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Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?

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Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a practicing Christian, I don't know many, can you indulge my curiosity? Do you believe in the literal truth of the bible, creationism, the big bang? I am a scientist and I doubt I'd ever be convinced to follow a religion whose followers believe in some stories and myths that are essentially anti-scientific. I don't mean to be harsh or barbed, I'm just saying I'd view the book as a mythological artifact from 2…

Fundamentalists and literalists are a very small minority of Christians and their movement is more or less a reaction to science/the Enlightenment that didn't really exist in any significant strength before the 19th Century (and honestly it's hard to square with a careful reading of the Bible, which contradicts itself in ways that present problems for literal readings). Even as far back as Augustine you have Christia…

Oh ok, thank you for your response. What are some examples of what the Christian faith offers you, the comprehensive framework?

Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I went from being curious to read it for the reasons you mentioned to being a practicing Christian. I just ended up finding it a compelling sort of moral system to think about the universe, I suppose. It took getting to the New Testament before I thought of it as anything more than a curiosity, though. There are definitely parts that are a slog, especially in the Old Testament, and just picking it up and readin…

You're a practicing Christian, I don't know many, can you indulge my curiosity? Do you believe in the literal truth of the bible, creationism, the big bang? I am a scientist and I doubt I'd ever be convinced to follow a religion whose followers believe in some stories and myths that are essentially anti-scientific. I don't mean to be harsh or barbed, I'm just saying I'd view the book as a mythological artifact from 2…

Not the poster, but as a Christian, no, I find the idea of the Bible being taken literally as rather surprising, and a rather recent invention.

Just on the face of it, there are 'books' in the Bible meant as history, books meant as 'self-help', despondent mullings on the meaning of life, a love letter, personal recountings, letters written to others...these are all kinds of authors and approaches here, and so it strikes me as silly to take all of them literally. I mean, Jesus is quoted as saying "Go tell that fox", when speaking of Herod; there is no other mention of Herod being anything other than human. Clearly, if the Christian message is to be taken as truth, it shows that God is able to speak in metaphor (as well as interesting translation differences; for instance, the word for 'day' in the creation story is a word with a number of translations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom )

So, how do things that seem antiquated apply now? Well, some parts of it -are- antiquated, in that they were meant for a specific time, and not now. Chesterton had a number of beautiful assertions in his book Orthodoxy, to the effect that Christianity is necessarily paradoxical, because -people- are paradoxical. To take that here, from my perspective (and there are many) morality can be both absolute and relativistic; what is 'good' is absolute, but what is treated as 'good' at a given time is relative to that time. You know that slavery is evil, but could you go back 4000 years and convince people of that? No. You would just alienate them, and likely get yourself killed. But you -could- convince them to at least treat their slaves better. You could design a moral code that would in time lead to them stopping slavery, by just introducing the idea that slaves are humans, with rights. If we credit the idea there is a God, and that evolution is a thing that that God uses, then the idea of allowing a moral idea to evolve into a fuller fulfillment of itself, over time, as people think, and talk, and develop, is an unsurprising thing for that God to do.

As to stoning adulterers, and a number of similar things; don't misunderstand what was a legal code with a moral one. Yes, it was influenced by morals (same as our own law is), but the punishment was a legal code to be adopted by a people, and was a symptom of the time. No Christian but the most fundamental would say we, now, should adopt stoning as the appropriate punishment for adultery. Interestingly, the Bible makes it clear "the wages of sin (is) death", but that that's a moral issue between man and God. Any actual judgement indicated to be carried out between men is toward a legal system, and its rationale is much the same as our own, to prevent people from doing it and/or to allow for carrying out some semblance of imperfect justice (since flawed man judging flawed man will necessarily be imperfect).

Similarly, many of the Old Testament rules were particular to the context of the time, and can only be understood in understanding the culture at that time. For why not wearing a diverse set of fabrics, have a look here - https://www.gotquestions.org/different-types-of-fabric.html

Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?

#223

If I'm being honest, I read a lot of books, but the only one I can think of really substantially changing my worldview was the Bible. Since you probably do not want to read the entire thing I am particularly a fan of Ecclesiastes, and maybe you could try some of the gospels if you still have steam after that.

Further, if you want to read the Bible end-to-end, consider a chronological Bible. It organizes passages into when they occurred in time, for example in the Old Testament there's overlaps between Kings and Chronicles; in the New Testament there's overlap across the four gospels. I find it much easier to read long-form with that organization.

Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like Alan Watts you might enjoy Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice from Shunryu Suzuki. https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Informal-Meditatio...

If you like that, I'd further recommend the biography of Suzuki, Crooked Cucumber. It's an interesting read.

Thank you very much :) I'll definitely check it out.

Re: Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?

#227
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found Mr. Tolle's visualization of the pain body an extremely helpful tool to get me through extreme stress time and again. I think these things, when moving beyond basic limbic system hacking like deep breathing, are highly personal, so YMMV. I agree it has the tepid undertones you imply, but did not devalue the book since the one tool it provided me with has served me so well.

I'm glad it worked for you. All the talk of the pain body and the egoic mind just fell flat for me.

"All the talk of the pain body..."

The point with these therapeutic visualizations is to try how they work, personally, as an actual tool to solve a concrete dilemma. As such it does not matter how useless they sound in written form. Human mind has these psychlogical switches that just seem to work in specific situations. For example of a pathological "switch", the gambler is lured by an unpredictable sequence of loss and reward. Which to most people sound extremely silly, until they try it out themselves, and are totally hooked. Therapeutic switches can seem to have equal power to deal with ones emotions and pain.

For me, visualizing my pain as a separate entity that fed from my suffering allowed me to conceptualize my internal pain in a way in which I could observe and deal with it better.

It's like how some yogis speak of energy flows and whatnot - which is completely inconsequential hogwash and do not matter just as long as the movement and breathing techniques do their very physical work on the human body.

The problem with presenting functional techniques as deeply linked with an esoteric philosophy, a religious movement or (in Tolle's case) a guru is that the technique is often used as a token hook just to lure the person to follow the movement or philosophy.

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