Early Christians Idea of Hell

That’s not exactly how early Christians used the idea of hell, said Meghan Henning, an associate professor of Christian origins at the University of Dayton. Those early Christians — inspired by the horror of Roman jails — created images of hell and punishment to motivate people to do the right thing in this life.

Fear of hell, she said, was used to motivate people to care for the poor or to live out the virtues of the Sermon on the Mount. That’s distinctly different from how the fear of hell is used today, she said — where failing to care for the poor is not one of the prime sins Americans care about.

Meghan Henning, the author of “Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature,”  looks at early Christian ideas about the afterlife,

As organized religion falters, the devil falls on hard times

As faith in God fails, so does belief in the devil. And that may have consequences.

By Bob Smietana

July 31, 2023 Washington Post

Attachment, Detachment, Non-attachment

The theme I'd like to speak about tonight is about attachment, detachment, and non-attachment; and sometimes its misunderstandings around what these words mean and what the nature of practice is. But as many of you probably read or/and experienced; in Buddhism, attachment is seen as being the source of our dissatisfaction and suffering in life. So we grasp after the things we want and we avoid the things we don't like and we hold on to the things that we think are going to make us happy in life. And it's the actual holding on that creates the problem, it's a kind of resistance to life because life (don't have to read it in a book, you just have to experience it) life is changing all the time, life is impermanent transient, everything is in flux. So if we try to hold on to something and make it a thing and make it your possession, whether it's a thought, or an idea, or a thing, or a person, try to hold on to it, you're out of step with the nature of life. 

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What we need to keep in mind is the whole point of doing this practice, where you you break out of being caught in the self-centered dream, is that you cultivate love and compassion and joy and equanimity.

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So, remember that your practice is about forgetting the self and throwing yourself into life. You know, throwing yourself into the stream of life and into the relationship of life. It is not about keeping yourself separate from them.

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Attachment, Detachment, Non-attachment, talk by Geoff Dawson, June 20, 2023, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

No Fixed States of Mind

It was a turning point which came when I read one of Alan Watts books called the wisdom of insecurity. And there was a certain point in the book where he quoted a popular Christian Sunday school song which said, build your house upon the rock and not upon the sand. But he said there's no Rock to build on, life is not like a rock, it's like a stream or it's like sand. There's nothing solid to build on. Everythings in flux all of the time. And when I read those words, it was a turning point. That's when I look back on it is led to me taking up zen as practice.

No Fixed States of Mind, talk by Geoff Dawson, June 13, 2023, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney