Thomas 13

13. Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like."

Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger."

Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."

Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."

Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."

And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"

Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."

Thomas 12

12. The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?"

Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."

Thomas 11

11. Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away.

The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"

Thomas 10

10. Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes."

Thomas 9

9. Jesus said, "Look, the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them). Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure."

Thomas 8

8. And he said, "The person is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"

Thomas 7

7. Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."

Some site changes

I recently changed the design of the site a little bit, and I wanted to explain what everything means. The two graphics on the left and right of the title are the compassionate eyes of Buddha, painted on a Tibetan temple. The squiggle between the eyes is not a nose but a stylized sanskrit character for "unity." (This reflects the Buddhist idea of nondualism.) There is also a third eye of wisdom that can be made out above the squiggle. The eyes are meditating, as indicated by the droop of the eyelids. The Tibetan script below the blog title means "Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha" which is the mantra of the perfection of wisdom (prajnaparamita), and is a mantra that is close to my heart. I've mentioned translations of this a couple of times before, but again, it basically means "gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment, so be it." The quote on the right is
number 8 in the 37 practices of a Bodhisattva. The full quote is


The suffering of lower realms, so difficult to bear,
Is the fruit of wrong deeds, so the Buddha taught.
Therefore, even at the cost of your life,
Never to commit negative actions is the practice of a Bodhisattva.


An example given to us by Lama Karma Chötso concerns whether or not it is okay to kill someone, even if that is the only way to stop them from killing you. The answer is an unequivocal NO. By intentionally killing another human being, no matter what the circumstances, you accumulate so much negative karma that you will be reborn in a hell realm and suffer for countless lifetimes. Someone asked why it's not better to prevent our attacker from killing us, because then we are selflessly saving them from future suffering. The Lama said that if that were our motivation, then this would be appropriate, but that it was very easy to deceive ourselves about our true motivations. If we kill a would-be attacker, are we really thinking "I have just resigned myself to an almost infinite amount of suffering to save this sentient being from a similar fate." I doubt that in my current spiritual condition that that's what I would be thinking.

Thomas 6

6. His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"

Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."

Thomas 5

Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.

For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]"

Thomas 4

4. Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.

For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one."

Thomas 3.5

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.

Hiatus

I'm traveling to Rome next week, so I'll not be posting. I might squeeze in a post tomorrow morning.

A song

We had a visiting teacher at our center, Lama Karma Chötso, who taught us the text The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, which is an invaluable tool. I'll probably comment more on it later, but for now, I just wanted to pass on a song she taught us.


Like a dream
Like an illusion
Like a city of Gandharvas
That's how birth
and that's how living
That's how dying
are taught to be.


A city of Gandharvas has the property that when you approach it, it gets further away. The song is a meditation on the Buddhist concept of emptiness. Nothing is truly real. Everything is impermanent.

Thomas 3

3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you."

Thomas 2

2. Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"

Thomas 1

These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.

1. And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is a list of sayings of Jesus that many scholars believe predate the canonical gospels. At first, Thomas was deemed a gnostic gospel, but many modern scholars find that a bit simplistic. It does have many sayings which have a gnostic feel to them, but it also has saying with a more orthodox feel. Both Luke and John contain a few gnostic-sounding sayings too. It's not clear why Thomas was not included in the New Testament Canon. As a list of sayings with no explanation and no narrative structure, perhaps it was just too difficult a text. Perhaps it didn't support the existing Church structure enough for them to want to include it. (It seems to refer to "James the Just" as Jesus's "successor" and not Peter.) Perhaps it was too gnostic. Still I think it's very neat that a list of (probably authentic) sayings of Jesus is available outside the NT. We get to hear some things the Church Fathers didn't like. So, I propose to go through Thomas saying-by-saying just for the fun of it.

I will be using the Patterson-Meyer translation. This and other translations are available here.

Deities in Buddhism?

