I was discussing 'spiritual aspects of living' on various online
forums. One group was composed of dedicated atheists, some quite bitter
I might add. But to be fair to the atheists, I've known many a
religious fellow that are just as bitter, if not more so, than atheists
I meet. So just being 'religious' is not a guarantee of being at peace.
Each man made religion contains perfection's as well as imperfections.
It is up to the practitioner or end user to use the tools in the right
way. The problem is not the wisdom that is defective. The problem lies
with religious practitioners who are defective in their practice of
this wisdom. The wisdom works - we don't work the wisdom. Many times we
are too busy for peace. As one atheist list member wrote, 'It took
awhile - far too long, really - but I've finally found that one can
find peace by simply being undisturbed." Yes, peace is our birthright,
if we are not destroying it by our own actions. In order to slow down
enough to be able to use peace as a tool I needed to apply simplicity
and renunciation to my life. I am not an acetic or total renunciate by
any means, but I did have to let go of many peace destroying habits
before making room for inner peace to enter my life. As we get rid of
one thing, it make room for another thing to enter.

The online discussions based in bitterness brought up the question of
"what guiding light do atheists use to be at peace?" Not much was
offered in reply to my question. I got a few answers here or there. It
seems whenever the discussion turns to 'inner peace' many of the people
I talk with are silent, this even goes for 'pious' Catholic priests.
But, one fellow on the forum mentioned 'truth and philosophy,' as his
tools - both of these being good answers for peace generation with
proper application. Philosophy plays a big role in my life as well for
providing tools to live at peace. I also supplement my spiritual path
from many other sources as I will go into below. I am only interested
in practical application of philosophy though and not bickering and
arguing over the unanswerable. So, I prefer truth based discussions
over ego based discussions where the truth gets overshadowed by
rhetoric. As someone once wrote ... "if you don't know the answer then
just say so."

I was at a philosophy symposium last year and talked with a professor
about a teaching / mentor relationship he had with Ayn Rand. He went on
to say how after a year they broke up the mentor relationship on a sour
note. After I questioned the professor about Rand's personal life as
well as her state of inner peace and happiness, I could see that with
all her talents of 'smarts' she was bankrupt when the subject turned to
peace smarts, contentment and happiness. She was ego based and not
practice based when it came to peace generation. Furthermore, she not
only destroyed her peace, but from the information that came out of our
discussion, the then student's peace was disturbed at the time and it
still sounded disturbed decades later as a distinguished professor and
author. Academic smarts are not the same as peace smarts.

The branch of philosophy that deals with the study of ethics and virtue
has also helped me along in life. What is virtue and ethics? Some
authorities define it as 'excellence of the soul' or moral excellence.
(Although the Greeks thought of 'soul and form' in different terms than
say Christians think of soul. For example, the soul of an eye would be
its ability to 'see' and whether this ability was good or bad would
decide whether the soul of an eye had 'virtue' or excellence.) The
concept for understanding virtue can be told in a story of the 'Ring of
Gyges' or 'Myth of Gyges'. This story was taken from Plato's Republic
and recounts how the shepherd Gyges finds a ring on a hand extending
from a crack in the earth and removes the ring from the hand and puts
it on. Gyges discovers the magic ring gives him powers to be invisible
at will and then uses these powers to kill the king, rape the queen and
take over the kingdom. As James Allen tells us in "As A Man Thinketh" -
"Circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself"

What is virtuous behavior in a flourishing human being? In readily
understandable terms we can help define virtue for us from this story
of Gyges and by asking ourselves the question, "What would we do if no
one was looking or we knew we would not get caught?" No heaven, no
hell, no God, no karma, no police, nothing but us and our virtue? Would
our actions promote our inner peace as well as the inner peace of
others or would our actions destroy our peace and the peace of others?
Virtue is not learned from the classroom, other than memorizing
definitions. Remember, a fool can only say what he knows ~ it takes a
wise man to know what he says. How do we become a success at living a
virtuous life and really know what we say? As a lecture on Aristotle
mentioned: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an
act but a habit." We develop it by practice. Practicing 'excellence of
the human soul' is how.

Beside the philosophical studies of ethics and virtue, a Buddhist or
Taoist practice is another good peace developer for an atheist.
Buddhists or Taoists are not required to believe or not believe in God,
so anyone can make use of this philosophy irrespective of their
religious beliefs or lack thereof. But be careful with your Buddhist
studies if you decide to head in this direction. For Buddhism is
riddled with useless ego based dogma. If you can sift through the
useless and find the gems you will do well.

