History of the Bible

I can't remember where I got this and I didn't finish cut and pasting the best parts.

The bible was written by numerous authors over a 1200 year period, starting with the Hebrew scriptures. During the writing of it’s various books, it was compiled and edited again, many times. By the time of the early church, in the 1st century after Christ, holy scripture consisted of a Greek translation of only the Hebrew scriptures, put together by a team of 70 translators. It wasn’t until the mid 2nd century that Church leaders agreed upon the contents of the New Testament, all of it written in Greek. It wasn’t until the late 3rd century that the bible was translated into Coptic, Syriac, and a Latin version that was accepted and used by the Christians of the Roman Empire. Before the printing press, the bible was not one book. Rather, it was a collection of scrolls, or smaller books – a library. In fact, today, Christian Bibles range from the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon to the eighty-one books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon. 

“This is the word of God.” Before publishing houses were competing with each other, this claim was rarely made about the bible. But, in the mid 1500's, when millions of persons were looking for a bible they could own, calling their book “the word of God” became a popular selling point and even a synonym for the word “bible.”English translations of the bible followed one upon another. Unlike earlier English translations from the Vulgate Latin, Tyndale’s printed version of the bible was a translation of the Greek and Hebrew texts, and therefore more accurate. Based on Tyndale’s work, King Henry VIII authorized the Great Bible. The Geneva Bible soon followed in 1560, the first bible to be divided into chapters and verses. In 1568 Queen Elizabeth made an attempt to authorize the Bishop’s Bible. Then the Douay-Rheims Bible was published by the Catholic Church, beginning with the NT in 1582 and the OT 1610. The King James Version was published in 1611 and authorized for use in the Church of England. 

Truth with a Capital T

I feel a little trite and immodest saying that I have been searching for the truth all my life but let me explain. When I was in high school and college so much of the world didn't make sense. My brother went off to a war in Vietnam that no one could explain except that it had something to do with fighting Communism. I remember reading a thin book that tied to explain communism and it didn't make sense to me. This could be called an existential angst, one of my favorite books was Catcher in the Rye. (I must reread that.) Mainly though it was that I never seem to be able to sense of why the world is the way it is. I figured there was some kind someone must understand it so I read what I could. I think I had a similar deep down longing for spiritual truth also. I did not go for an all out search but I checked out each new "learning" with this in the back of my mind. In my college introductory psychology class, I remember that in class the professor did some kind of simple test and I came out - "I'm not OK, You're OK." The most common position according to Wikipedia since as children we see that adults are large, strong and competent and that we are little, weak and often make mistakes.

I no longer think there is Truth with a Capital T though I think there is much truth that is helpful if we know and try to follow it. Civilization is not only how we have figured out how to live with each other but We each do are best in trying to make it through life.

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After Escaping North Korea, Freedom Is 'Seriously, Deadly Hard' Yeonmi Park on NPR

Counting Breaths to Experience Everyday Moments More Deeply

Instead of seeking for some success in the objective world, we try to experience the everyday moments of our life more deeply. That is the purpose of zazen.

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Meditation we sometimes practice counting our breath. You may think it is silly to count your breath from 1 to 10, losing track of the count and starting over. But the underlying spirit is quite important. While we are counting each number, we find that our life is limitlessly deep. If we count our breath in the ordinary way, as you would count the distance from here to the moon, our practice doesn't mean anything.

To count each breath is to breathe with our whole mind and body. We count each number with the power of the whole universe. So when you really experience counting your breath, you will have deep gratitude, more than if you arrived on the moon.

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The only way is to enjoy your life. Even though you are practicing zazen, counting your breath like a snail, you can enjoy your life, perhaps even more than taking a trip to the moon. That is why we practice zazen. The most important thing is to be able to enjoy your life without being fooled by things.

Enjoy Your Life, by Sunryu Suzuki, not always so 

Philip Kapleau Roshi (1912-2004)

Philip Kapleau Roshi (1912-2004)

Remembrances from Sean Murphy, Don Morreale & Kenneth Kraft

One time, during a dharma talk, Kapleau said, “Once you truly embark upon the path of Zen, you will lead a consecrated life.” I’ve been working out the implications of this statement ever since. What does it mean to lead a consecrated life? It means that your aspiration to awaken becomes the central organizing principle of your life. It informs your every choice, from the people you associate with, to the work you do to support yourself. It determines what and how much you eat and drink. It dictates your manner of speech, how you walk, how you do the dishes, what you will allow yourself to watch, read, listen to. It even calls into question which pronoun you use to refer to yourself (“I”? “We”? “One”?) Kapleau was a stickler on this point, suggesting that we find ways to avoid self-referencing in speech.

Toward the end of a sitting one evening, Roshi told us, “When you ask people what kind of experience they are having with the practice, you usually get two very different kinds of answers. The first group says, ‘Fantastic. The practice is transforming my life.’ The second group says, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been sitting for a year now and I don’t notice much change. Of course, my wife says I don’t fly off the handle as much as I used to. But I really don’t see it.’ You have to take what the first group says with a grain of salt,” Roshi said. “It’s the second group for whom the changes have really gone deep, so deep that they may not even be aware of them. That’s the real Zen.” It was this sort of off-the-cuff observation that began to shape my understanding of what meditation is, or is supposed to be. “You can let go,” he seemed to be saying. “You can surrender to the practice and trust that it will take you exactly where you need to go.”

Sentience vs. consciousness

Sentience — the ability to experience feelings and sensations — is not something easily measured. Nor is consciousness — being awake and aware of your surroundings.

People disagree on what is and what is not intelligence. The words used to describe the once and future powers of this technology [AI] mean different things to different people.

Some in the community of A.I. researchers worry that these systems are on their way to sentience or consciousness. But this is beside the point.

“A conscious organism — like a person or a dog or other animals — can learn something in one context and learn something else in another context and then put the two things together to do something in a novel context they have never experienced before,” Dr. Allen of the University of Pittsburgh said. “This technology is nowhere close to doing that.”

A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?

Robots can’t think or feel, despite what the researchers who build them want to believe. By Cade Metz, New York Times August 5, 2022

The stubborn "I"

Realization is just the realization that you're not separate from your life, that that's all it is. So they can put it in grandeur words, you know, grander, esoteric words. But that's simply what it is. You realize that you are not separate from life. And when you realize you're not separate from life, your way of embracing life changes. What's happening through Shikantaza and what's happening through pure Zen practice is before we started we're just clinging to the known, the memory of the known, the words of the known. 

When you practice Shikantaza, you're stepping into the unknown. That's what's occurring and because you don't know what the next moment brings, but if you step into the unknown, then life is vibrant. It's more joyful, it's more vibrant. It's kind of like it's an experience of discovery every day, but if you stuck in the known it becomes somewhat boring, even, you know, if not superficially safe. 

The Stubborn "I" October 2, 2020 talk by Geoff Dawson, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney