Tags / 65 quotes from 22 sources
#religion
Adesso basta (Simone Perotti)
Il vero cambiamento parte da noi stessi
Qui però parliamo di un altro cambiamento, e ho usato questi esempi solo per specificarlo. Il vero cambiamento, quello che interessa il downshifting, è fatto da noi stessi. E qui le doti di imprenditorialità di ognuno vengono al pettine. Non avendo mai ricevuto insegnamenti su…
Il peccato di sperare in un'altra vita
«Se c’è un peccato contro la vita, è forse non tanto disperarne, quanto sperare in un’altra vita, e sottrarsi all’implacabile grandezza di questa.» Albert Camus
Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart)
Leibniz: propagating faith through science
But Leibniz’s real reasons for wanting a binary numbering system were much deeper than the philistine goal of counting money. Leibniz, like almost all scientists of his day, was also deeply religious. He dreamed of inventing a universal language of logic that could once and for…
Charlie Hebdo Attack: Manhunt After 12 Killed At Paris Offices – Live Updates | World News | The Guardian
Rushdie: respect for religion means fear of religion
Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we…
Dio odia il Giappone (Douglas Coupland, M. Howatson and Anna Mioni)
Se un dio non basta, si prova il prossimo
Da Dio? Dio è un’idea così «non giapponese». Noi andiamo da un dio, preghiamo per quello che desideriamo, e se non lo otteniamo andiamo a pregare il prossimo dio.
Svegliarsi senza memoria per reinventarsi
Caro Clone, cosa spinge le persone a fare quello che fanno? Ci svegliamo la mattina, ci ricordiamo chi siamo e dove siamo e a volte ci dimentichiamo il giorno della settimana, oppure la stagione, e dobbiamo fare uno sforzo di memoria, ma prima o poi ci tornano in mente. A volte…
Erik Davis - On Psychedelics
Psychiatrist rick strassman experiments with ayahuasca
The most active alkaloid in ayahuasca is DMT, the tryptamine whose study initiated the current wave of psychedelic research and also occasioned some of the more intriguing juxtapositions of religion and science in the recent literature. In the early 1990s, the American…
Good Without God – A Letter To The Faithful
Religion does not bring meaning
Life is insignificant – in the span of the universe. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m starting to come to the conclusion that the convictions held by Creationists, as barking mad and as scientifically untenable as they are, make more sense than those held by the majority…
Human, All Too Human: A Book For Free Spirits
Senility, Suicide and Death
Senility and Death.—Apart from the demands made by religion, it may well be asked why it is more honorable in an aged man, who feels the decline of his powers, to await slow extinction than to fix a term to his existence himself? Suicide in such a case is a quite natural and…
Error has made men so deep, sensitive and imaginative in order to bring forth such flowers as religions and arts.
It is believed that the more profoundly man thinks, the more exquisitely he feels, the higher the standard he sets for himself, the greater his distance from the other animals—the more he appears as a genius (Genie) among animals—the nearer he gets to the true nature of the…
Servility assumes the aspect of Christian virtue
Being Religious to Some Purpose.—There are certain insipid, traffic-virtuous people to whom religion is pinned like the hem of some garb of a higher humanity. These people do well to remain religious: it adorns them. All who are not versed in some professional weapon—including…
Religion against religions
The Breaking off of Churches.—There is not sufficient religion in the world merely to put an end to the number of religions.
If there is no longer any ought morality, wouldn't death be preferable?
