Kuba Adamów

[Kuba Adamów]

…and if, just if, Alan Watts does not get through (he may not—I, personally, do get him, but I’m weird :)) on the topic of transcendence, here’s the quote from another great mind of his time who might have more impact:

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

That was Bruce Lee, paraphrasing old tao and zen masters (you’ll find the very same analogy in Bernardo Bertolucci’s ‘Little Buddha’, too). Now, you just don’t argue with Bruce Lee, right?

[Kuba Adamów]

Why yes, of course! The lack of belief in a supernatural being does not imply the lack of spirituality. I, for one, do consider myself ‘spiritual’, as I experience awe and wander on a daily basis—when I see ‘miracles’ of nature, of the vast space out there and within ourselves or of science. When I look at my son growing up and learning new skills every single day, at the starry sky at night, when I listen to music, when I watch films like ‘Her’ or ‘The Ledge’, or read Philip K. Dick’s, Allan Watts’s, Ken Wilber’s or Stanislaw Lem’s stuff I have no doubt I experience something greater than me, than us all, something our limited senses and minds are not capable of processing beyond their boundaries. It all does not imply the existence of any sort of deity, it merely implies our immersion in a ‘soup’ of which we understand only as much as we can at any given moment with the mental tools we’re equipped with, individually. We keep expanding and growing more and more conscious and aware of our capabilities and limitations, but the journey seems never-ending. And I like that never-endingness.

[Kuba Adamów]

@DrBob, @Unseen, @Davis, @Simon—Thank you, I’m genuinely grateful for your thoughtful words. It’s a never-ending journey for me, with quite a few arrogant and not-quite-informed claims (some really ill-informed ones, sadly, too) over the years. Your responses give me hope and encourage to tweak and verify my views. My use of words and the editorial choices I make are far from expressing the universal truth (English not being my first language makes it even further from it), which I will never be capable of, and are more thinking aloud with a hope that some wiser, more skilled and better-read than me (like you guys) will read and verify my mental paths. Just like you, I gather, by posting here I seek not the ‘pat-on-the-back, you’re-so-right’ confirmation from a hermetic mutual admiration society, but the genuine discussion and thought exchange. I’ve been now assured with the people like you this is the place.

As for the ‘unfortunate’ title for the post and a few claims in it—I absolutely agree it’s a massive over-generalisation that suffers from my very personal stance, experiences, arrogance and some deeply held grudge I’m trying to work through. I was born and raised in Poland, a beautiful country of mostly good but very often confused people, a country rooted deeply into Roman Catholicism, and that was one of the most important reasons to leave it (I live in Edinburgh now). I’ve experienced that confusion on many levels, and although I have to admit that, being from a buddhist background (which is not, as any other non-Cathlic system of beliefs, very common in Poland), these experiences have never been for me, personally, too harmful, the general mental climate I grew up and lived in for quite a long time has never been favorable for those trying to think for themselves, with a lot of instances of direct religion-based hostility and aggression. This is my grudge. There was one thing my late grandma, who I had a very close relationship with despite her being a devout Catholic, said that struck me, and that was along the lines of ‘If you don’t believe in God, heaven and all that—what stops you from doing as you please and hurting people along the way.’ I’ve seen that many times—God and the fear of eternal punishment being probably the only factors keeping some people from hurting others, and in some more radical cases God and the promise of eternal pleasure being the very reason for hurting others.

