The Pilgrim Exiting Civilization on the Tiger

The Korean Christian culture requires some removal from normal Korean society and thought processes that are integral to the traditional culture. It is a culture where shamanism is extremely prevalent and it is easy to see its remnants throughout social practices and attitudes, but even when we are looking at life through a non-religious element we see certain attitudes towards sexuality that can undercut even Western secular concepts about it in a way that outright atheism cannot. Basically, there are so many aspects about traditional Korean thought that are rooted in outlooks based in Eastern religion that it being a Korean Christian means a separation from tradition. 

This morning I woke up and watched a Japanese Christian describing one of the biggest & greatest barriers to entrance into Christianity as the fear that Japanese have of not meeting community expectations and expectations of their ancestors to honor them, and it can also be daunting in general to hear that their ancestors may not be in heaven... it grinds too much against them. This is solved in Korea with many people having realized that replacing certain aspects of the traditions with Christian prayer fills the gap between Christ and the East and still fulfills cultural obligation. Probably the same can occur in Japan, but that threshold just has not been hit. 

Probably all civilizations have had issues like this which separate it from Christ, and this is also why even Jewish religion, with its monotheism, stuck out like a sore thumb to its neighbors. Rejecting the worship of traditional spirits, ancestors, etc., and the many deities that are thought necessary to maintain life and happiness, and eventually even replacing this with the very Christian idea that you can pray but maybe it's only going to bring you persecution, shows such a radical departure from traditional ideas about life. 

In a wonderful post on PoFo, #15,354,109, I was able to get grain inspiration from Annater who points out that civilization itself seems to have a pagan nature to it that is conducive to polytheism. This is in line with a lot of what we see in real life, how civilization propels people to eagerly worship things that are not God, whether that is mammon or lust. Call me crazy, but I affirm the traditional view - these things are presided over by demons, what the pagans call gods. 

Annater talked about how the West has a tradition of creating circumstance where Annater has the capacity to be a pilgrim, "to be in a civilization but not of a civilization." He equates this with... 

"To ride the Tiger and let Nature Flow as Nature does. Even somewhat "Chinese about it."

This is some of his most profound writing, in my opinion, perhaps the opus dei of his amazing posting career. 

I will have to return to the 'Chinese' part at the end of this post. But first, back to ideas about Western civilization...:

What makes the West unique is that their traditions have a history of exiting civilization. We should perhaps refer to the West of having a history that treats the soul as a pilgrim who defies secular and temporal realities. The individual does not feel boxed into certain pagan rites or obligations. I am not saying that pagan civilization did not previously have rebels who defied these norms and expectations, in fact, I think it is the case that pagan civilization frequently becomes decadent and incapable of fulfilling its traditional pagan rites, but the gods are indifferent about this. Why? Because the worship of fortune/money, fertility rites, and ancestor worship are just the worship of greed, lust, and pride, and many other things as the context provides for them in the practice of these rites. The gods do not need to disturb the decadence because the decadence feeds their hunger and serves their purpose as demons. 

Because we are based on the rejection of pagan civilization, modern Western civilization is liberal as it is liberating individuals of previous obligations and boiling religion down to a far more intimate, personal experience. Moreover, Western civilization is highly self-critical, and it encourages also the criticism of that which is around it as a means of separating oneself from the fallen world.  

Oddly enough, you could say that the Christian civilization is one that has a spirit of self-appraisal and critique baked into it, and so secular institutions which attempt to circumvent these things are doomed by the increasing literacy and naturally rebellious pilgrim spirit of Western civilization. 

Of course, it takes centuries to build up the necessary momentum to achieve the real blossoming of this we first see, the Renaissance, but real eyes would actually look to the monasteries of the dark ages and medieval world, and to also look at the way that Christianity always created a tension within government that emphasized legality and limitation of tyranny for the explicit sake of all people that is the deep roots of this liberalizing and progressive force. 

You could say that human rights are in the DNA of Christianity. After all, it abolished the slavery of the Roman world outright. Serfdom and other difficult economic relations that subsequently appear in the West would keep people arguing against my point, but remember that slavery was essentially reinvented in the West by Protestants when they went to the new world, and they promply abolished it again a couple centuries later.

