Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; not upon rumour; nor upon what is in scripture; nor upon a surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, “The monk is our teacher”.
Kalama Sutta- The Buddha’s charter on free enquiry
It might be advisable that we follow our internal consciousness rather than follow the voices of appraisal or condemnation from the others.
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many of us would rather not. custom and culture have an iron clad hold on our thinking
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What I tried to say with the previous words was, we need to activate our consciousness for its own sake. We are not living in times when people existed in the shadows of ignorance and only a few had developed the consciousness to see through the mythological deceptions.
The footprints of those enlightened women and men have long been filled in by the shifting sands of time. Their words of wisdom were then being absorbed by the “Ism’s” of the day, with the intention to control the ignorant masses for the purpose s of the ruling classes.
The remnants of those words of wisdom as meaningful they might still appear to us presented the insight of individuals. Considering the number of conscious human beings of today, it is time we begin to interpret our insights on the base of our personal experiences of reality.
If we allow monks, priests or mullahs to proselytize, with the intention to distort our conciseness minds, then we will continue to dwell in the shadows of ignorance.
To lift us out of those places were the intentions of Nietzsche and the twentieth centuries existentialists! Appealing to us to take responsibility for our conscious minds and to choose freedom instead of slavery.
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