A Probability of Being

Which I will post in place of an actual blogpost, because even though I Tumblr'd it, it deserves to be its own post. It came on the heels of a discussion about my posts on parental cruelty, but took a religious turn: Tariq:  yeah  I keep feeling that "accept", which is a word people use a lot in that context, is exactly the wrong word to use  I mean... are you saying that it's right?  Jaymee:  yeah, exactly  i think they more tolerate it  Tariq:  what does one mean when one tells another person to "accept" things the way things are?  Jaymee:  usually?  i get the feeling of  "Just give it up, it wont change and you'll only make yourself more unhappy by thinking about changing things"  Tariq:  except that if you think it, and you explore it, the entire premise of existence is pain. it doesn't make the pain and the injustice right.  it means that you can't do anything about it.  Jaymee:  oh, shut up, i ju...

Ordinarily, every year in celebration of the Lunar New Year, my family hies off to a temple to pray before carrying on with other festivities. This would mean a lot of standing around whilst one or two family members got joss sticks, lit them, and brought it back to the others who would usually be waiting outside the temple, so they could pray without actually venturing into the smokey air.  My mother raised me on regular worship of the Goddess of Mercy, although this was usually framed as asking the goddess to bless us so we would get good grades in the school year. Her religiousity is the practical kind which only bugs the gods when she really needs something answered. When I joined the school's Buddhist Association, my main religion was Theravadan Buddhism. I was pretty good at being Buddhist, it seemed: I attended the weekly meetings and never missed one except once or twice a year; I sang the hymns well; I memorized the chants. Every Wesak Day was spent at the temple, hel...

So I was watching that "If You Use Contraceptives, You Will not Be Raptured" video that's been going around ( transcript at Shakesville ). I must confess that I don't actually get this Rapture thing, and how most people who believe in it really live their lives waiting for it. It sort of is counter-productive to the idea of loving God, you know? Apparently, God put you on this earth so he could make your life miserable and see how well you bear it. If you do as he says, he rewards you. If not, you get sent to hell. Everything in your life is performed according to your fear of Hell, and wanting to go to that Good Place instead. But as I said, it runs counter-productively to the whole, I respect God because He is in fact the Almighty, by ignoring that big thing which gives him that Almighty status in the first place - Life On Earth Itself. What kind of messed-up mindedness do people need to get to the point where they are driven to loathe or ignore the rest of t...

This is derived from reading Marilyn French, particularly Beyond Power , although it comes up in From Eve to Dawn . I also found it in a book called When God Was A Woman . I have been expressing it in many ways in order for me to really condense it into something more cohesive and so I don't fucking stutter when I talk about it, but the theory does come up often. Namely, what do the Patriarchy, monotheistic religion, men, and power have to do with each other? So, it's posited that way back when, the earliest civilizations were matriarchal and worshipped an Earth Goddess. The Earth Goddess is irrevocably tied to the Earth and all phenomena on Earth - she waxes and wanes with the moon, with the seasons, with stuff that humans do on her soil. Back then, women giving birth was a specific gift, magical, because nobody had figured out how men figured into the whole thing yet. I'm guessing at some point they did, but nobody really gave a shit. A child belongs to the whole communit...

So, I used to hate Kant. Somewhere in my Intro to Philosophy textbook, is scribbled "Kant is a cunt" (those days I didn't know what 'cunt' meant, only that it's a bad word. Well, it still is for me, but bad in a good way) and "KANT U SUCK" and "YOU IDIOT!" and various other sputtered criticisms of his text. I have my textbook in front of me now, reading my reactions to some of his words: "... when a wretched man, strong in soul and more angered at his fate than faint-hearted or cast down, longs for death and still preserves his life without loving it- not fron inclination or fear but from duty; then indeed his maxim has a moral content." I thought it was bullshit then, and it's still bullshit now. A choice to live or die is not in itself a question of morality - it's a question of personal liberty. Certainly, if a person's choice to die affects others deeply, causing grief and mourning, the action takes on a certain l...

Okay, that fucking fig tree thing. Why is that even a story in the Bible? No, seriously, what fucking point does it prove? Don't piss Jesus off or he will smite your ass into barrenness on the off-day that you just so happen to not have what he wants when he's feeling peckish? I think Jesus was a nifty man and all evidence that proves his existance also proves that he was worthy of following. But, the guys who edited the Bible and all - why would they pick this story? It makes no sense. It's fanciful. Jesus was being a careless asshole. Anybody?

So on some of my identification papers, my religion is listed - Agama: Buddha (Religion: Buddhist) In secondary school, I was a regular attendant of the Friday meetings of the Buddhist Association at school. Partly because I HAD to be part of some extra-curricular activity, partly because I genuinely did believe I was a Buddhist then, partly because we had a prayer session where we recited pali prayers, followed by a session of singing. Partly also because Chinese culture is somewhat saturated with Buddhistic references, but not what we learnt at those association meetings - our brand of Buddhism was Theravadan , which is the oldest school of Buddhism, and thus rather devoid of all Chinese myth funness. I was part of this Association from Form 1 until Form 4 and I tended to skip meetings only twice a year. I was feeling rather lukewarm about the whole idea by the time I hit Form 5, and discovered Wicca. (Which I don't practise either. I'm a horrible heathen like that.) But it ...