Mark 1-10

Jesus vs. God?

"And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha Cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment." (5:41-42)

This is the part in which Jesus revived a young girl and I think of it as one of his greatest accomplishments. I mean, who has ever revived someone? Not even God revives people and if they are revived, they are meant to be revived so how is it so accepted that Jesus, the son of God can go walking around reviving and healing people from left to right? I know he is the son of God but playing with life is supposed to be a sin and not accepted by christians.

I wonder, if Jesus could walk around reviving people, whats the big problem with the scientists creating artificial life? Whats the deal with abortion? It seems to me as if anyone with the power to revive someone could do it. I'm not saying that I would like to have my own personal clown that cleaned my clothes, that would be akward but my point is compleately different. Where is supossed to be the limit or the line that divides what is right and what is accepted by our religion?

I knew about this revival since I was a kid and i never thought about it. No one has the right to alter others life so drastically. Yet, another thing is that the story has changed and the girl was only sick and Jesus cured her. In this case that is great, a doctor cured an ill patient. But, brining the dead back to life? In modern days this girl couldve been a lab-rat with a nickname as Frankenstain!

I do beleive that laws are for everyone equally and no one should have the right to avoid them for his or her rank.

Matthew 23-28

Honestly, I would've preffered to read something else in vacations because of the complexity of the bible in terms of grammar. The words used in it distract me from the main point of the stories and I cant seem to get strong connections with my life relating this issues.

Once again, Jesus implores complete obedience rather than "social" obedience. It seems as if Jesus prefered those who didnt follow the rules at all than those who followed them at halves. One of the parables told in these chapters talked about 10 virgins and it grabbed my attention. According to this parable, 5 virgins were wise and 5 were foolish and the wise ones were the ones that ended up with the lord. Untill this point I had a complete understanding. You have to be prepared for everythig because you don't know what is coming and you must be obedient at all times because If you follow God laws when you want (just like the 5 foolish virgins), you wont be granted acces to the heavens. Then, it mentioned that the master of the 5 wise virgins provided them with all that they needed for their journey and that is the part that confused me. According to that phrase, not everyone can be with the lord, only those who are choosen get a chance. This isnt fair at all.

Lets say that you are not choosen and yet, you want to be with God and do everything as you are supposed to. Is this supposed to mean that you cant be with him no matter what? Does this mean that you wont be able to do whats nessesary to be with God even if you truly want to? That parable was very confusing indeed.

Matthew 13- 22

The beggining of these books made me think that we are misinterpreting everything in the new testament. Jesus says that he speaks in parable because you can see and not see and you can hear and not hear. What you have to do to understand anything is to think about it and interpret it. I beleive this is true since you choose what to see. When you don't see you can't choose what to see. You have to think about it and thats when you'll trully learn. Maybe everything mentioned in the bible about Jesus is written in a parabolical sense and we should not take for granted that Jesus walked on water but we should be thinking of the meaning of walking on water. A wild guess about what the walking on water means is that water symbolizes the stablished ideas by society and when Jesus walks on water, he overcame these barries and therefore was free from any "laws" as the law of walking on water would be.

Jesus life presents dozens of ideas that we should think about. I can't say that something is real because i didnt live with them to take it for granted. I mean, how do we know that Homer "epics" weren't real? there is nothing that says that they are real as nothing says that they arent. As I see it, the same applies for Jesus since we cant relly on a text. As Jesus could be symbolical or if he existed, his death for humanity maybe was more than dying to forgive our sins. Maybe the death and his attitude toward it also tried to teach us that there is no reason to fear death. After all, us christians beleive we'll go to heaven and I dont see the downside of it.

I know I am taking all this too far but it could be real. Maybe there is more of his teachings than the superficial ideas that are mentioned on the book. If he teaches in parables, why shouldnt we learn in parables too?

Matthew 1-12

Something in these books that Jesus stresses the most is that you shouldn't do things for God so that others can see. He calls these people hypocrites since they do it for recognition amongst others. Jesus says that the most important thing is to do it because you are willing to do it since God knows that you are doing it.

I liked something mentioned in chapter six. "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full od darkness. I therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!"
6: 22, 23

What I understand from this is that your life depends on what you want to see. If you beleive you are sorrounded by goodness and that everything is positive. You'll consequentially be positive since there is no reason to be negative. On the other side, if you see everything as dark, bad and evil. You won't see a reason to support being good to others and therefore you'll be evil. I guess that the eye symbolizes the mind and therefore, its not what you see that causes this. It is what you think.

Tao Te Ching 44 to 66

I found these chapters as the most interesting I've read but i think that the next ones will be even better and so on and so forth. These chapters mostly express the same 3 ideas.

