Religious Texts' Crash Course + Sharing

explorAR

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I am interested in learning some quotes and excerpts from religious texts that you find significant. I was raised Christian so I have a background in studying The Bible, but am more interested in learning of other religion's pieces of wisdom. You can still post Bible quotes that you find interesting, especially if you add why it is personally significant to you! I would especially love to learn about the Islamic holy books as I do not fully understand what role each one plays.

Thank you in advance for any replies to this thread!
 
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There's this Islamic quote that I love, and it's:

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It means a lot because I used to think that I and my memories are inherently meaningless, but in the grand scheme of things, I think having a universe within us makes so much more sense. Our decisions, spirit, hopes, dreams, memories, soul—do they not compound to something as great as a universe, one that God has allowed us to cultivate?

It's a little scary, especially when I realized that everything is so full of meaning to the point of overwhelming, but isn't that inherently such a beautiful thing?
 

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There's this Islamic quote that I love, and it's:

View attachment 44126

It means a lot because I used to think that I and my memories are inherently meaningless, but in the grand scheme of things, I think having a universe within us makes so much more sense. Our decisions, spirit, hopes, dreams, memories, soul—do they not compound to something as great as a universe, one that God has allowed us to cultivate?

It's a little scary, especially when I realized that everything is so full of meaning to the point of overwhelming, but isn't that inherently such a beautiful thing?
Such a great quote. A single conscious soul is indeed so much more significant than however many lifeless balls of matter there may be out there.
 

Chao Tse-Tung

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This one is a little long, and a bit different from I'm sure a lot of the responses you'll get. An excerpt from Principia Discordia (wherein is written absolutely everything about anything you'd ever need to know). I've probably posted snippets of it on here before, but here's the whole deal, a fun little exercise in perspective and just how limited our scope is as a single point of consciousness.

"HERE FOLLOWS SOME PSYCHO-METAPHYSICS.
If you are not hot for philosophy, best just to skip it.

The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Eristic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making.

With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about- reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept.

We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids.

A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle.

Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.

DISORDER is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", no-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about sex. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness", or vice versa, is a matter of definition and metaphysically arbitrary. The artificial concept of no-relation is the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE.

The belief that "order is true" and disorder is false or somehow wrong, is the Aneristic Illusion. To say the same of disorder, is the ERISTIC ILLUSION.

The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered.

Reality is the original Rorschach.

Verily! So much for all that."
 
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Treat others as much as you want to be treated, even tho i'm an atheist, i respect the messages of equality and tolerance, i just wish majority of christians were like that.
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Also do not forget: If you avoid paying taxes, you are supporting the anti-christ.
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Jade

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Deyr fé, deyja frændr,
deyr sjalfr it sama,
ek veit einn, at aldrei deyr:
dómr um dauðan hvern.

Cattle die, | and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one's self;
But a noble name | will never die,
If good renown one gets.
-Havamal, (The Sayings of the High One, verse 77)

"ek veit einn" is often translated as "one's reputation", backed up by the second half of verse 78, which reads:
svá er auðr sem augabragð,
hann er valtastr vina.
One thing now | that never dies,
The fame of a dead man's deeds.
but I think this is misrepresentative of the real meaning of this verse. The concept of mortality, not merely for men, but for all things, even the gods, is a core theme within old germanic thought. This is shown most famously with Ragnarok, the apocalyptic event wherein the entire world and almost all the gods will be destroyed. But even beyond this the germanic gods were unusually mortal - not only could they be killed, and were even fated to die, but they aged, too, and only though mystic means were they able to keep their youth.

A good reputation, and especially things like glory and fame, is earned by deeds, but dependent on men. But the verse clearly shows, men die too, and without men there can be no glory in any traditional sense - who would tell the tales? Who would there be to be famous among?

I think, rather, it has to do with the concept of time in old germanic thought. The book "The Well and the Tree" goes into more detail on this than I can here, but essentially, the past builds up on itself sort of like layers of sediment, becoming more and more "solid" and entrenched the more layers are added on top of that layer, on into infinity. What this means is that any deed or action you take, and just as importantly, all the deeds and actions you DON'T take, will never be "lost" from the perspective of the universe, because the way it settles into the vast chronological strata of the past continues to support and affect the future, even a hundred trillion years from now. The universe is shaped partially because of those deeds, but it is also NOT shaped in other ways because other potential deeds you might have done were not taken.

Of course this is all cognate and related to the concept of Brahman in Hindu thought and Indo-European beliefs, and even the concept of mass-energy and potential energy in modern science and the actual structure of the universe far beyond that, but that's the gist of it.
 
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explorAR

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I'd like to contribute a Bible quote that popped into my head today. There is a part in the Bible when Jesus returns to his hometown is rejected by the people there. Jesus says:
"Truly I tell you," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
I've been thinking about this quote because I am going back home for thanksgiving and I always have an awkward feeling towards my friends in my hometown. It is a feeling of having outgrown them/going a new and different path than them. And I see now that a part of any "hero's journey" is this out-growing aspect.
 
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Taleisin

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The tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken
is not the eternal Name.

The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of creation.

Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.
By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.

Yet mystery and reality
emerge from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of all understanding.
 
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The two texts that perpetually remain within arms' length of me - The New Oxford Annotated Bible & The Taoist Classics vol. 1-4. The former is a very well done biblical translation, with an emphasis on scholarly accuracy and lots of great historical & linguistic annotations, the latter is a high quality selection of Taoist texts, including some long overdue like Cleary's accurate translation of the oft-misunderstood Secret of the Golden Flower - my favorite guidebook for meditation, that's had over a century of misunderstanding in the west due to a poor quality early translation.
 
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