For Tranquility.—But will not our philosophy become thus a tragedy? Will not truth prove the enemy of life, of betterment? A question seems to weigh upon our tongue and yet will not put itself into words: whether one can knowingly remain in the domain of the untruthful? or, if…
La Formica Zen (italian Edition) ( )
L'ultimo tratto del cammino si fa da soli
Non ci sono scorciatoie che possono indicare il cammino, ognuno di noi deve fare questa strada da solo. I libri sacri, i maestri, le religioni, possono aiutare, ◊◊◊◊◊◊ servono, ma come gli ascensori che ci portano sù facendoci risparmiare le scale. L’ultimo pezzo del cammino…
Lo Spirito del Giappone (Leonardo Vittorio Arena)
Lo shintoismo, arte del vivere e del morire
Le origini dello shintoismo sono materia di discussione. Se ne trovano tracce prima degli Yamato, ma non si riesce a stabilire la data di nascita di questa religione. La componente sciamanica, con i suoi riti ancestrali, non è separabile dall’amore per la natura, i culti della…
I tre tesori del buddhismo
Nell’articolo II si esorta il popolo a venerare i tre tesori o pilastri del buddhismo: il Buddha, la legge (dharma, ho) e la comunità dei fedeli (sangha). Buddha è il risvegliato, colui che ha indicato la Via della liberazione dal dolore. La legge è la sua dottrina, che predica…
La Terra Pura e il voto di Amida
Nel periodo Kamakura nuove correnti presero corpo. Esprimevano le esigenze dei ceti popolari. Il buddhismo abbandonò gli ambienti cupi e segregati della corte per diffondersi tra la gente comune. Si accantonò anche l’insistenza sul cerimoniale, al pari delle austere discipline…
Chi prega gli dèi solo nel bisogno
Pur rappresentando gli interessi dei samurai e dei nobili, Yoshimasa risulta credibile nello scagliarsi contro gli opportunisti, «i quali pregano il Buddha o gli dèi solo in difficoltà». Certe attitudini erano diffuse nella religione giapponese, spesso basata sul tornaconto e…
Eisai e lo Zen protettore del Paese
Eisai (1141-1215) avrà più fortuna. È lui il fondatore dello Zen nipponico. Anche questo monaco proviene dal Tendai, nel quale aveva ricevuto una iniziazione esoterica. Poi si volge allo Zen, in conseguenza di un fortunato secondo viaggio in Cina. Azzarda persino che lo Zen…
Restare Buddha è più difficile che diventarlo
Voleva mostrare la superfluità delle prescrizioni buddhiste ai fini della liberazione. Con amara ironia affermava che una volta i grandi spiriti si trovavano nei monasteri, mentre ora ne prendevano le distanze. A suo avviso, i laici erano da preferire al clero. La pedofilia…
Buddhista, confuciano e shintoista insieme
Evidente, lo spirito di tolleranza. Un giapponese può professare varie religioni: non si concede mai soltanto a una. Così è stato nella Storia, ed è adesso. Ogni religione soddisfa una inclinazione mentale o una esigenza sociale. Dal punto di vista rituale, specie nelle…
La religione come stile di vita
Talvolta nella letteratura giapponese si afferma che sono i sacerdoti a distinguere categoricamente un culto da un altro, mentre l’uomo medio riesce a cogliere le analogie e i punti di raccordo tra il buddhismo, lo shintoismo e il confucianesimo. Questo perché la religione in…
Tolleranza e senso di superiorità
Tuttavia, nonostante lo spirito di tolleranza i giapponesi si considerano al centro del mondo, assegnando alla loro nazione una funzione-guida nell’Asia e nell’universo. La disamina delle scuole nazionalistiche dovrebbe averlo mostrato. Esiste una mentalità che, pur ammettendo…
Tariki e il bisogno di una guida
Il fatto che in Giappone le pratiche tariki, basate sull’energia dell’altro, il Buddha Amida della Terra Pura, siano molto più sviluppate che in Cina rivela la necessità di una guida, verso la quale professare una fiducia cieca. Ciò conduce al culto delle immagini e al ripudio…
Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle)
Descartes divides the territory between science and religion
Cartesian dualism was important in the seventeenth century for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it seemed to divide up the territory between science and religion. In the seventeenth century the new scientific discoveries seemed to pose a threat to…
Substance dualism and religious faith
Because of the failures of Cartesian-style dualism, especially the failure to get an adequate or even coherent account of the relationship between the mind and the body, it is widely assumed that substance dualism in any form is out of the question. This is not to say that no…
Materialism as the religion of our time
The single most influential family of views in the philosophy of mind throughout the twentieth century and leading into the twenty-first century is one version or another of materialism. Materialism is the view that the only reality that exists is material or physical reality…
Nishida Kitarō (stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy)
Religion begins in knowing one's own death
His notion of the essentiality of religion is remarkably individualistic, removed from all social contingencies. He locates the core of religion in the heart of the individual: religious awareness arises in one's knowing one's own death.
