DharmaCatLamp
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Howdy!
Recently I have been thinking about scripture an awful lot as I have been going through various Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh scriptures. I thought it might be interesting to discuss the view I have come to embrace and see if you guys had any interesting thoughts or responses.
I think that just about every religion has some kernel of truth in it. I think broadly speaking religion is a tool that we can use to interact with the divine and try to learn more about it. I also think that religion is mostly an attempt to point to truths that are beyond the everyday human experience and scripture is the same in that regard.
Scriptures often explore deeper spiritual truths. Things like the unsatisfactory nature of the material world, the pursuit of knowledge being a worthy goal etc. Scripture is often bound up in the cultures they were written in. The Bhagavad Gita may have some powerful insights and describe the nature of the divine in a way that is incredibly attractive to me, but it would be difficult to say it is not an Indian book. The Quran might have verses that make you weep but that does not mean it’s entirely easy to remove from its Arabian context.
What this means to me is that even the most beautiful scripture is still marked by the humans that wrote it. In some cases, scripture has an easier time getting away from its origins, I might give the Tao Te Ching as an example here, but it is still important to understand the possible bias that went into it. You should look at every scripture and take it with a grain of salt. Do not throw out the baby with the bathwater though and consider taking what you find useful from a book while discarding what you don’t.
Ultimately, I would say that scripture is pointing towards people’s experiences with the divine and pointing to the divine/truth. I have read numerous scriptures from a variety of different faiths and found a great deal of wisdom within them but, I rely on my own experiences and my own intelligence to decide what is useful to me and what is not.
What is also important here is to understand that people will find different messages more useful at different times and according to their own experiences. I am perfectly comfortable saying that I had a strange mystical experience while reading the Gita while someone else says they were bored to tears. I do not think that ultimately God is particularly concerned with whether we read the Bible vs reading the Dhammapada for instance.
Part of the reason I can do this is because I think all scripture is ultimately flawed and human language is simply not cut out to explain the mystical. As an example, I have had strange experiences in deep meditation, and I could attempt to explain what they meant to me, but language doesn’t convey it all. The experiences of different mystics and religious figures are often things that are incredibly difficult to describe unless you have some familiarity with those experiences already.
This can get more complicated because attempts to express the divine in human language can be made but the language will often come out somewhat contradictory. Ultimately the responsibility is on individual people to determine what works for them and what doesn’t.
I am also cautious of attaching too much meaning to any individual experience of practice or with scripture. As an example, I had some very interesting interactions with the Gita recently as well as the Guru Granth Sahib. I would say these were both interesting and somewhat powerful experiences, but I did not assume that this meant either of those scriptures were strictly speaking telling me the ultimate truth about God etc.
What I’m not saying.
Although I think just about all religion has some truth to it, I do not think they are all literally true. Simply put there are certain mutually exclusive ideas within scriptures that cannot be easily dismissed. I think if someone embraces a literalist approach to most scripture this only becomes truer. You can’t say for instance that Jesus Christ died for your sins on the cross and the Jesus wasn’t crucified without having a logical contradiction there.
I am also not saying that all religion points to the same truth in the same way. A pagan’s experience of the divine is going to be different to a Muslim’s experience of the divine. While I think in some sense, they are both experiencing part of the same truth which is beyond human expression they are still different enough to mark them as different experiences. The same is true of the way those two people experience and utilize scripture.
Scripture is a tool that can be used to help those seeking deeper spiritual meaning, but it should not be placed on a pedestal. I do not believe that there is any one ultimate answer to what the truth is and think that is an important thing to understand when it comes to scripture as well.
What do you guys think?
Recently I have been thinking about scripture an awful lot as I have been going through various Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh scriptures. I thought it might be interesting to discuss the view I have come to embrace and see if you guys had any interesting thoughts or responses.
I think that just about every religion has some kernel of truth in it. I think broadly speaking religion is a tool that we can use to interact with the divine and try to learn more about it. I also think that religion is mostly an attempt to point to truths that are beyond the everyday human experience and scripture is the same in that regard.
Scriptures often explore deeper spiritual truths. Things like the unsatisfactory nature of the material world, the pursuit of knowledge being a worthy goal etc. Scripture is often bound up in the cultures they were written in. The Bhagavad Gita may have some powerful insights and describe the nature of the divine in a way that is incredibly attractive to me, but it would be difficult to say it is not an Indian book. The Quran might have verses that make you weep but that does not mean it’s entirely easy to remove from its Arabian context.
What this means to me is that even the most beautiful scripture is still marked by the humans that wrote it. In some cases, scripture has an easier time getting away from its origins, I might give the Tao Te Ching as an example here, but it is still important to understand the possible bias that went into it. You should look at every scripture and take it with a grain of salt. Do not throw out the baby with the bathwater though and consider taking what you find useful from a book while discarding what you don’t.
Ultimately, I would say that scripture is pointing towards people’s experiences with the divine and pointing to the divine/truth. I have read numerous scriptures from a variety of different faiths and found a great deal of wisdom within them but, I rely on my own experiences and my own intelligence to decide what is useful to me and what is not.
What is also important here is to understand that people will find different messages more useful at different times and according to their own experiences. I am perfectly comfortable saying that I had a strange mystical experience while reading the Gita while someone else says they were bored to tears. I do not think that ultimately God is particularly concerned with whether we read the Bible vs reading the Dhammapada for instance.
Part of the reason I can do this is because I think all scripture is ultimately flawed and human language is simply not cut out to explain the mystical. As an example, I have had strange experiences in deep meditation, and I could attempt to explain what they meant to me, but language doesn’t convey it all. The experiences of different mystics and religious figures are often things that are incredibly difficult to describe unless you have some familiarity with those experiences already.
This can get more complicated because attempts to express the divine in human language can be made but the language will often come out somewhat contradictory. Ultimately the responsibility is on individual people to determine what works for them and what doesn’t.
I am also cautious of attaching too much meaning to any individual experience of practice or with scripture. As an example, I had some very interesting interactions with the Gita recently as well as the Guru Granth Sahib. I would say these were both interesting and somewhat powerful experiences, but I did not assume that this meant either of those scriptures were strictly speaking telling me the ultimate truth about God etc.
What I’m not saying.
Although I think just about all religion has some truth to it, I do not think they are all literally true. Simply put there are certain mutually exclusive ideas within scriptures that cannot be easily dismissed. I think if someone embraces a literalist approach to most scripture this only becomes truer. You can’t say for instance that Jesus Christ died for your sins on the cross and the Jesus wasn’t crucified without having a logical contradiction there.
I am also not saying that all religion points to the same truth in the same way. A pagan’s experience of the divine is going to be different to a Muslim’s experience of the divine. While I think in some sense, they are both experiencing part of the same truth which is beyond human expression they are still different enough to mark them as different experiences. The same is true of the way those two people experience and utilize scripture.
Scripture is a tool that can be used to help those seeking deeper spiritual meaning, but it should not be placed on a pedestal. I do not believe that there is any one ultimate answer to what the truth is and think that is an important thing to understand when it comes to scripture as well.
What do you guys think?
