taken under observation while planning such practises, so that the wonderfully magical quality of religious life can be reached ”in the demanding sense of the term”?
This is a difficult topic to answer, because it is so important and yet so personal.

In the quote from Vignanabhairava, tha word for magic can also be translated as someone tickling your arm pits. So I would associate it with the more commonly known example of the feeling of ants crawling on the skin. Both, I believe, refer to the concept of shaktiparsa, or the touche of Shakti. One can feel it in smaller and greater things. In the end, it can denote the final immersion into the absolute. The key to the experience is, I think, that one cannot tickle one's self.

In his commentary on Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka, Jayaratha makes a metaphor of a salt lake:

"As wood, leaves, little shards of stone, etc. which have fallen into a salt lake transform into salt, in the same way all entities which are different from the Self enter into Cit (a word often translated as consciousness, but which is essentialy untranslateable)"

So, I really feel like I'm (although propably a hard shard of stone rather than a dry leaf) in the salt lake. And there is the certainty that all will eventually be salt. And that is a blissful, blissfull thing. But you need to have, I think - and this goes especially in the christian countries - a spirit of the Black Mass with you. Not the miserable kind, but the kind with cow bells and tambourines. You enjoy it when you're having you dessert in front of the television, and you hear it when you hear people saying dum and detestable things in the name of religion. In the end, things are just turning in to salt in the common lake, and they can turn from grotesque to pretty and back in the process.

As the people in Nepal say, where the old Tantric state religion is passing away, preserve the heritage in art. So when you realize we're all in the salt lake - the blissful, blissfull salt lake - my natural instinct is to participate in the beauty. There is an example from christian art: fra Filipo Lippi painted the Virgin taking a step forward, and that is a new dynamic, because she was always painted static. That is, I think, what happens to religion in the salt lake; that is how it gets magical - The Virgin takes her first step, and the world is astonished. And then you realize she is coming to tickle your arm pits. Now, you need to have the spirit of black mass with cow bells and tambourines with you to enjoy the bliss of it, rather than be horrified by it.

I cannot find a better way to explain this...
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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