Looking at Immortality

For some reason, Andru's posts at oncaesura haven't been updating on my Bloglines list, but today I went there anyway and found a treasure-trove of recent links and writing. I'd like to call your attention to two in particular. First, an article from Harvard Divinity Bulletin by Karen Armstrong, Is Immortality important? Religion is About Inhabiting the Eternal in the Here and Now. I was lucky enough to hear Karen Armstrong speak at McGill University recently, and she included some of this material in what she said that evening. I was very impressed with her in person; she was much warmer and funnier than I'd expected, though her piercing intelligence was exactly as I had thought it would be.

Second, the former blogger Abdul-Walid of Acerbia has contributed a memorable essay, Vertigo, which I will not ruin with a synopsis, but merely commend to your reading.

Comments

[Soen Joon Sn]

Have you read Armstrong's "A History of God?" It's quite good, and has a similar approach: that religion at its origin and core isn't about the stuff that most folks are so tangled up in (preoccupation with the afterlife being one such thing). My only complaint was that she too easily assumes points of connection between different traditions, but it's refreshing to read someone so optimistic about the potential of religion. (And thanks for the tip to the article, a good read too.)

[dale]

Armstrong's essay is wonderful.

I have found visualizing my life as unbounded in time very valuable. The picture I ordinarily have, of having popped into existence ex nihilo at one moment of time and being due to vanish -- presto! -- at another moment, is coercive and distorting in subtle ways that I could not see at all until I tried to step outside them.

Both pictures are, according to buddhist doctrine, false -- I don't exist at all in the way I imagine myself to, whether temporarily or permanently -- but until I can see things as they are, it's valuable to at least loosen up my belief in things as they aren't :-)

One of which is that anything I say or think or do that doesn't bear fruit before my death will never bear fruit. Another is that starting 48 years ago, I made myself up from scratch. These are both clearly wrong, even from an ordinary worldly point of view. But that doesn't stop me believing in them; and as long as I believe in them, I'll speak and think and act in ways that would make sense if they were true.