Friday 6 March 2009

A Momentary Credo

Here is a simple credo I have written:

Death is a means to life: such is the case with evolution; such is the case with the swirl of the universe. The fact that individuals die makes space for others to live. Dying and death are natural and we must let go. What comes goes.

All material things are impermanent and all situations are transient. To hold on to any of them will undermine any pleasure they give. To give them up finally releases one from any sadness they give.

Emotional states are also transient, and even receiving beauty and laughter are transient. So once done, let them go. To try to keep things happy is to find that they are soon miserable.

The now is very important because it is where we receive meaning. The now shapes the biography of our lives and the future possibility. We should say Yes to life as it is, and Yes to what there is while it is, whilst actively helping to eliminate suffering. This is a translation of redemption. The ethical turn, for the most to receive least and the least most is inevitably a changing situation and prevents attachments.

In the long run we are all dead; in the end there is nothing. The universe will either spread out to nothing but lifelessness (most likely) or crunch. But there may be other existences that come and go in a multiverse.

Spirituality is a means to a true happiness; a true happiness is a cool, free, clear, anti-emotion: similar to a stare at a clear window through which one might see a single tree in one of its moments, or the stone of a church wall that one day may be a ruin and a later day dust.

8 comments:

Hugh said...

Nice one Adrian....

Love the blog by the way ... if it doean't inform me , it entertains me .

Regards

Hugh ..

June Butler said...

It's always a pleasure to read what you write. There's much that's good and wise in your "Credo", however, it doesn't quite suit as a creed for me.

I occasionally quote, "In the long run we are all dead," (at appropriate moments) almost always to accusations that I am morbid, but the words are true, nontheless.

Anonymous said...

Seems incredibly bleak to me. Even 'all this live for the moment' stuff. No space for memory? No space for larger time-scales? No space for hope? More fundamentally, the assumption that ALL is material has at the very least to be scrutinised. No space for consciousness? No space for personal motivation? No consideration at all (even) for modern physics. I am afraid I think that, as stated, this is superficial and circular. I do not say it is necessarily wrong. I do say it is lazy.

Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold) said...

John Maynard Keynes said it. We have a new town called Milton Keynes, and I always think it is Milton Friedman and J. M. Keynes combined.

June Butler said...

I know, Adrian. It always struck me as odd that an economist spoke the words.

What a blessed town to be so named. I read a screed against it here, if I'm not mistaken. Of course, I could be wrong.

Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold) said...

Of course there is consciousness (very much so), physics (the expansion of the universe!), hope in relationships: but it's realistic.

Erika Baker said...

Whose realism?

Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold) said...

Mine. Realistic, not realism.