Himmat ji,
I’ve written the below mostly muddle headedly and not certain whether it will end up being posted. So please excuse any incoherence of thought.
You wrote:
I would be interested in members open statements, one way or another, as to whether they feel scriptures are mere opinions or not, even if the authors had higher levels of knowledge or wisdom than our own. I can and admit I believe in blind faith, but am not getting such an open response from others, and instead the original topic has digressed into other areas (mainly through my own comments).
C: I haven’t read all the responses and I must admit that I can’t really make out who said what. However the general impression is that people have responded to your enquiry in their own way and I don’t think that you should insist on open statements. None of us are ever clear as to what we believe in and even on issues long time pondered upon, we are continually revising our positions. I’m quite sure that this applies to you with regard to your position about ‘religious scriptures being opinion’ as well.
Besides, it may be that your particular idea is not something people have had the opportunity to think about before, although I must say that a similar line of thought crossed my own mind many years ago.
Faith and blind faith has been brought up quite a bit and so I’d like to make a point based on this concept.
In the tradition where I come from, faith or confidence is a mental factor which arises only with good states of mind. Blind faith in my opinion, is thinking a particular way about some concept conditioned by ignorance and attachment if not also wrong understanding. The following has been said about Faith:
Quote:
“... It has purifying or aspiring as its characteristic. As the water-purifying gem of the universal monarch thrown into water causes solids, alluvia, waterweeds and mud to subside and makes the water clear, transparent and undisturbed, so faith arising discards the hindrances, causes the corruptions to subside, purifies the mind and makes it undisturbed: the mind being purified, the aspirant gives gifts, observes the precepts, and engages in mental development. Thus faith should be known to hove purifying as its characteristic...”
So faith is faith in the good, and it is not like we just talk about it. As I said, it arises with good states and this would be, moments of giving, morality, kindness, compassion, truthfulness, respect, renunciation, wisdom etc. So when we say that we have faith in some concept, we need to determine at that very moment what the state of mind is. Wisdom is the cause for all the other good states being developed and as this happens, faith increases. This is why faith is also identified as ‘confidence’. The more the understanding, the more is there confidence in the power of goodness, more so in wisdom itself. Although there can be a strong inclination to good deeds without the support of wisdom, in this case the accompanying faith would still perform its function of purifying the mind. However there is no place for blind faith around here.
Now the following is speculation on my part, but I’d just like to make a point:
I believe that most people who are inclined to religion, what mainly attracts them are those parts which talk about the value of goodness and the harm of evil. This imo reflects a degree of faith on their part; since it is something they can relate to and observe to some extent. What happens subsequently is that things get muddled up when it comes to those parts in the particular teachings, which begin to talk about things unrelated to their lives, and they are faced with the question whether or not to believe in those things. I sometimes try to draw people’s attention to the one and discourage them from thinking too much about the other.
I come from an understanding where the concept of a creator God has absolutely no place, nor do such ideas as the ‘oneness with all that is’. But I do not want to argue about this with anyone, but instead like to encourage everyone to develop the good and understand the harm of the evil. Of course it may be that people can’t avoid making the particular association, especially when discussing and talking with others about such things. In a day when interacting with people around us however, such association is seldom made. At those times, being reminded about the value of good and kind acts, and the harm of evil, can on its own condition good deeds.
The point I’m trying to get across to you is that, instead of talking about things which apparently has no practical value, why not talk about those things which will arouse “faith” in the good? Unlike me, you know the Sikh scriptures quite well, so why don’t draw their attention to those parts which are helpful to this end?
I realize that you mean well and I’m sure you have no intention to disturb the waters. But no one is going to be convinced by philosophical arguments, given especially the perception of having gained so much from their own experience with regard the teachings to date.
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Himmat:
If it is felt by members that scriptures are opinions of authors, ie are not based on ultimate reality, then my, yours or others opinions are potentially as valuable as the next, and impacts upon the concept of gurmat vs manmat.
C: If I’m not wrong, your basic premise is that knowledge about God is impossible since each individual can only speak from his limited perceptions. Yet, being part of this whole, each is playing its part and therefore whatever the perceptions are, these contribute to the whole and are in this regard valuable.
The above idea is something I would not wish to entertain and I hope that I’m wrong in thinking that you think this way. But I’d guess that a possible argument by someone who agrees with the particular concept of God and believes in the enlightenment of say, Guru Nanak, is that this is a matter of penetrating the nature of one representative part, which means that one needn’t have had a knowledge about all the different parts.
But what kind of knowledge is each part supposed to give anyway? What is it that you could say to someone else about your own experience which would result in his further knowledge about God? Or would you say that such a thing couldn’t happen since each is limited by that much ability to comprehend God?
I’ll just leave this here and won’t discuss any further. Since I think I’ve gone way out of bounds into a territory where I don’t have even a basic knowledge of.
