Xn3cTs

A friend once asked whether there is room for “soul” in pantheism.

Am just one pantheist among many, so I guess there could be room for the “soul” in a pantheist’s life. =)

In the first place, what do you mean by “soul”? (It can have poetic, mystical, metaphorical, even literal meanings…) If you mean by “soul,” a “thing”, I’m not very sure about it…

If you mean “life-force,” then traditional (Thomistic-Aristotelian) philosophy has always affirmed that every living being has this “soul” or “life-force” or “life-principle.” (That’s why, in the seminary, we used to laugh at Uthai, a Thai seminarian who vehemently argued that a stone has a soul. His argument: If the stone didn’t have soul, it wouldn’t be able to move when you throw or kick it.)

But if you’re a pantheist who believes that the universe is god, and this god is not an impersonal force (as opposed to a scientific kind of pantheism), then the soul/spirit is indeed present everywhere. Even in stones! The stone is god! The stone is alive! The stone has soul!

We can even go to the idea of reincarnation: if there is a soul, and there’s no permanent heaven or hell, then it’s quite logical to believe in reincarnation, until one so to say, goes back to the source (become Pure Consciousness).

As you can see, there are many possible permutations, so it can get quite muddled and confusing for someone who’s searching for absolute certainty.

But I do know of a certainty that really matters, the certainty of the heart. As Blaise Pascal would say, “The heart has reasons of its own, which reason itself doesn’t understand.”

Does it really matter whether there is a soul or not? I mean, does it help you live a good life?

If it does, then believe in it. If you find it quite useless, then dispose of it.

As for me, I’m a lying bastard, a mystic-poet, so I speak of the soul even when I don’t believe in it. Mwahaha! =D

I’d rather go for a drink, and get drunk with life, philosophy, and love!

best regards,
ian

Tags: Pantheism, Philosophy, Psychology, Soul, spirituality
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something I wrote in April, 2004. When I was still meditating regularly…

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Sitting On My Pain… Sitting With My Pain
by Michael Ian Lomongo

“The essence of meditation is nowness…it is not aimed at achieving a higher state or at following some theory or idea, but simply, without any object or ambition, trying to see what is here and now.”

– Chogyam Trungpa

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I. In a few more days, it will be six months since I’ve started doing sitting-meditation. Regularly. Two hours. Daily. An hour in the morning, and another one in the evening. Alright, there are days when (due to partying with friends) I get to sit for just an hour (and days when I don’t get to sit at all), but I’d say I’ve been pretty consistent in my practice.

For the longest time, I’ve been meaning to meditate. Problem was, I didn’t know how. Sure, I’ve encountered several books on meditation and had some general idea about what took place during the “practice” but it was all in some kind of a haze. The closest I’ve come to a meditation practice was journal writing (specifically, Julia Cameron’s “morning pages”). And even then, I just couldn’t discipline myself to write three pages everyday.

And then I read an article by Bela Lipat in the Inquirer about this 10-day meditation course, Vipassana, that was given for free (yey!). This was June 2003. The article mentioned that the next course would be given October of that same year. I kept the article and resolved to apply for the course.

Just before October came, I e-mailed Sr. Angelita Walker, RSCJ (who was responsible for bringing Vipassana to the Philippines) about my desire to join the course. She directed me to www.dhamma.org to read the code of conduct for those intending to join the course. There I found out that I’d have to keep “noble silence” (absolute silence), cut off communication with the “outside world,” refrain from reading, writing, intoxicating substances, and killing mosquitoes, eat vegetarian food, etc. And all these for the duration of the 10-day course.

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Tags: Life, Meditation, spirituality, Vipassana
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Pantheism, Underwears, Coffee, Bread, Tea, and Everything in Between

Whenever someone makes the wisecrack that pantheism is the love for underwears, I retort, “No, on the contrary, I, a true-blue pantheist, hate lingerie. In fact, I have this great urge to discard it whenever I see it on a sexy female body.” LOL

Token reference for nerds: “pantheism” comes from the greek words “pan” (everything) and “theos” (god). Thus, pantheism is the “belief that everything is god, or conversely, that god is everything.” I don’t know exactly how “pantheism” is related to “deism” (which Rizal practiced, as gleaned from his exchange of letters with Fr. Pastells while exiled in Dapitan) but I have a suspicion that “deism” probably still sees God as transcendent from the universe while pantheism sees God as immanent to the universe.

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“Pan” and “te” are also spanish for “bread” and “tea.”

Anong konek?

After one has removed the underwear, one has “coffee.” Once satiated with “coffee,” then one can have bread and tea for breakfast.

=)

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Became a pantheist by way of Nietzsche and Buddhism/Hinduism.

If there is such a thing as a Nietzschean Buddhist, that’s what I am right now.

best regards,
panth-ian of the gods

Tags: Buddhism, Deism, Hinduism, Nietzsche, Pantheism, Philosophy, Rizal, spirituality
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Of course, almost everyone is familiar with chain letters and forwarded emails. There would be the usual exhortation to pass it on to a certain number of people for good luck and the warning not to ignore the message for the bad luck that would be its consequence.

I used to forward a lot of political emails (mosly anti-GMA stuff) that I was dubbed a “spammer” in certain circles. But once, I received a forwarded email that I liked and forwarded to others as well. It was about being grateful for the inconveniences and small misfortunes that happen to us because of their (often) unperceived value to us in the greater scheme of things. But what really caught my attention in that e-mail was the last paragraph:

“Pass this on to someone else, if you’d like. There is NO LUCK attached. If you delete this, it’s okay: God’s Love Is Not Dependent On E-Mail.”

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Tags: , Chain Letters, Compassion, Forwarded Emails, Gratitude, Love, spirituality
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Everything happens in the now. But even if everything happens in the “now,” we do not experience this. Consciousness, experience is time-bound.The theory of eternal recurrence is, if i’m not mistaken, also held by some eastern/hindi religions. Also by the stoics. Basically, it’s the theory that everything which has happened has already happened and will happen again infinitely. The premise is that if the world is finite and we have infinite time, all the permutations in the world will take place and be repeated again and again and again. To simplify, let’s say the whole world is made up of A, B, and C. At one point, the order would be like this: ABC; another, ACB; still another, BCA… and so on, until you will have to come back to ABC.

For my idol Nietzsche, it is a theory or a postulate which can be used to help us to live better (like heaven/hell, reincarnation, etc.).

Would you want the kind of life that you’re living be lived again? And again? And again?

Live then with the goal of eradicating, or at least, minimizing regrets.

best regards,
ian

Tags: Eternal Recurrence, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality
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