Cool I’ll check him out. The main problem I have with buddhism is if we do not exist, then why did the buddha come back to eliminate suffering? If the key to the ending of suffering is to realize that there is no one to suffer, then there is no suffering to end.
Well what I mean is that I hadn’t considered that a spirit could be native to the universe instead of given by a monarchical god who is separate from the universe, so my only choices at the time was either to believe in that type of god or to believe the dead universe somehow created life.
The way I think of spirit is like the spirit of the great outdoors, the spirit of fun, the spirit of the wild.
Like the song Fred Bear:
[i]There I was back in the wild again.
I felt right at home, where I belong.
I had the feeling, coming over me again.
Just like it happened so many times before. eh.
The Spirit of the Woods is like an old good friend.
Makes me feel warm and good inside.
I knew his name and it was good to see him again.
Cause in the wind he’s still alive.
We’re not alone when we’re in the great outdoors
We got his spirit We got his soul
He will guide our steps and our arrows home
The restless spirit still roams
Oh Fred Bear
Walk with me down the trails again.
Take me back, back where I belong.
Fred Bear
I’m glad to have you at my side my friend
And I’ll join you in the big hunt before too long[/i]
(If some of our teenage thrill seekers really want to go out and get a thrill.
Let them go up into the northwest and let them tangle with a Grizzly bear
Or Polar bear or brown bear and get that effect that will cleanse the soul.)
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyNYzcXAPf4[/youtube]
Spirit is wind or breath, which seems to be an effect with no cause. I remember being <5 yrs old and looking out the window during a storm and thinking the trees were making the ruckus.
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
I used to believe computers could never be conscious since it’s just a glorified set of deterministic switches, like dominoes, and I couldn’t see how that would result in a feeling of experience, but now I’m not so sure because if spirit is in the atom, then a computer is more than switches.
I think it boils down to every effect needing a cause, but if the causes can never be known, then it’s as if events do not have causes and randomness exists. Freewill and spirit is somehow mixed up in that I think.
I have to remember that anytime there is a trap that I can’t get out of, such as the freewill problem, it means I and the trap are one and there is no trap or anyone to get out of it. Trying to peer into my own inner workings is a trap with no exit because a subject cannot be an object to itself and therefore the fundamental deterministic variables can never be known.