I used to have a rather mixed attitude towards money--that is, it was good to
have some, but not good to crave too much-- then whaddyaknow, i read ayn
rand's atlas shrugged (mentioned earlier in this thread, i believe) and was
totally blown away.
Her statement that money is essentially nothing more than value was quite a
revelation for me. I know this is going to sound lame and cliched and maybe
it's even been said before and I missed it, but....what is evil. are we
talking about an absence of good? lack of quality? two-ness (all you mystics
know what i mean.)? what? I'm just going to go with "lack of quality" since
this forum is dedicated to moq, so then if money is the root of all evil, by
rand's definition--which i think is a good one--then value is the lack of
quality. now that's certainly not right.
Onto greed then...Is greed (excess desire for money) the root of all
evil? That would be saying that an inaccurate or disproportionally large
value-judgement leads to lack of quality. I don't think so.
In case it hasn't been mentioned before, i'm going to go ahead and
introduce a Huxleyian sort of answer to the problem. For perennial
philosophers evil was the self, personality, ego or whatever you want to call
it. By not accepting and uniting with the divine ground (buddha nature)
within you, you let the anti-divinity of the self dominate your actions and
thoughts. It's quite interesting how Christian mystics sound like a cross
between a Christian monk and a Buddhist. anyway by destroying desire (sound
familiar?) and through self-immolation and meditation, the human self could
become aware of the the divine ground within it and attempt to become one
with the Godhead.
I've been looking all over for the message, but i can't seem to find it
so forgive me for not giving credit to whomever it was that stated that
"mysticism needs to done." We can talk about the mysticism and how it
comprehends evil til we're blue in the face, but unlike some things,
mysticism is an experience. unfortunately to experience mysticism is to
understand it, not the other way around. it requires a sort of leap of
faith, if you will. and for the reason that i haven't made any real effort
make that leap, i'll shut up now.
Justin
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