See: http://jesusneverexisted.org/jne/for....php?topic=9.0

Personally, I've settled on the essence of Buddhism and that is what I
work on and find much peace with this type of simplified Buddhist
practice.

"The Three Pillars of Buddhism"

1- Practicing mindfulness and meditation to develop peace and self
awareness of our own true nature.

2- Accepting the liberating wisdom of impermanence and practicing
non-clinging and a lessening of craving and desires.

3- The development of compassion for others.

In addition to the three pillars, we can use the eightfold path to
guide us. Within the three pillars and the eightfold path are a
lifetime of practice. No need to get lost in endless debate and spend
your precious time in idle talk that only serves to massage one's ego.
Plenty of work to do right here, right now, unless we prefer to keep
our minds distracted through our perpetual complexities we are so
addicted to. We do need to give some thought of the 'right' way to live
as the eightfold path tells us, so we should never try and be devoid of
thought in our lives, but instead look for a balance and let thought
serve us for once.

"The Eightfold Path"

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

How can you differentiate right from wrong? By peace. You learn what
destroys your peace and the peace of others as well as what promotes
you inner peace and the inner peace of others. Do you need a teacher
for that? Or the Pope to tell you? Or just listen to peace as the best
teacher?

The Five precepts are the 'commandments' more or less for Buddhists.
Although you are not commanded to do a thing. If you wish to live at
peace, then proceed the best you can - but it is your choice.

"The Five Precepts"

1. Refrain from Killing
2. Refrain from Stealing
3. Refrain from Sexual Misconduct
4. Refrain from False Speech
5. Refrain from the Use of Intoxicants

Once I am at peace, I can share with others about finding peace for
themselves, which is the secondary reason I practice. I have no
interest in practicing Buddhism for extinguishing reincarnation. These
"fear based" reasons for being a Buddhist are not authentic or natural
- the persons actions are based on fear or negative consequences
otherwise they would not do them. My actions are based on inner peace
and if I stray - there goes my peace - it is my choice. Remember what I
wrote about above with the myth of Gyges? Take away the fear of pain of
karma or hell and you have a different person? A truly virtuous life
remains the same irrespective of such fears and is not based on them.

I enjoy life and realize that due to natural law, suffering comes about
as part of the process and I accept it as a fair trade off for the
privilege of living. Buddhism helps makes this trade off of life and
pain more in my favor by lending me support to live a life at peace. I
do not practice Buddhism to earn merit for the next life - I practice
Buddhism for my own peace generation in THIS LIFE. You see, once a
religion requires faith, this is where I leave off with it's teaching.
I only use the tools that can be applied in this life that can be
tested to yield peace. Otherwise, if I succumb to fantasy notions I
start heading towards the road of delusion. So whether it is heaven,
hell, reincarnation or chanting 'Namo Amitabha Buddha' for the Buddha
to carry me off to the pure land...none of this can be proven as fact
and is just based on ego based man and their fantasies.

Still, I am not shy about benefiting from any religious path that
offers tools for me to live at peace. I take from ALL spiritual paths
without prejudice, my only requirement is that the religious or
spiritual tool be one that offers peace. Any tool always has to pass
the peace test, this way it speaks of a 'higher authority' than just
man made dogma - it speaks of universal truth. But, this all has to be
done in balance. For there are many true things that are good - but
done in excess they become bad. For, even though air and water give us
life, they will also give us death when in excess. So always seek
balance. For instance, the Muslims have a practice of praying five
times a day to Allah. For those that do not know, Allah is the same God
of the Jews and of the Old Testament that the Christians worship.

The Muslims pray at sun up, when the sun is at its zenith at noon, when
the sun is part way down in the afternoon, when the sun sets and when
they go to bed. Even though I am not a Muslim, I borrowed from the
Muslim's prayer schedule to use as a reminder to be mindful of
"gratitude" in my life. If you do not want to develop a practice of
gratitude, then what about using it as a reminder 5 times a day to
relax your breath, practice mindfulness and bring your thoughts back to
the present moment? When you have come to a point of gratitude for
being able to open your eyes in the morning and being able to take a
breath of air everything else is just gravy so to speak. Gratitude
plays an important part with finding inner peace, just as being mindful
of the present moment and being aware of anything that causes this
mindfulness to wander.