You can also credit Christianity with making the West hyper-creative, even outright countercultural and revolutionary. For in Christianity, the worldly culture is not a definitive commentary on truth, the truth is something that transcends the world, and so disposal of conventional cultural understandings, of common "truths" and even common "sense" and traditions is seen as not just as excusable, but even praiseworthy.

The Christian is actually here to radically re-envision himself and the world so as to make room for Christ and to embrace his worldly neighbor, creating a completely new space in each generation in an attempt to perfect himself and be a light to others.  

In short, Western civilization was able to redefine what makes a civilization due to the influence of Christianity... It was able to create a whole new concept of governance and social ontology that is highly transient and contractual and noninvasive because Christ blew up the mythos surrounding power and redefined interpersonal relations, removing traditional emphasis on blood ties that was overly clannish and localized. 

Now, in regards to how this is Chinese... 

There is a distinct tieback into Eastern philosophy in riding the tiger. The East is obsessed with the world as an often arbitrary, domineering nature that eats us up but it has within it something that is also pleasing and defining. It erases particularity of the individual by emphasizing the interconnectivity (interpenetration) of the whole, and in this it actually can begin to subvert secular power and redefine relationships. 

Thus in a sense there are some notes from Taoism that are uniquely affirming to a Christian outlook on this... 

Modern Western Christians tend to not see this easily, but the Eastern Orthodox can in the sense that they emphasize the incarnation of God in earth and His Death on the cross as a final blood sacrifice that permeates the world, redefines our relationship with God, and allows for salvation. 

They also understand the concept of being a floating minority in a cruel world - the Eastern Christians have tragic relations with the world and emphasize historical saints that suffered and were martyred, and they see in them the highest glory. This affirms a sort of arbitrary, naked natural power that is lurking in the wilderness to eat us all... 

We refer to the world sometimes as the Desert, so even some of the monasteries on Mt. Athos where there is no desert can refer to the nature around them as a desert due to the symbolic meaning. Desert denotes wilderness, and that wilderness denotes the natural world and raw state of power that is out there swallowing everything. 

Western Christianity overemphasizes the individual, and the East emphasizes the whole of Creation, I feel, and thus tends to encourage self-erasure of the individual through emphasis of Creation as a means of producing humility and peace with the arbitrary, predatory state of nature... 

And who is then trying to create PARADISE, UTOPIA in such a world? 

It comes off as profoundly Chinese in terms of its spiritual dimensions because it emphasizes unity with the creation and ignores the Catholic and Protestant urge to conquer creation and build. 

Christians are not here to conquer anything but themselves, and they are no there to build anything but the church. 

Thus, it has its strong parallel with the spirituality of a Chinese peasant who is riding the tiger of unpredictability and upheaval, uncaring or even oblivious to the society that rages around him because he neuters it but calling it what it is: never-ending chaos that isn't even really my business. 

(This strain of thought is, of course, most clearly Taoist, but the assumption of a chaotic, uncontrollable reality is absolutely also a Confucian concept.)

Cyrus the Great Is Everywhere

Interpenetration is insane... For instance, King Cyrus II, known as Cyrus the Great, who is mentioned in the Bible over 23 times and said to be anointed by God, lived for about 70 years in Persia in the 6th century BC...

Today, with a few exceptions of isolated water, Grok estimates that every single liter of water includes about 1.4 billion water molecules that were once consumed in some fashion by Cyrus. The same would be true for virtually every single other person who lived long enough go - got the number roughly in half based on age, I imagine, with someone only having lived to 35 being at about 700 million molecules per liter. There are, of course, many other variables, but this is the idea...

Because a single drop of water consists of over 1.6 sextillion water molecules, and the Pacific Ocean is only something like 2.7 quintillion liters (an entire order of power lower than the total molecules in a single drop of water), and due to the principles of molecular diffusion... This is all not just possible, but the only reality. That we are living in one another's blood, sweat, and tears, wherever we go.

Check out the question on Grok for some more details.  

Think of this also in the sense of Holy Water - a blessing of water is meant to return it to its original state, meaning that water itself can be tainted to some degree through the ways which it interacts with us and the world... Think of how we imbue water with something whenever we are interacting with it, and what that means. 

This holds up in our religious context. 

