This started its life here on Reddit. Lightly edited. The beginning of the thread is backed-up here.
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In a sense that would make our lives unreal, and from the very top of the mountain nothing would matter -- even nuclear blasts, the Holocaust, eco-cide). It was all just a game.
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I'm monist, in a sense - it's the cosmic background radiation of my practice, but while I'm here in this flesh bundle, there's really no reason to think much about it. I can thoroughly explore that kind of oneness after I'm dead.
Oh, I really like that. I think that a defense of compassion follows from that as a premise.
I) From the Mountaintop
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Up at the tip-top of the great tall mountain of spirit it is cold, icy. There is an austere beauty of pure pattern, harmony, purest flow. As you said, we can contemplate that forever when we are dead, if that death means a transport to that place. Hinduism and Buddhism posits there are many more impediments to breaking the cycle of rebirth, while mainline Christianity and Islam are more committed to selves that stay separate forever and get their final, total judgement from Sky God.
To switch conceptualizations. Alan Watts expressed the pantheist concept in The Book by talking about two types of games: 1) hide-and-go-seek and 2) cards. As to hide-and-go-seek, basically, the One consciousness shattered itself into pieces to make for games. And once you fully realize (I mean fully realize) you the One. . . you win! But card games are another matter. If you think about it, virtually every card game is about putting the cards back in order. To make it a game worth playing, however, the cards have to be first disordered. And for the sake of variety, they have to re-disordered each round of play. Ergo, no disorder, no game.
In a sense that would make our lives unreal, and from the very top of the mountain nothing would matter -- even nuclear blasts, the Holocaust, eco-cide). It was all just a game.
But while you are in the middle of a game, why wouldn't you play?
II) A Western Detour
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I rather like Watt's explanation, but the West approaches it all completely differently. Imperfection, rather than the heart of a game, is either the source of sin or a sin in itself. This is seen in the Platonic ideal of forms and the garbling of them that is our world. The implication is that our plane is filth. Further down the line, Gnosticism holds that evil forces created this plane.
I hereby present another heterodox idea (I'm not claiming I'm the first person to come up with it, just that I don't know of having ever heard it before): perhaps the forces of creation and consciousness aren't even the same. It's only when sufficiently complex enough brains come along processing sufficiently complex patterns that consciousness comes to possess the being.
But the mainline Western faith is that this life is a test for a prize. And as we moved through modernity, the more the test questions narrowed to in-group signaling and virtually nothing else. Absent that very last turn, the Western detour is not a bad way to defend compassion -- the Authoritarian God said have compassion, and that's that.
Failing that, the argument could be that we are so low compared to the divine that we are equal -- only Grace can give us any relief from our unworthiness.
This equality under God concept is highly underrated, and without it Liberalism has a very difficult time defending itself.
III) to the Daodejing, book 1
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While the daodejing famously starts by starts by showing how labels don't work (thus Good is perceived pre-verbally, if not pre-cognitively ), I think the next passage profound enough to change a life:
Truly, "rid of desire, one can perceive the Wondrous." With desire, one can perceive only outcomes.
I don't find the Daodejing prescriptive as much as descriptive. But what it is describing here is of the utmost importance. The human body/brain apparatus is very prone to cogitate on social standing. When this happens, it crowds out all other virtues. Only by silencing that monkey brain, even if for a bit, do you get to wonder.
Why the hell is wonder important? Well, for one thing it is the source of every creation that is not hyper-specialized and derivative. That's not to say you can't make some really good weapons that way, but even if all you care about is weapons, the better ones will eventually be made as a by-product of someone's wonder. Wonder is the golden goose.
Wonder has another attribute -- it is inexhaustible, self-generating. There is always enough to go around. Every artist and creator, both through the text of their work and through their life gives extra texture to reality that can be explored while doing virtually no harm to rest of the world. To a greater extent, each segment of land is itself layered through with beauty on level after level. (And even the ugly spots are worth a gander -- they teach us to perceive time). Fractal. Reflective. Patterns ever widening, deepening. . . Whoa.
In "outcome world" this very inexhaustibly is a weakness -- if you have unlimited supply, you can't be paid by any level of demand, you see -- but once you let a crack of wonder in to the eye of the beholder, the argument in its favor is apparent. Which makes it sad that there are people who intuit this weakness in hierarchy and thus do whatever they can to thwart the forces of dao.
I recently saw an old post where Ran Prieur quoted Cynthia Ozick:
Heaven is for those who have already been there.
I cannot teach the pre-cognitive bliss of the dao. I can only connect to experiences of people who have experienced it, and explain why it is worth defending. I would also go here to this understanding to try to make the case for all lives having worth.
Hilariously, I am told that Ayn Rand made an argument like this: one of her super-men wanted to kill someone because, you know, a lesser being was in the way, but then he noticed this lesser being had a clean shirt. This showed that the lesser being at least had ability to value something. So no, no right to kill. (Probably Atlas Shrugged -- but I'm not tracking it down).
This is a Kantian, weak sauce version of the argument; rather, the compassionate mode of being does tend to stick better when it comes from a spiritual experience.
IV) to the Gita
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The Gita is really easy to mis-read. I think it is second to Nietzsche in terms of the most dangerously mis-read work of all time [Update: I have no idea how the Bible didn't come to mind when I wrote that sentence. I leave the sentence as an exercise in humility]. In The Gita, a warrior has realized the truth of hide-and-go-seek and that none . . . of this . . . matters. An avatar of God (actually, I think it's an avatar of an avatar -- but even this gets interpreted in a lot of ways) comes to our warrior with the gist of "Oh, so you think that by doing nothing, you're going to be blameless?" And proceeds to build arguments against non-action and to argue that action which, if performed without attachment and desire, is just as holy. Wikipedia says of this theology
right work done well is a form of prayer
This forms basically all of my understanding of dharma. (It should be pointed out that I am more of a breadth than depth person, so I could be missing a lot).
It is because we are still in the middle of a game that values appear to us. I do believe there is some connection here to your "right relationship" concept. Pulling a quote for the OP blog post
Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships.
Enemies/scapegoats are for the "results only" crowd. When things are going well, they will worship the winners under the current paradigm. When things are going badly, their instinct is to find a comfort ritual grounded in that very hierarchy they love. I find it to be an ugly way to play the existence game and one that does little to maximize the high score for everyone. But, then, I'm not an asshole.
V) I guess that's an essay.
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I would also be very interested to read your thoughts in essay form, for what it's worth!
Oh, I think this is it. I spent all morning on this and will count it as a one of my long pieces for the week. With your permission, I would like to reprint your side of the discussion on my blog as well, and eventually in the custom-print book I one day plan on paying to have made so I can give out as presents. I have a few friends that will enjoy it. To family I see giving the gift going like this: "Oh, you wanted something store bought. . . Too bad! I made it myself!" as it then sits on their shelf, unread forever.