If I could define the basis of my spiritual practice it would be that
of peace. Inner peace is the foundation of it all, for we cannot have
world peace without first being at peace within. I used to be a
Catholic for 50+ years of my life before becoming an agnostic
spiritualist. One time a lady moderator on a Christian forum banned me
for claiming that God is peace, telling me "you don't know who God is."
Funny thing about the Christians. I was a Christian as well as a
Buddhist in my earlier life and 100% of the Christian forums have
banned me, and 90% of the Buddhist forums have also banned me. this
says something about the Christians and Buddhists and whether they
practice what they preach? The Christians chanting the Golden rule of
Reciprocity? Charity and Humility? and the Buddhists preaching
Compassion and Do No Harm?

Why am I banned so much? Is it for getting in fights or flame wars?
No...I get banned for writing about truth. When someone disagrees with
you, apply the law of opposites to get at the truth. This removes the
personalities and focusses on the principles and helps you see the
entire picture. If God is not peace, then God must be the opposite of
peace...turmoil and unrest. I prefer to believe God is peace and God is
the authority on the subject of peace. The difference between an
authority and an authoritarian is this. An authority speaks from a
place of truth and such speaks as an authority. Whereas an
authoritarian rules by fear and not by truth. For the truth stands on
it own and the authoritarian stands on their ego.

The Buddhists have a set of rules they use to determine what are
definitive truths and what are not. This can also be applied to such
questions.

1) Do not rely on just the person but rely on the doctrine.

2) With respect to the doctrine, do not rely on just the words, but
rely on the meaning.

3) With respect to the meaning, do not rely on just meaning requiring
interpretation, but rely on meaning that is definitive.

4) With respect to definitive meaning, do not rely on just dualistic
understanding but rely on the wisdom of the direct perception of the
truth.

Bringing this worship business back to the topic of religion, do we
worship a higher power out of fear for if we do not worship this higher
power we will be killed? Sounds like the aliens in an old "Superman"
movies that came to earth to tell us to bow down to them or else? If
there was a God or a higher power does this entity need us to 'bow
down' to a 'big ego' or does God need us to 'act right' to our
companions as well as to act right to ourselves? Bowing down produces
no peace, whether in the person that demands it due to an over bloated
ego, nor does it foster peace within the person forced to worship
against their will. But this is how man made religions work - they are
run by fear, greed and ego. I prefer to be truth and peace based. Many
think God is like 'Santa Claus' and must come through with their
demands, just as we did as greedy children making up a long, impossible
list for Santa to fill. This smacks of the ego based practitioner.

The ego based person prays thinking they know better than God does. The
truly spiritual based person prays for God's will and not their own,
for if they truly knew better than God...the practitioner would be the
God. Nothing wrong with asking if one is a believer, but always end
such requests humbly with accepting Gods or a higher powers will with
gratitude. Can you imagine if everyone's prayers were answered
according to our self centered and conflicting demands? The world would
be in real turmoil then. No, I prefer to make God peace and truth based
and as such any action that develops peace brings one closer to God and
any action that destroys peace brings one away from God.

Many times we violate the three branches of laws that govern us and
constantly ask God or a higher power to give us 'hall passes' to avoid
the consequences of our actions. Such prayer is again ego based,
thinking we should have preference over the rest of the world for
wishing to be exempt from our actions

We are all governed by these three areas of laws.

1 - Natural Law

2 - Divine or spiritual law (if you believe in spiritual matters)

3 - Manmade laws

I find that sometime spiritual practitioners neglect the natural laws
that govern our bodies and suffer in this area from lack of living a
balanced life. Some of us forget we are spiritual beings residing in
physical bodies living in physical world and governed my both spiritual
and physical or natural laws in addition to man made laws. We need some
effort with spiritual work and some effort in physical work for a good
balance. Some of us think we can defy man made laws as well as divine
or spiritual laws. But no matter how defiant the person is...we all
answer to natural law. We all bow to nature in the end.

Anyway, you are free to think or not think of God or higher power as
you see fit. I am only a 'minor authority' on peace and do not wish to
be an authoritarian, so I allow freedom for all to think as they wish
and only ask the same courtesy be extended to me - reciprocity.
Psychologist William James once said, "A great many people believe they
are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." This
applies to atheists as well as the religious or the pious. To avoid
prejudice, we have to be careful of 'black or white' absolutes if you
claim to truth based and not ego based in your beliefs. I work to keep
an open mind for all religions as well as those persons that believe
nothing.

When I discussed Christian principles one time an Atheist piped up to
say "the Christians have no principles," and "Jesus was a fabled
creation of the Christians." When we sperate the personalities from the
principles it makes looking at things much easier. When I am referring
to Christian principles I speak of such things as charity, works of
mercy and the golden rule, where the emphasis is on principles and not
on the personalities of the church. For even if Jesus was just created
as a fable, these Christian principles are universal truths in their
own right if one desires to live a life at peace and promote the inner
peace of others in this world.