At our center we do a Red Tara practice two times a month. Tara is a feminine deity in Buddhism, but what does that mean, exactly? The answer is complex, but this Wikipedia article is a good start. Some Buddhists think of Tara as an actual separately-existing deity, or Goddess, that can be prayed to in much the same way some Catholics pray to Mary. Indeed, Tara is known as the "Mother of all Buddhas." On the other hand, many Buddhists view Tara and other deities as emanations of ourselves. By praying to and visualizing Tara, we really are visualizing those good qualities in ourselves we wish to bring forward. At first this may seem narcissistic. Worshiping oneself seems like a bad idea, after all. However, we are not worshipping ourself in the self-absorbed narcissistic sense, we are honoring that part of ourselves which is best, and which we wish to cultivate. Also, by giving our good qualities an anthropomorphic embodiment, we can honor those same qualities in all sentient beings by praying to, and visualizing this embodiment. This reminds me of a poem I wrote once while under the influence of a mind-altering substance. (Those days are gone now.)

"Hi my names Happy. I am a traveler of time and entity."

That is, one can think of happiness as an entity which travels through time and jumps from person to person, in much the same way the body of good qualties can be thought of as a deity who manifests at different times in different people.

Russell's Paradox and Pascal's Wager

In the foundations of mathematics you have to be careful. You need to set things up to be completely self-consistent, for if a singe paradox occurs, it can be used to prove anything. (This is because "false implies true" is a true statement.) Bertrand Russell noticed that a certain way of constructing sets led to a contradiction, now known as Russell's Paradox. Let X be the set of all sets which are not elements of themselves. Now the question is whether X is an element of itself. If it is, since X is defined to consist of those elements which are not elements of themselves, then X must have this property. In other words X is not an element of itself. Oops, that's a contradiction. On the other hand if X is not an element of itself, that means that X does not satisfy the condition for inclusion in X, which is that X is not an element of itself. That means X is an element of itself, again a contradiction. So the set X leads to logical inconsistency. The way this is resolved in modern mathematics is to limit the sorts of sets that can be formed.

There is a similar question in theology: can God create a rock so heavy that She can't lift it? If She is omnipotent, then She can do anything, so She can make a rock She can't lift. But that rock demonstrates Her lack of omnipotence. This is Russell's paradox in a different guise. It really demonstrates that the concept of omnipotence is logically inconsistent. I used to think this argument conclusively demonstrated that God doesn't exist, but in actual fact it shows that human language is an imprecise tool. This argument rules out an omnipotent God in this technical sense of the word omnipotent, which is concept that is not well-defined. It doesn't rule out an extremely powerful being, force or entity.

On the other side of the coin we have Pascal's wager. What Pascal basically said was that you might as well believe in God, because of the following four possibilities:

Believe? | God exists? | Payoff
-------------------------
Yes | Yes | Infinite
Yes | No | None
No | Yes | Eternal damnation
No | No | None

So if you want to maximize your payoff, you should believe in God. (Basically you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.)

However this argument is complete hogwash. The above chart does not give a complete list of all logical possibilities, and it assumes a great deal about the properties of a God that exists. It is logically possible that God exists, but that He only rewards those who don't believe in Him. It also give no hint about the "right" religion. What if you choose the wrong one?

So the Russell-type rock paradox is not a good argument against God's existence, and Pascal's wager is not a good argument for God's existence. The glib lesson to be drawn is that it's hard to get anywhere using logic alone. Additional input is needed.

And on that ambiguous note, I bid you adieu.

Seven Reasons Not to Hate

1. Hatred hurts.
2. No-one is inherently a certain way.
3. Things we hate in others are also in us.
4. We can never be sure who is right.
5. You can't fight karma.
6. Through understanding comes compassion.
7. Hatred cannot overcome hatred. Only love can overcome hatred.

Incredulity

I just read a story on CNN.com that a special panel appointed by Bush has recommended that when Castro dies, we need to have people in Cuba to "assist" and "ease the transition to democracy." Hasn't any one learned their lesson? What right do we have to dictate how another country runs its government when we can't even take care of our own problems? This CNN article seemed to take it for granted that we have the right to mold Cuba in our own image, that everything we say about Cuba is true, and that everything Cuba says about itself is false. I think the strangest juxtaposition in the whole article was when the state department accused Cuba of "bullying tactics," in reference to a recent power outage to "U.S. interests in Havana."
(CNN takes it for granted that the power outage was intentional and targeted only U.S. interests. According to Cuba, it was simply a power outage, affecting a wide area of Havana. You won't find Cuba's side of the story in the article, though.) The next paragraph describes the draconian sanctions that have been placed against the island, which have been rendered even more draconian in the past couple of years. Who's bullying whom?