Loquaciousness & the Career Poaster

In Unseen Warfare: The Spiritual Combat and Path to Paradise of Lorenzo Scupoli, the topic of loquaciousness is addressed: 

Good feelings are silent. The feelings which seek expression in words are mostly egotistical, since they seek to express what flatters our self-love and can show us, as we imagine, in the best light. Loquacity mostly comes from a certain vainglory, which makes us think that we know a great deal and imagine our opinion on the subject of conversation to be the most satisfactory of all. So we experience an irresistable urge to speak out in a stream of words, with many repetitions, to impress the same opinion in the hearts of others, thus foisting ourselves upon them as unbidden teachers and sometimes even dreaming of making pupils of men who understand the subject much better than the teacher. This refers, however, to cases when the subject of conversation are more or less worthy of attention. 

On first reading, his attack on loquaciousness seems to be quite broad, but his words are actually quite careful. For instance, at the end he states that this seems to happen when the subject of conversation is more or less worthy of attention, which I believe states quite frankly that internet discussions are often worth our time. He is by no means discouraging good conversation that seeks the truth necessarily, though in other parts of the section he certainly takes on the character of the monastic and speaks about the perfection of silence. 

I do not want to detract from that, but it is also not within the breadth of this post and is far further down the path of spiritual development than most any layman is. 

Rather, I was impressed with how succinctly he pointed out that sharing opinions is often highly egotistical and seeks to win people to oneself. We may say that we are trying to win people to the truth, but this is often a facade for something darker... 

I also think this is a reminder not just of potentially our own shortcomings in this, but it also surely has to do with many of the characters that we meet on the internet. Let me state first & foremost, I share the exact same vice as them, and I am not condemning anybody but myself. However, it probably is useful to understand that a lot of the people we are even preaching to may not even be there for the truth, but also there to exercise their own ego and to grow it by "winning" arguments and followers. 

Before we write anything, we should resolve that we are trying to communicate honestly and assert something for discussion that is beneficial for others by somehow stating an opinion or fact that is relevant. Moreover, we should not be obsessed with "winning," and we should respect other opinions that are presented in a manner not so unlike our own. 

Otherwise, we may be guilty of idle talk, even egotistical and prideful talk. 

Destroying Dichotomies Is the Beginning of Understanding Peace

Post below originally lifted from my post on PoFo. 

One of the more important aspects of "peace" and "pacifism" is the idea that we are always ready to negotiate for a peaceful solution, even with people who we think of as evil. For the truth is that we all have something evil about us... The difference is whether we let it grow far out of our heart or whether we are able to put the sparks out before they become a fire or a conflagration. 

So, even when we see someone as nothing more than a gangster, we have to acknowledge that there is soemthing about them that is also worthwhile within them, and that they are someone that we can achieve a peace with. 

I am not saying that there are zero circumstances in which violence should ever be wielded, but rather I am suggesting that the true root of peace has to be in viewing every human as having the potentialities for peace... And this means connecting to them more profoundly. 

When we start calling people tyrants, we quickly learn that there is almost no limit to the number of people that we can call tyrants.

I think Christianity promotes a more "liberal" and "tolerant" worldview by suggesting we are all sinners...

That means engaging the practicing LGBTQ people who show no signs of repentance with dignity, respect, and kindness, not even in solely to "convert" them, but to legitimately honor the image of God within them and to also to love your neighbor sincerely...

That also means doing the same for people we truly believe are tyrants.

There's this great Kahlil Gibran poem -

A young man of strong body, weakened by hunger, sat on the walker's portion of the street stretching his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating the sad song of his defeat in life, while suffering from hunger and from humiliation.

When night came, his lips and tongue were parched, while his hand was still as empty as his stomach.

He gathered himself and went out from the city, where he sat under a tree and wept bitterly. Then he lifted his puzzled eyes to heaven while hunger was eating his inside, and he said, 'Oh Lord, I went to the rich man and asked for employment, but he turned me away because of my shabbiness; I knocked at the school door, but was forbidden solace because I was empty- handed; I sought any occupation that would give me bread, but all to no avail. In desperation I asked alms, but They worshippers saw me and said 'He is strong and lazy, and he should not beg.'