"The Corporal Works of Mercy"

To feed the hungry
To give drink to the thirsty
To clothe the naked
To harbour the harbourless
To visit the sick
To ransom the captive
To bury the dead

"The Spiritual Works of Mercy"

To instruct the ignorant
To counsel the doubtful
To admonish sinners
To bear wrongs patiently
To forgive offenses willingly
To comfort the afflicted
To pray for the living and the dead

You see, by applying the rule of reciprocity or rule of opposites we
can see if we were in these positions of the needy mentioned above, we
would like such charity bestowed on us for the most part. What about
our children, parents and loved ones? Wouldn't we wish the same for
them? We have no loved ones? What about our neighbors? The Christian
ethic says to treat one another as we would wish to be treated. As we
give ~ so we receive. Even if an atheist, as we give peace - we receive
inner peace as many of the tools I mentioned above do not require
belief in God, they only requirement is a desire to be at peace and to
bring peace to others. This is the Christian doctrine in a nutshell,
when we put principles before personalities.

As you instill seeds of peace within others you plant the same seeds
and water these seeds within you as well. As James Allen wrote in "As a
man Thinketh" ~ To think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to
patiently learn to find the good in all - such unselfish thoughts are
the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of
peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their
possessor." This is universal truth that transcends man made religions.
Remember, we do not have to do it perfectly. Just look for direction
and forget perfection - for perfection or range is of the ego and form
is of the soul. There are many tools for peace within the worlds
spiritual paths, no one said these paths are perfect, in fact, it was
once said that walking the spiritual path is akin to walking on a
razors edge. But if we bother to be honest, non prejudicial and to
look, we can find tools that can help us be at peace whether atheist,
agnostic or believer.

In the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, it was reported:

"The disciples asked Jesus, when will the kingdom come? Jesus replied,
'The kingdom will not come by watching for it. It will not be said -
look here or look there. Rather, the kingdom of heaven is spread out
upon the earth and men do not see it."

What does this quote mean for the atheist as well as the religious
minded person?

For the atheist or as a nonbeliever of an afterlife: THIS LIFE IS IT -
This life is either heaven or hell as you make it. Just grabbing all
the gusto you can will not give you peace. It requires much more than
that - for greed is never satisfied by attainment, it is only satisfied
by contentment. We are reminded to be mindful of each moment given to
us and to be grateful for this life. Being of service to others and
charitable actions help lead us to contentment and peace. There are 3
components for a happy life: Contentment, love or compassion and
gratitude. When we realize that happiness and contentment are there for
the taking and that they are independent from our circumstances it
sometimes can sink in that there is nothing stopping us from being
content and happy this very instant. It is your choice alone as to
whether you make this life one of peace for yourself and others or not,
but in either case you will reap what you sow. "Just as a life of
virtue yields its own reward, a life of vice yields its own punishment"
- Plutarch

For the religious minded person and believer in an afterlife: Jesus'
saying will foreshadow things to come. For if we make this earthly life
hell for ourselves and others, we have a slim chance of doing better in
an afterlife. Just paying lip service to religious principles and doing
the opposite will not do it. Again mindfulness of our actions is most
important. An old Buddhist saying sheds some light on our journey "when
one eye is kept on the destination, it only leaves one eye left for the
journey." If we keep fixated on the after life, and can't find peace in
the present life, we can lose sight of the fact that our actions can
turn the present moment in a living hell for us as well as others.
Actions speak louder than words and this especially applies to such
religious beliefs. By applying the rule of reciprocity and Christian
ethics and charity we have better chance at entering any afterlife and
in the interim help make this life a peaceful one for all that dwell on
earth.

So, whether you are on either end of this spectrum of beliefs, the
choices are the same as to the direction we take when it comes to inner
peace. The seeds of enlightenment are all around us - we only have to
seek the truth and come to peace within to realize this.

A quote on finding peace from Thich Nhat Hanh

"There is no way to peace, peace is the way. This means that we can
realize peace right here in the present moment with our look, our
smile, our words and our actions. Peace work in not a means, each step
we take should be peace. Every step we take should be joy. Every step
we take should be happiness. Are you massaging Mother Earth every time
your foot touches her? Are you planting seeds of joy and peace?
Enlightenment, peace and joy will not be granted by someone else. The
well is within us and if we dig deeply in the present moment the water
will spring forth. If we are determined, we can do it. We don't need
the future. We can smile, breath fully and relax Everything we want is
here in the present moment. Peace is every step. Shall we continue our
journey?"


Take care,


V (Male)