I’ve read and thought quite a lot on religion from the moral, social and behavioral perspective (surely, not as much as you have—that seems rather obvious to me), and my conclusion so far, a very general one, which I’m always willing to alter when confronted with some more compelling views, is that theism, while—that I absolutely agree with—not being, as a concept, inherently ‘evil’, is a mental device that is useful and serves its purpose only on a very basic level—when applied to more complex dilemmas, it loses its applicability as the dogmas which serve as the basis, are too often too inflexible and rooted in the archaic and out-dated visions of the reality which may have sufficed two thousand or even two hundred years ago, but can’t stand their ground nowadays. This is also, I agree, a simplification, but the majority of the theists I’ve ever met, who are mostly generally ‘good’ people, display this quality to a lesser or a greater degree, some of them being extremely radical. That radicalism, although—one might say—statistically marginal, and its consequences, outweigh, as I see it, the benefits, which do exist, that is hard to disagree with. The fact that atrocities may be, and have been, committed with the support of theism of some sort is, for me, a reason enough to denounce it. Any ideology that takes the burden of thought, compassion and responsibility from people and places it upon some vaguely and imprecisely described deity, is—in my view—harmful, even if not directly, even if not immediately. But I may be wrong, of course, and, in this respect, I’m always ‘happy’ to be proven as such—imperfectly as it goes, I do try to grow beyond my grudges, convictions and prejudices.

So thank you once again and I’m looking forward to more inspiration and thought-provoking exchanges, hoping I won’t be the only side benefiting from them.

[Kuba Adamów]

Hi Doc,

Just to make sure we’re on the same page—I don’t know what you should do and I’m not even going to try to attempt to convince you that I have a faintest clue that I do. I’m not going to patronize or preach, because I’ve been through some similar doubts over the years of my journey. All I can say is you are not alone—I, and quite a few other people here and in other places, do feel your frustration and understand it—judging by what you’ve written, I gather you may be relatively young (we all are, right? :)) and, from my own experience, it is vital that you do not get discouraged from seeking and questioning just because there are people who are capable of making valid counterpoints. It’s good, and very important, that they are there. Avoiding confrontation with facts and thoughtful mind is exactly what’s wrong with religion—a fixed, petrified dogma that is so very often so rigid and impregnated that it must fight any thought that questions its validity, just because its foundations are usually so frail and illogical that any attempt of touching them with reason may lead to their decomposition and chaos. If it takes a few questions to make the giant on clay legs fall and crumble—does it deserve to exist?

You may be familiar with this quote from Timothy Leary:

“Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness; chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself.”

My late grandma was a very devout Christian—raised in the spirit of culturally and socially sanctified patriarchy, total subjection and unquestionable trust in the words of the Bible. I just could not, as a teenager—and a son of blasphemous parents who dared not to have cared about going to any sort of church, having more important things to do in life—subscribe to all that and felt it was my duty to ‘enlighten’ her. ‘Despite’ her religiousness, she was a very good person—no matter how confused she seemed to me then—and now I feel trying to shatter her world was a really bad idea. And a very arrogant one. I was very arrogant then, and, quite likely, I still am, but at least now I am capable of recognizing it and making sure that I do not impose what I’ve tried and failed at onto my son, for example. And he may have it a bit easier because of that. Now, being 40 and having struggled with my thoughts for some 25 years, I have come to the point of accepting that, faulty as we may see it, religion, and its very existence, is far from perfect but it is because it is the product of imperfect ourselves—but, luckily, we, as our needs and fears that underlay our being and our need of some sort of order, do evolve and dissolve—slowly, even if not as dramatically as many of us would like them to. A few hundred years ago we’d be burned for our thoughts, a few decades ago—we’d be universally ostracized, now—we can gather and discuss, exchange ideas, and the thought is growing stronger as never before. So do not give up. Just be peacefully resilient.

There is a nice, and rather suitable Buddhist proverb:

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

We’re all students, and we’re all teachers as well, but usually not in the way our confused ego would like us to see it. Trying to shove our ‘teachings’ and ‘enlightened wisdom’ in the faces of those who aren’t ready for them is neither wise nor enlightened and will only make things worse, both for us and them.

There are plenty of stupid people, but there is a plenty of wisdom around there as well—and we have access to all that! Rejoice! Learn and evolve :).

I just thought you might like this talk (on youtube—it is, or may be, a very useful platform, indeed):

Alan Watts – Myth and Religion [1hr42]

Enjoy your journey—this is a wish, not a piece of advice :).

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