Why use the word "God"?

So, today I am taking it easy but taking it mindful. We’ll see how it works. I noticed earlier that I really am aversive around moving fast and being normal. I cling to the spacious, warm experiences. But I bet I could be spacious around ordinary experience too. The key is not to put too much in - it will spiral. Less reading, control of writing. But “meh” is an important practice attitude, I think. Ok, I’m moving fast. As long as I’ve got my witness engaged, that really is all that matters. I don’t need to feel oceanic every day.

I wonder if there is a difference here between the religious and the purely contemplative view on this point. Wouldn’t a Sufi want to yearn for that feeling of love? In a way, I’m also playing almost a sort of game. Because my hunch is I can get that feeling of love even in the midst of ‘fast’ time. So I’m testing that out. And lo, if I just do a quick Dzogchen check-in, which for me requires a few breaths to center, I’m back to the silence which is presence. So.

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I want to write an essay called There’s No Free Will. Because there isn’t. There is only on the apparent level of separate self, ultimately it’s an illusion. This is how we understand “God ordains everything and yet free will is also granted.” Because it’s an epiphenomenon at only a particular level of observation. Of course, that level is where we hang out 99% of the time, so it counts a lot. I think people are worried for several reasons. Loss of humanity. Loss of responsibility (“then is murder okay?!”). I think they’re more worried for the first reason but express it more in terms of the second. There is still responsibility, in a way, but it’s impersonal responsibility. Correctional institution - if only that were really what it were about. As opposed to penal colony. But even the penal colony serves mostly instrumental ends, like deterrence, which don’t really depend on free will. Only ‘just desserts’ does, and that is BS. Postmodern Buddhist Critique of Just Desserts.

Ok, back to listening to sounds and taking it really easy. It’s funny how that feels at once heretical and definitely the right dharma idea.

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Why do we use the word ‘God.’

Not just the word, but the concept.

It’s so tricky.

It readily translates into a thing which can be a kind of placeholder for other people. But, two points on that. First, I’m more interested in why I use this concept than other people; I’m not interested in sociology of religion right now. Second, as we’ve seen, the use of that concept causes a lot of harm as well as good. One might even argue, at this point, more.

I have a God-concept because it helps me relate to Presence and to Being. My experience of Being is that Being Knows, and sometimes that Being Loves. God as a personality captures that. I think it’s an accurate way of seeing Being.

What if I seriously undertook not to use the word ‘God’ anymore, but only ‘YHVH.’

David’s “God is a Verb” helps here. Really push us away from the old man in the sky and toward the Unfolding Now.

YHVH is, at the very least, a gerund. Which is what David really means anyway.

I think a problem area for me is the question of fear, yirat shamayim. Sometimes I think I don’t have it, and sometimes I’m glad and sometimes I’m concerned about that. But I think actually I do have it. My fear is not that God will punish me if I eat treif but that I will be alienated from God. The thought of doing so makes me very sad. Why would you do this to me? I hear ‘God’ saying. Or, ‘See, this is what happens when you do meditation and Buddhism instead of the tried and true.’

Part of me sees these thoughts as delusion. Projection. Part of me sees them as really true, at least on an emotional level. What that means is, I guess, subjectively, i.e., about me, not about God. Could I handle it? I don’t know, when I think about adjusting my kashrut practice, I see a nice plate of spaghetti on one side, and this gorgeous ineffable Presence on the other. Come on! And then a number of stories start. The two up above, and also ‘You really are just lazy and weak. Can’t you have any discipline?’

But that’s not how I live most of my life, being afraid to push boundaries. You know? I mean, I have my reasons for halacha and I think they still make sense for me. I’m not sure how much sense they make in the details, though. When I’m convinced the rabbis just have it wrong – wine, for example – I don’t listen. I guess based on experience, I’m not convinced they do have it wrong when it comes to some of these other things.

Pizza ovens, though? Come on. The only thing that could happen would be some pepperoni falling in the oven, which you’d see, or in the pizza itself, which you’d certainly see.

The reason this matters - the reason I don’t just keep doing what I’m doing - is: (1) it takes away from joy in life at times, and sometimes makes me really in bad shape (e.g. on election day, I would’ve really been better off had I eaten a slice of the pizza), (2) it gives me doubt, (3) it is contrary to other norms I hold, e.g. live life fully.

OK this thought chain is getting a little too fast and heady. I’m going to go do the 245 sit up in 101. Come back to presence, in whatever shape and form it’s in. These thoughts will not go away, nor is there anything that’s pressing to get written down.

I feel like I didn’t quite finish the ‘why have a God concept’ bit, but that can wait too.