'Oh Lord, it is Thy will that my mother gave birth unto me, and now the earth offers me back to You before the Ending.'

His expression then changed. He arose and his eyes now glittered in determination. He fashioned a thick and heavy stick from the branch of the tree, and pointed it toward the city, shouting, 'I asked for bread with all the strength of my voice, and was refused. Not I shall obtain it by the strength of my muscles! I asked for bread in the name of mercy and love, but humanity did not heed. I shall take it now in the name of evil! '

The passing years rendered the youth a robber, killer and destroyer of souls; he crushed all who opposed him; he amassed fabulous wealth with which he won himself over to those in power. He was admired by colleagues, envied by other thieves, and feared by the multitudes.

His riches and false position prevailed upon the Emir to appoint him deputy in that city - the sad process pursued by unwise governors. Thefts were then legalized; oppression was supported by authority; crushing of the weak became commonplace; the throngs curried and praised.

Thus does the first touch of humanity's selfishness make criminals of the humble, and make killers of the sons of peace; thus does the early greed of humanity grow and strike back at humanity a thousand fold!

Poem Hunter

This reminds me also of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh writing his poem where he pities and sympathizes with the pirate who SA'd a young girl... This is, of course, just wild to think about - to sympathize with someone who does that to a defenseless girl...! But... This is the level of spiritual enlightenment that one ought to try to pursue...

From his poem Call Me By my True Names:

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

This is the true spirit of peace....

One that sympathizes with every single sort of moral failure, and attempts to right the problem through such sympathy, for the sake of the benefit of all parties - including those who are morally wrong.

This sort of destruction of dichotomies... of connecting the sufferer with those who inflict suffering... Is exceedingly powerful, and I think once you can do that... You can talk about peace more meaningfully.

St. Justin Martyr on the Stoics & the Seed of Reason [Logos Spermatikos]

 And those of the Stoic school—since, so far as their moral teaching went, they were admirable, as were also the poets in some particulars, on account of the seed of reason [the Logos] implanted in every race of men—were, we know, hated and put to death,—Heraclitus for instance, and, among those of our own time, Musonius and others. For, as we intimated, the devils have always effected, that all those who anyhow live a reasonable and earnest life, and shun vice, be hated. And it is nothing wonderful; if the devils are proved to cause those to be much worse hated who live not according to a part only of the word diffused [among men] but by the knowledge and contemplation of the whole Word, which is Christ. And they, having been shut up in eternal fire, shall suffer their just punishment and penalty. For if they are even now overthrown by men through the name of Jesus Christ, this is an intimation of the punishment in eternal fire which is to be inflicted on themselves and those who serve them. For thus did both all the prophets foretell, and our own teacher Jesus teach.*

Martyr, Justin. The Writings of Justin Martyr (Annotated) (p. 83). Logia. Kindle Edition. 

There are actually two very remarkable things about this passage: 

First, that he freely grants that every race of man has within it the Logos, and he specifically acknowledges the Stoics of the Hellenic world as possessing Logos. Obviously, we can now consider that various Eastern masters like Confucius and Lao-tzu are potential bearers of the Logos, and we can further imagine that the Buddha himself and various Indian and Sikh masters had something of the Logos. 

Second, and perhaps more amazingly and seldom discussed, we see that the devils hate all who live reasonably and earnestly, shunning vice. 

The devils themselves are actively working to drive men to hatred of those who have any nobility to them to live a life according to good reason, and it is these men who literally put to death even Stoics out of their own madness. 

St. Just Martyr doesn't just imply that those who live in the light of proper virtue and rationality can be open to salvation even if they could not know Christ, but that they will be persecuted by the devils just like Christ. 

It is the nature of the demonic to tear down goodness wherever and however it can, and to mobilize and empower men to take over institutions so as to inflict moral & spiritual damage on the righteous. 

1.5 Sextillion Molecules & the Chemical Pregnancy

This is probably the "trippiest" thing I have ever written. Bear with me.  

According to thoughtco, there are 1.5 sextillion molecules in a drop of water (0.05 ml), which equals out to about 5 sextillion atoms per droplet. These are, of course, nonsense numbers. They hardly mean anything to us. But, it goes, of course, from million to billion to trillion to quadrillion to quintillion to sextillion. Technically, I think a 'sextillion' can qualify as a 'zillion.' 

