Where did all the Prophets go?

Its been too long since we've had a prophet, someone willing to stand up and lead our culture into another direction.  If you ask me or anyone marching on wall street they would agree, we need a prophet for these crazy times.  Our capitalist dream has been smothered by the few that are capitalizing at excessive rates and leaving the rest in the dust.  Meanwhile our military as well as military groups like NATO keep the playing field and rules in check for their advantage while the rest of us our slaves to the 8 hour day and to our reality TV shows.  Our culture has bottomed out and its substance is leaking out while the shit keeps adding on.  No but seriously we've created a society that is obsessed the individual, the individuals gains, the individual's ego comes before everything else.  And yet as individuals we stand alone in super markets like sheep waiting to eat, and we complain and say "well shit that president didn't really do what he said he was going to do, better luck next year".  We take nothing into our own hands.  Those people on wall street, I don't care how disorganized, have a better outlook on life because they are thinking about our people's and our planets future.  The world needs another prophet, a revolutionary leader, to remind people of why they are really here.  Jihiliyaa spirit is the poisonous venom  spewing from our leaders mouths and their tribe is the white male, their vehicle the dollar bill.  Where is the 2012 prophet when you need one?

The Western Bias

It has become more and more evident that growing up in American schools have made us bias against other cultures and the way they do things.  In history class we learn mostly about American history or how everything in history has led up to the development of America.  This sheltered education as well as media have turned us against other parts of the world and at the same time have made us dangerously competent and proud.  One example of this is the prejudice towards Islamic culture and the life of Muhammad.  Reading about Muhammad has opened my eyes to a religion and culture that I really had no prior knowledge of. If we ever want to attain the peace in which Muhammad preached we have to take away prejudice and seek the truth.  We also have to stop sheltering our youth and open their eyes to the world early and this could be done with some serious reform in the educational system.  What do you say?

Unity after Detachment

I am posing the question of whether or not it is possible for our human race to dually detach from hierarchy and at the same time unify under communal effort.  The reason I bring this up is because I would like to make some noise during this most pinnacle moment in our human history, as to whether we should be thinking of ways to ultimately unify in leu of our potential for mass nuclear destruction.  I would like to create some dialogue about this possibility because its imperative to how we would like to see our world operate.  How perhaps could we learn from mistakes made before us?  Could we perhaps as intelligent species evolve into egalitarian naturalists, or is our survival dependent on more animal like instincts? If everyone was enlightened and still needed to survive together on this earth would they even act out of egalitarian principles, or would they wander and eat only what they find?  Give me your thoughts.

Jesus, The Philosopher

One theme that could be taken away from Crossan’s description of Jesus is that he wasn’t exactly the immortal messiah that performed physical miracle, but an extraordinary religious student whose moral attachment and divine understanding of human interaction drove him to act towards revolutionary social reconstruction.  To undertake the responsibilities he enlisted to himself and to his followers, Jesus subscribed to a certain understanding of the world in which philosophers or religious scholars before him had most likely thought of before.  Jesus’ actions are a reflection of free will’s possibly imperative influence on human relationships and their potential for absolute cooperation.  This involves acting under certain moral criteria which in this case is a universal principle of justice and morality much like principles of deontology.  The thing that makes Jesus so extraordinary is his ability to take the principles in Judaic text and assure that himself and his people are acting upon such to their fullest significance.  Jesus is an incredible example of the improved and elaborated product of a past idea or way of doing things.  This Theme is also found throughout the evolution of music composition, art composition, social construction and possibly even the manifestation of life itself.    

The Image of a Messiah

People tell me that I look like Jesus.  In fact many of my peers know me as baby Jesus.  But do they even know what the messiah really looked like?  In our culture Jesus is associated with a white, slender, tall man with long brown hair and a beard but other cultures have their own image of the man.  Consider that image though with the historical context in mind; Jesus would have looked very different from everyone else if that’s how he looked.  He would have had darker skin as a middle-eastern Jew for one. Different cultures have different interpretations of the image of Jesus, projecting him as similar to their own kind, probably making him easier to relate to.  A team of researchers has designed a more likely view of Jesus based on anthropological and archeological evidence that is far different from our Western view of Jesus. This website explains a different view of Jesus that may change the way you think of him in your minds: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/forensics/1282186

What would Jesus do?