Quotes About Introspection (133 Quotes)
Solitude
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.” ― Aldous Huxley
Rage Against The Machine - Township Rebellion Lyrics | Songmeanings
Shackle their minds when they're bent on the cross
"Shackle their minds when they're bent on the cross When ignorance reigns, life is lost" Religious fanatics prey on the minds of those who are lost or weak. These people get brainwashed by their religion and can't see faults in what they've been taught to believe. They turn…
Religious Children Are Meaner Than Their Secular Counterparts, Study Finds | World News | The Guardian
Religion is not a prerequisite of morality
The report pointed out that 5.8 billion humans, representing 84% of the worldwide population, identify as religious. “While it is generally accepted that religion contours people’s moral judgments and pro-social behaviour, the relation between religion and morality is a…
Shantaram (gregory David Roberts)
Fanaticism is the opposite of love
‘Fanaticism is the opposite of love,’ I said, recalling one of Khaderbhai’s lectures. A wise man once told me—he’s a Muslim, by the way—that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common…
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen R. Covey)
Principles belong to no single religion
The principles I am referring to are not esoteric, mysterious, or “religious” ideas. There is not one principle taught in this book that is unique to any specific faith or religion, including my own. These principles are a part of most every major enduring religion, as well as…
Affirmation and visualization as programming
I believe that central to all enduring religions in society are the same principles and practices clothed in different language—meditation, prayer, covenants, ordinances, scripture study, empathy, compassion, and many different forms of the use of both conscience and…
The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray)
Advaita means not-two
Over the intervening years I had been surprised by the increasing number of people who were coming to feel the same way. Not only had Buddhism made steady inroads into Western culture, but so had the Indian tradition of Advaita Vedanta, of nondual philosophy. Probably Ramana…
Hijacked by a seventeenth-century Protestant
Exactly what had happened I couldn’t remember. One moment I had been my habitual agnostic self, the next I was a Christian fundamentalist—and the trip saw me seesawing wildly between the two. One moment I was yearning passionately for God, convulsed by emotions that seemed torn…
The witness as pure consciousness
To what natural state will we revert? To the detached purely attentive consciousness, which has always registered everything we have ever experienced. To what Indian religion calls the witness—that is, the presence of consciousness itself in each individual. Pure consciousness…
Mushrooms and the origins of religion
Such speculations were to run through the two-volume Mushrooms, Russia and History, which the Wassons published on their return from Mexico. Their book, or so the story goes, had started life as a cookbook of mushroom recipes. As the couple researched their subject, however…
Eliade's shamans
The next book I set about reading was Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, which proved to be an inspired choice. Mircea Eliade’s groundbreaking research had been published only a few years before the Wassons’, and in many respects their books dovetailed…
Shamanic flight between three worlds
Only after this experience of death and resurrection were they apprenticed to an established shaman. The teaching they received was substantially the same over a vast geographical area—that they were not their physical body, but were capable of sidestepping time and space. For…
Acid outflanking my defenses against religion
I think it must have been ten days or a fortnight after Anna’s cremation—it was an afternoon, I remember—when abruptly I understood what had been happening. In a flash I saw that all of it was an ongoing form of the opening to religion, to Christianity in particular, that I had…
Houston Smith's essay on drugs and religion
During my reading spree I had run across an essay by Houston Smith titled “Do Drugs Have
Religious experiences versus religious lives
Religious Import?” The text was well known and had been one of the most widely reprinted of all papers on psychedelics in the ’60s. Despite being in many ways unusually positive for an academic, Houston Smith had felt bound to draw a line under psychedelics, and his tentative…
A seventeenth-century prayer as set for a trip
During the past few days I had picked up The Secret Chief again, and I had memorized part of the seventeenth-century prayer that had been Jacob’s preferred “set” for psychedelic work. Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of Thee . . . I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I…
Being in the world but not of it
Toynbee’s analyses of the various forms such resistance takes are too complex to do more than touch upon here—initially workers tend to be conservative and merely want to return to an earlier, less dehumanized stage of society; only as such Utopianism proves impossible do they…
Psychedelics culturally vindicated
A well-established, even well-heeled cult I had been expecting, but not one thriving like this. The hall was so packed you could barely move. Of all the revolutionary groups of my youth—the hippies, the New Left, the students, the blacks, the feminists—it was, however…
Always already free
It was late at night, and the young Adi Da wandered through the streets, intoxicated by what he had glimpsed: I saw that we are, at any moment, always and already free. I knew that I was not lacking anything I needed yet to find, nor had I ever been without such a thing. The…
Visionary versus mystical experience
In summary, I would suggest that, yes, psychedelics and the magic they access could possibly prove a key factor in the birth of a new universal religion. They are coming from an angle outflanking all our materialistic conditioning—and doing so with a speed and to a depth…
Ram Dass overlooked Ramana Maharshi
To the best of my knowledge, he never defined more precisely what he meant by “catalyst” or “door opener,” nor mentioned whether he had explored the possibility of using psychedelics and awareness practice in tandem. More significantly, he overlooked another teacher who, in…
Who are you?
