What Mário Ferreira dos Santos does in this work entitled Sobre Deus (About God) is remarkable. After a brief exposition on the scabrous subject, there follows a very high-level debate in which simply the best arguments for and against the existence of God are confronted. Mário, although he exposes his personal position on the issue beforehand, lets his opponents speak freely. The result is, above all, an enlightening work, whose outcome fatally exposes the terrible contradictions into which those who deny the existence of God throw themselves, that is, the existence of the supreme, eternal, self-sufficient, and indispensable creator. Logic dictates that we must admit it. But there is more, there is a very interesting effect resulting from Mário’s intellectual honesty and wisdom: there are no stronger, more complete and convincing arguments against the existence of God than those raised by Baron de Holbach; and these permeate the work unhindered, free to show their potency. It so happens that when confronted with the irrefutable logical proofs offered by the great scholars of the problem, the logical proofs that demand the existence of a creative principle and require of it the qualities that have generated so much controversy for so long, Holbach’s arguments lose their force, even though they are not being directly refuted. What an effect! Logic imposing itself sovereignly! Everything that could be said against God is said, and said emotively, eloquently, bringing together enough aspects to make no soul indifferent. And yet, the argument fails completely in the face of close examination…
Tag: religion
The Common Man Places the Meaning of His Own Existence…
The common man places the meaning of his own existence mostly in relationships. Relationships are extremely fragile, and it is predictable that, for this reason, the common man falls into a very strong existential crisis. The religious man, however, the true religious man, who has nothing of common, finds something firmer to lean on. Whatever may be said, there is nothing like religion to give meaning to the human spirit, and this alone justifies the honorable role it plays in society.
The Contrast Between Buddhism and Christianity
The contrast between Buddhism and Christianity is really striking. The former can never, ever be mass-practiced, because it simply targets minority psychological types, to use Jungian terminology. Christianity would not be badly summarized as the rites of Christianity, whereas Buddhism consists in essence of a personal inner practice. If we talk about Christianity, we can talk about the Christian community; if we talk about Buddhism, we are talking about a relationship that the Buddhist has with himself. The good Christian guides his actions by the teachings of the Bible; the Buddhist, following in the footsteps of Buddha, has his conduct as a consequence of an inner philosophy. This says it all, and it is unnecessary to spend additional words…
The Path to Enlightenment
Although doing so may run counter to Buddhist doctrine, analytically dissecting the “path to enlightenment,” presented in numerous ways by many different schools, we realize that it can, indeed, deliver much of the results it promises. The basis of Buddhist Tantric practices consists in educating the mind through a self-suggestive process that establishes a new understanding of the self and the environment. Through a collusion between habits and mental reprogramming, plus a retreat that makes distractions or disturbances difficult, the being is effectively transformed. Meditating for hours, days, months in emptiness, seeing oneself and reality devoid of autonomy and self-grounding, believing oneself to be part of a whole, mixed in the same emptiness in which one meditates, although hostage to the illusions of sensible experience, it is predictable that one reaches a rupture—or overcoming—of earthly ties, and consequently reaches a state of soul that oscillates between peace and beatitude. Repeatedly denying the body, the mind, the reality of observable phenomena, the sensations, then visualizing oneself as a shapeless superior entity, strictly controlling any deviation from focus: someone who steadfastly pursues this path will certainly become something different. And to think that all this is just the laying of the ground…