(Read this entry at your own risk--I only hope it makes some kind of sense! It's a little philosophical, so sorry! ) Like I have said earlier, I was not a big fan of Christians, and so had thrown Christianity out with the same bathwater (so to speak) that I had thrown Christians. I had also tried to let loose of any preconceived ideas I had of God, and so god had become for me entirely gentle and kind and loving, and
in everything, sort of like a huge essence of light and love permeating the entire universe. Everyone was traveling their own path as they eventually evolved into more perfect beings, filled with perfect love. I rested in this for awhile, but something kept nagging at me. I could never find a really good explanation as to why over the history of mankind, so few people had seemed to reach that ideal level of spirituality that would make the rest of us all so inspired that we would want to emulate it. I had read a lot of literature and a lot of history, and in no period of man's existence had there been just love and peace in the world. History and literature both were racked with stories of war, disease, famine, poverty, hatred, jealousy, lust, greed, and every form of fear and oppression that one human could put another human through. Man has consistently stolen, cheated, and lied, hurt, and killed to get whatever he wanted. As a whole, we did not seem to be evolving towards the light so much as we were headed straight into a big black hole! And then, let's say, hypothetically, what if we lived forever as spirits, how black could those souls get, and what if they never decided to change, and how would other "good" souls escape that darkness when not in their bodies? Plus, when a soul chose to reincarnate, how much control could there be over where and how it came back to the earth? I was having a hard time accepting that so many souls had chosen their own destinies when most people's lives sucked so much! Why would we choose all this hurt? Karma was certainly one answer. I had already gotten rid of a god who would sit back, seemingly not caring, and let all this happen, but even still it seemed we were stuck with the same problem of evil. I could easily see how a person might just throw up their hands and say that there was no god! And yet, if we were living just for the mere sake of existence, why then did mankind
seem to have a moral conscious? Most of the human race had set the same standards for themselves along with appropriate penalties, and while I got it that this could be explained as social evolution (for which all guilt could be explained as well), how was it possible that the gods mankind had "created" could show characteristics of say, a strong authoritative feminine divinity, when the culture it sprang from exhibited only oppression of women? In other words, if archetypes did exist, where did they originate? These thoughts bothered me, and enough scholars
way smarter than me had contemplated the existence or non-existence of god to make me, especially at such a young age, question how I could possibly assume I had all or any of the right answers! Afterall, I was in graduate school finding out that there was a whole bunch of stuff I didn't understand or know anything about! Wow!
And then even Karma was wearing on me, because I noticed how few people took Karma very seriously, and just referred to it as a form of justice that would "get" people sooner or later, and so gave them a sense of fairness about life that seemed to me to be one more thing we all hoped for! And why do we so desperately want life to be fair? Think about it! We want it on just about any level of life, starting from our earliest childhood! That's why most people who don't like the Christian God don't like him: because he doesn't seem fair! And as for me, I was trying to give Karma (which seemed much more fair!) some real serious consideration. Karma, the universal law of cause and effect, works on all levels of existence, including the physical, mental, and spiritual planes. Of course to Buddhists, the first cause is unknowable (
but of course, so here we go again with the whole faith thing!), but it does get rid of the need for a Savior! This was what I found so appealing, and what I think lots of other people find too. You just have to do these eight things: have a correct mental attitude (which means dropping all specific views of everything), maintain right motive (not seek for anything), and have right speech, right action, right livelihood (which could maybe be summed up as thinking before speaking or doing!), right effort (and in the right
direction), right meditation, and right discipline. (This is a whole lot of
rights, and I guess Karma is the judge as to how successful anyone is.) This was a true do-it-yourselfer, and every other theory on Karma came pretty close to this one. The idea, no matter what else you believe exactly, is to get out of the Karmic cycle! But whoah! On second thought (and on not that close of an examination), this didn't seem like it would be all that easy! It was going to require way too much self-control! So if I were to decide I didn't like karma either, and that I'd throw it out with all that other dirty bathwater, I was starting to not be left with much I could live with, except for maybe the whole "live and let live" philosophy that in no time of mankind's existence did we seem willing or able to do! But, mankind has always had a strong desire to live, to persevere, to keep dreaming and building, even when he knows that it will all eventually turn to dust. And so do we just keep hoping for the best? Even in the face of all the evil man commits? It would still take a whole lot of faith to believe in that.
These are some of the discussions that
J and I would have, which would ultimately lead to my asking him what he thought the answers might be. When Tolkien came up, and how much I loved that story of good versus evil, and how little self-control was exhibited when the chance to wield great powers were at stake, and how the worst of everyone started to come out so that ultimately sides had to be taken; and how only an act of sacrificial love would save Middle Earth (like almost all heroes journey stories, where the hero must go into the underworld, face himself or some form of evil, and either be defeated by it or return triumphant to save the day) I thought, yes, I'd like to read another author who wrote like Tolkien, even if only slightly. I was still hoping someone would point me in the direction of a real hero, or at least something I could believe in.
