If you had to be a true believer, which one would you be? Take a pick and justify it.
Advaitan? Buddhist? TMer? Christian? Jewish? Hindu? Taoist? Or? What I'm trying to get at with this question is the identifying of which ism comes closest to one's "best fit" -- emotionally, intellectually, socially. I don't find it to be a trivial question for me. I may have an intellectual cynicism that tosses all "systems" out with the bath water, but emotionally, I resonate with the feel of some systems far more easily than others. Socially, being raised as an American, I have "built in" a certain automatic resonance with those systems that have been presented to me by Media as "American," as opposed to the way Media has presented non-Christian systems. And these various "approaches" to this question seem to each be able to hold their ground in my inner debate. I like Lutheranism as my "calling card" if I'm to fit in general society such that I'm not immediately pegged as "totally out there." I could be safely "invisible," and the other aspects of my presentation to society in general would not be skewed by knee-jerks. When I was a TM TB, this was not the case. I like Buddhism emotionally speaking because compassion is its middle name, and if ever I had a prevailing emotion, it's the feeling that others are in the same lifeboat I'm in. But, Buddism is a long hard slog to me when I consider its many processes that, to my way of thinking, MUST be overseen by someone who's already got the tee shirt, or, like a TMer who doesn't get checked, one's practice might easily get off track and one drifts from being a Buddhist. And, I am not a person to bend a knee to the mind of another these days. I was for Maharishi, but the sting of that failure still throbs. I think the TMO kicked the wind out of my heart -- commitment to another system just doesn't seem like it's in the cards for me. I like Advaita, intellectually -- it seems to have the best explanations for how I can escape attachment by bringing me to clarity about Identity and identification. But, the adherents of Advaita leave me cold with how they look down their noses at, say, well, compassion. Yes, ultimately, even compassion is a drug, but if I ever got enlightened, I sure would wish that compassion was an easily available process of the mind I witness. You? Edg
