Stop reading profoundly fakey stuff
To a friend besotted with the Talmund and other medieval writings:
Don’t waste time on books of speculation, like those medieval writings. Life is really short, at least for both of us in our 50s, so read only what will help clarify your thinking and deepen your understanding of life.
Don’t do what I did – wasting my youth studying imaginary subjects like the bible gods (there are three of them squeezed into one head) and how many angels can dance on a pinhead.
The whole question of religion boils down to this: Man made gods in his own image. The trouble starts when one man’s image of his god isn’t agreeable to another man’s, so people evangelise, fight and kill in order that their image is the one to be accepted.
There’s not a single human being – including you, Mother Teresa and I – who can honestly say they have received communication from a non-human being, whether gods, angels or your neighbourhood graveyard denizens. The only communication and vision they have received were fantasy created inside their mind. Examples of these people with lots of fantasy communication include Moses (or whoever wrote Genesis, most likely a woman who plagiarised the Babylon temple tablets), Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Stephen King, Rowling, RR Tolkien and George Lucas.
All writings on religion and spiritual experiences are based on what the writers have rehashed from other people or what they have re-created inside their mind.
Mother Teresa was quite blunt about it in her letters – this god thing is just one big sham foisted by the church on her mind when she was no more than a naive teenager growing up in Albania. You must have read all the learned articles published recently to explain away Mother Teresa’s letters. They are what Dr Samuel Johnson would have labelled as cant or dishonest writing.
In Singapore, lorry drivers, loan sharks and irreverent TV talk show hosts have a word for learned, scholarly and religious cant – they call it chim, meaning deep, as in profoundly incomprehensible and fakey. Usually when someone says you are chim, it means you’re so profound as to be comical.
Talk about chim knowledge, many Americans, according to a recent survey by an evangelical market research firm, believe that Joan of Arc was the wife of Noah, the man who built the Ark, a cruise ship for his family and some land animals during a massive flood that drowned all his friends and neighbours.
Medieval writing, known as “Scholastic”, is chim. To avoid being taken in, follow this guideline in your reading:
All that you are, all your reality, is the result of what you have thought and perceived. They are made up of your thoughts and perception. What matters is that your thoughts and perception are wholesome and inoffensive, so that your conduct towards all living beings is wholesome and inoffensive.
Those are the opening words of history’s most practical and critical counsellor in human conduct – the Buddha.
“Wholesome” includes action that is skilful in doing good (some people like to do good works but are not very smart in the execution), expedient (doing what is appropriate in the situation, like a wise physician), and above all, that will not hurt nor cause suffering to any living being (yourself, other humans, and all creatures). These words sum up Buddha’s rules on wholesome living. The rest of Buddhism is just an extension of this theme.
I recommend that you read less chim books, particularly those of the pragmatic ancient Roman thinkers Marcus Aurelius, Cicero and Seneca. The modern-day practical and meaningful book would be Viktor Frankl’s 1946 work Man’s Search for Meaning.
Adopt this motto from MacQuarie University in your intellectual pursuit:
Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede.
Noght o word spak he moore than was neede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quyk and ful of hy sentence;
Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne
And gladly teche.
(Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer)
– September 2007
Of studies took he most care and most heed.
No words he speaks more than was needed,
And that was said in form and reverence,
And short and quick and full of proper sentence;
Seeped in moral virtue was his speech,
And gladly would he learn,
And gladly teach.