Inside the drop of water, the molecular bonds are constantly breaking and reforming as they rush past one another. The lifetime of the bonds between molecules is short due to its constant movement. This means that water essentially is constantly breaking and reforming in its journeys, and the hydrogen and oxygen atoms even end up exchanging atoms as the molecules dissociate.

The kinetic energy of water is part of the process of dissolution.

When a crystal of sodium chloride is placed into water, the water's molecules collide with the crystal lattice. Recall that the crystal lattice is composed of alternating positive and negative ions. Water is attracted to the sodium chloride crystal because water is polar and has both a positive and a negative end. The positively charged sodium ions in the crystal attract the oxygen end of the water molecules because they are partially negative. The negatively charged chloride ions in the crystal attract the hydrogen end of the water molecules because they are partially positive. The action of the polar water molecules takes the crystal lattice apart (see image below).

 After coming apart from the crystal, the individual ions are then surrounded by solvent particles in a process called solvation.

 

 Libretexts

 Water is often called the 'universal solvent' because throughout nature and within our bodies it is constantly attracting and dissolving many different types of molecules. It acts as a solvent for  not for nonpolar ones. 

Regardless, it's easy to see that water is constantly at work, constantly forming and restrucuring... 

And these nonsense, giant number of water molecules in a single droplet are very meaningful... 

These little droplets form great bodies of water, and when the droplets enter, they form the teeming surge that is water. They constantly form new bonds with other molecules and flow, saying goodbye to one another and carrying on their long journey through the cosmos... 

And so what does it mean when a woman has a fertilized egg that fails to implant... and we have an ensouled life that does not "enter" the world? What does it mean for the baby in the womb that sadly perishes before it becomes a newborn? 

It means that they knew a microcosm within their mother, and through the interaction this interaction they leave behind their traces written in water, the recordless universal witness & interpenetrator. 

The Bible speaks of this:

6 This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.

7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (1 John 5:6-8)

The tiny soul in the tiny body of the embyro was an Existent whose miniscule form is adequate, as its dissolution into the greater whole and experience upon earth is a powerful demonstration of the concept of life's interpenetration... 

For its mark dissolves and flows through the world, as the blood and the water in the arena of our struggles.  

Perhaps this cannot be seen easily from a materialistic perspective in terms of its significance, but it is indisputable that, on the molecular level, we are in a constant, shifting state of interbeing & interflowing, and it is this flowing through one another through commonality of substance and matter that illustrates the profundity of any form of life, no matter how temporary. 

Christian Hagiography & Human Rights

 Christianity divorced religion from the state apparatus in the Western world, and spoke of salvation as a largely individual phenomena. It also rather uniquely spoke about the necessity of loving one's enemies, and in viewing the sinner as having a second shot at life and not simply one who was born of poor constitution or character.

These things are quite vital in opposing the totalitarian urge in humanity, which is still very plain to see when you speak with East Asians who even in societies with modern political constitutions ruled by modern political philosophies often see the state, the culture, and the people functioning as a single unit.

What's funny is this idea we see returning in the West where people treat dissenters and people who disagree actively with the government narrative of events as agents of misinformation, which draws into question the inalienable rights that were at the basis of classical liberalism and even to lesser degrees of monarchy as distinguished from despotism.

Of course, other societies have always had concepts of justice and an awareness of tyranny, but it was Christianity that provided the basis and the lexicon for subsequent political theory that invested great worth in the individual.

Idiots like Stephen Pinker look at the 'age of enlightenment' for this and gush about literate men being touched by literature humanizing women because they are completely unaware of Christian hagiography that has always been obsessed with the stories of women, children, the downtrodden, etc., all handing themselves over to Christ, often facing martyrdom by powerful political forces, which are always ultimately millennia old stories about the righteous individual against the mob & the tyrant.

There are some prequels to this in other civilizations but nothing as extensive, and they often have within them ethnocentric and community identity as central themes, like with Esther and Daniel from the Old Testament who stood up against tyranny but were successful and did so as part of a greater struggle for ethnos. Christians record the singular deaths of young women at the hands of their own communities that provide no political change as edifying stories.