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?