Who are you? Ramana asked. Just that. Who are you? Find the quick of your sense of identity, of your most intimate sense of you-ness, and see what you consist of for yourself. “You are awareness,” he said. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no…
In the end there is only Grace
The bitterness and sense of betrayal (the recourse to smack or fundamentalist Buddhism) are totally in accord with Underhill’s descriptions of the Dark Night. For only true self-obliteration—the old medieval self-naughting—can leave us totally, unconditionally open for the…
The Book Of Dead Philosophers (critchley, Simon)
Philosophy against the new sophistries
There has never been a more important time to emphasize this distinction between philosophy and sophistry. We are surrounded by countless new sophistries. Televangelists offer authoritative knowledge of the true word of God and perform miraculous cures in exchange for…
Books of the dead treat death as illusion
The Book of Dead Philosophers is not a ‘Book of the Dead’, whether Egyptian or Tibetan. These exquisite ancient writings carefully describe the rituals necessary to prepare with certainty for the afterlife. The Egyptian Book of the Dead comprises 189 spells to ensure that the…
The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Religions are divisive and quarrelsome
Religions are divisive and quarrelsome. They are a form of one-upmanship because they depend upon separating the “saved” from the “damned,” the true believers from the heretics, the in-group from the out-group. Even religious liberals play the game of…
Religions that divide in the name of love
I define myself in terms of you; I know myself only in terms of what is “other,” no matter whether I see the “other” as below me or above me in any ladder of values. If above, I enjoy the kick of self-pity; if below, I enjoy the kick of pride. I being I goeswith you being you…
Exhausted mines
The standard-brand religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Buddhist, are—as now practiced—like exhausted mines: very hard to dig. With some exceptions not too easily found, their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites, and their notions of…
In the vedanta philosophy, nothing exists except god
But this is because we think of God as the King of the Universe, the Absolute Technocrat who personally and consciously controls every detail of his cosmos—and that is not the kind of God in my story. In fact, it isn’t my story at all, for any student of the history of…
We do not need a new religion. we need a new experience
We do not need a new religion or a new bible. We need a new experience—a new feeling of what it is to be “I.” The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are…
The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian)
The soul as the pearl of self
However, there is one possible candidate for the pearl of self that we have so far ignored: the soul. Many people believe that a human being, in addition to having a physical body, also has a non-physical part which does not depend on oxygen and food and which can persist long…
Ātman and brahman
what is being negated in the word attā? To understand that, argues Batchelor, you have to appreciate the context of the Buddha’s time, fourth-century BCE India, where attā or ātman was very much the central idea of the brahmanic tradition. That tradition thought of brahman as…
Ātman as a depersonalised self
Ātman is a kind of depersonalised self, lacking individual personality and identity. So if ātman succeeds in becoming fully reintegrated with brahman, personhood is destroyed.
Levels of reincarnation and the tulkus
‘In Buddhism, everybody is a reincarnation. But there are different levels of reincarnation. Some choose what kind of home they want to be reincarnated in, in order to help others. Some are reincarnated without their own wishes because of their past karmic accumulations.’ In…
Calling superstition by its name
It is often considered disrespectful to dismiss any aspects of religion as mere superstitions, but if that is what they are, there is no other truthful way of putting it.
The Golden Bough
Anthropology
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). It first was published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised…
The One Day When Christians And Atheists Sing From The Same Hymn Sheet | Giles Fraser | Comment | The Guardian
Religion is a set of bronze-age myths designed to keep the priestly caste in power and carefully engineered to feed off the insecurities of the weak and the ignorant.
...now I need to own up and come clean: I don't believe in God. And no, this is not some modern theologian's semantic dodge. The whole thing is rubbish; a set of bronze-age myths designed to keep the priestly caste in power and carefully engineered to feed off the insecurities…