During class on Thursday Professor Silliman brought up a very relevant and important conversation about the Occupy movement.  This is a conversation everyone should have at some point because it involves everyone, whether they agree with it or not.  As we learned on Thursday the Occupy movement is motivated by likely circumstances as the movements that threatened the Roman Empire.  This brings up the questions: What would Jesus do in a time like this?  I think its important to note that I am not asking what would the Catholic church or Christian followers do about the current conditions of inequality, but what would Jesus do?  One way we could answer this would be to say that he would spread the word of equality between everyone and hopefully gradually people will begin creating communities in light of the values of his lessons.  Jesus’ philosophy would be like Ghandi’s philosophy, as Silliman referred to, create nonviolent opposition and let the injustice of the oppressor be exposed through the expressions of compatibility and love in which fuel the oppressed.  Of course this movement is much more complicated for the people in America are much too divided and individually focused.  Most people don’t see themselves as part of the “working class” but they are not looking at the situation from a bird’s eye view.  Sure maybe the situation isn’t yet bad enough for people to be ready for revolution, but it seems as if we are moving in that direction.  But would Jesus’ ways work today?  Did they even work back then?  Some people are theorizing that this is a pivotal point in our human history; do we destroy each other, or do we become a unified whole that works for the best interest of each other?  Our enormous population size, our technological capabilities, our compassion or lack there of, are factors today that will decide.  The only intervention from god that is realistic is our ability to change our consciousness towards each other and the way we interact.  Or would it be better to start from scratch?

Jesus John and Moses

The stories of Jesus John and Moses have incredible similarities that I have never looked at as closely in any sunday schooling.  We ussually only here the story of Jesus and his divine birth but Crossman has pointed out that Jesus was not the only divine child the world had seen.  I am wondering then, if perhaps these weren't the real accounts of jesus' birth, but rather just a popular and impressive way to tell the tale of something we don't actually know about.  I suppose the point is to make Jesus seem the greatest among the great spiritually enlightened leaders.  It also makes it seem as if they are the same person, especially when the presentation of John is partially about Jesus. They are indeed individual characters with seperate stories but are equally divine. 

The fear of death

In life we are faced with the inevitable fate of death, a fate which can be interprated in many ways because of its uncertainty.  One feeling in which often strikes within the hearts of any of us when thinking about death is fear.  Fear is the oppresser, fear holds us back from living a life of fullfillment, and makes us hesitant to make life decisions both big and small.  We don't take the couragious leaps of life in fear of failure, but this is no way to go about life, for this life that we lead has infinate possibilities just waiting to be unlocked.  The key to unlocking these possibilities is engrained in the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita. 

Hinduism and Krishna's wisdom assure us that we do not have to worry as much about death for we are merely just occupying these bodies as if we were hermet crabs, moving throughout the wheel of life occupying different shells.  Reencarnation is a reassuring notion that our purist existence is much beyond our bodies and that death is only a cold reminder that we will start a new.  This belief takes on further varied interpretation on where our souls go for the time in between, and what body will they occupy in the next life.  Often I think about how some animals tend to have different personalities even among identicle specie much like humans would have.  So possibly we take on another body the resembles our personality, but the nature of reencarnation can be interprated however it must to please the beleiver.  Regardless of this different interpretation I feel it is important to echo the value in accepting things as they are, and being unattached to the outcomes of fleeting moments in our life.  There is so much to enjoy in life, to feel, to do, and these should all happen without our fatal flaw as humans shadowing over our light and slowing us down. 

To end this blog open ended I would like to propose a metaphysical question: Do you beleive this life only exists in our minds or is it a more objective existence? Justify your beleif. 

In Response to the film: An Eternal Spirit

A very noble endeavor it is to even begin searching for the enlightenment of Sannyas considering the sacrifice one must make.  For almost all of us, including the man in the film who begins the journey, it is extremely difficult to conceptualize the true purpose of seeking Sannyas for we are too attached to the material world or a world that provokes us to live a life on behalf of duties that are not motivated purely by spirituality. 

Some of us may be thinking that it is very selfish of this man to leave his family for the sake of reaching a goal for himself.  But in the Sannyasin perspective I think that the goal is not just for the self but for the whole of the universe because ultimately if true Sannyas is reached and Moksha is truly attained then the self will be dissolved into the universe and thus returning to the one.  With the mind-set that this is a possibility we can begin to understand the futility of the attachments we make with things and people in our lives compared to the vastness of the eternal life that is supposedly within all of us.  As for that eternal spirit, I sometimes think of such when watching students walking around campus while I myself am doing the same, or watching an animal in the woods, and I think that there is something that connects us, more than just our being alive and conscious in this world.  Or maybe it is that we are conscious.  Have you ever had an experience where you saw more than just a human when you looked at one or more than just two round spots when you look in someone’s eyes, even an another animals?

About me

Hello,
My name is Adam Tobin and I am a sophmore at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.  I study sociology and anthropology.  I hope to use my education for the practice of teaching and during the process to assist in the effort of reforming the education system in America.  I live by the ocean in the summer and the mountains during the school year.  I was baptized and confirmed in a Christian church and have used those ideologies as a basis for my own spirituality. Although Christianity played a strong role early on in my understanding of the world and myself, I have expanded this understanding with Buddhist and Taoist ideologies which hold equally if not more significance to my spirituality.