The first one. You have to be a simple person and detach yourself from everything that you don't need. I am sure that this has a great, positive effect in your life but I dont consider myself ready to do such a difficult change in my life. This implies release yourself from every relationship, every material thing that is "useless" and every situation that is not nessesary.

The second one is that you can do more by doing less (which we already discussed in class). A quote I found that really made me think is "The farther you go, the less you know." chapter 47.
This is real because as you see more and more things, you have less time to really get to know these things or places and therefore end up with useless vague ideas that end up being a waste of time. Instead, when you take your time to get to know everything around you, that's when you really get to understand and truly learn. This means that you should take your time since you shouldnt have any hurries.

The last one says that you should take everything piece by piece and then you will accomplish even the greatest things. "See simplicity in the complicated" 63 "In the universe, the difficult things are done as if they are easy". 63 I will definitevly apply it to every situation I face from now one. First, I'll make the problem as simple as possible. This will save me more time and I will just focus on doing the important. Then, I will split what i have to do in little pieces to make it much easier.

I am sure that by combining all these 3 ideas your life will be really easy and serene. I guess that one thing that you can learn is that if you can accomplish simething by doing less and letting things solve themselves, why should you bother on worring about it and make a whole big deal about it. I strongly beleive that life is what you make out of it and if you can make your life easier and better, why shouldnt you at least try?

Tao Te Ching 29-43

Now I'm starting to feel the Ying-Yang that we talked about in class. For almost everything in this book is based on something and its opposite. I dont think that the Ying-Yang ever referst to good and wrong but always refers to A and B. This book shows us the balance of being and Wu and of acting and Wu-Wei. I am not an expert at that subject but I do beleive that Ying-Yang shows us that both sides taken too far are really bad so you have to mantain yourself at the middle, being able to adapt to certain situations and their opposites. As already mentioned in the book, extremes are bad and that is why you shouldn't be trying to look for more than what you need.

I came to understand at this moment a phrase I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that said that it was better to stop short than fill to the brim. I guess that it has to do with what you can do to fix it since to a glass short of water, you can add more water while to a glass with more water than needed, there is nothing that you can do (obviously you can pour some out but it will not be the right way since it'd be to missuse the water. The other idea about this quote is that when you stop short, you can make ammends and align yourself while if you do more, you've become eager and that has a price.

Returning to the balance thing, the Tao tries to tell us to go on, in the path without taking any deviations and this relates to the following quote.

"The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will loose it." chapter 29

Aside from explaining that the universe is greater than ourselves and we are not in control of it. I understand it as to stay in line and face any difficulties. As to myself, I dont beleive in that since I beleive that you can indeed reshape the universe as you want.

I accept the mayority of these ideas but I still have my own grounds, this is the best of the books we've read in class this year along with ishmael and I beleive that it is because of the radical ideas that each of these books present with respect to our lives.

Tao Te Ching 13-28

Alter I read these chapters I have to say that I feel much more intrigued towards this ideas. One thing that I admire is that there is no God, which means those who follow these ideas can fill it out, or that they simply believe that there is the only the way (Tao) and a source, The Source.

Clearly, they all believe in evolution and in life after death and I think it’s great. For many of us, death is one of our greatest fears simply because we don’t know what is expecting us or even if there is something expecting us but to them, they don’t have to worry about it since they know that they can’t do anything to change their future and that they’re lives will continue for eternity.

In chapter 23, it says that rains don’t last forever and winds don’t last all morning. If heaven and earth cant make things last forever, how could it be possible for men. I found this very wise and relates to the afterlife, or to our perspective of it. I keep seeing that being able to yield is mentioned often in this chapter and it relates to Wu-Wei because sometimes, to win you have to yield which means that they believe that a balance in our spiritual lives is very important.

Tao Te Ching 1-12

I think that the first part of this book is based on the idea of being selfless and only doing what you have to do. I understood this as going with the flow in other words.

“Better stop short than fill to the brim” chapter 9

This phrase caught my attention because its similar to a typical phrase in our community. What I understand from it is that its better to do what you have to do, or try to do what you have to do, than to do more since it will result negatively and will probably affect others or even yourself.

I believe that these teachings come with the idea that life is set up to you and that you have a predestinated destiny, which I found ridiculous, yet all these principles are full of wisdom and should be taken into acquaintance.

I believe that the Tao Te Ching and Confucius are strongly related although they refer to different aspects of life. I don’t know yet but I have a feeling that this book is going to be much more spiritual than any of the ones we’ve read before and that’s great because I consider myself as a person of a open mind, waiting to learn knew ideas and perspectives.

GO

What i found out about Go after I read all the tutorials is that Go relates to Confucius in a way because both are calm and patient. They are able to think further away from their next step in order to win or in confucius case, to have the smartest answers. Serenity is the key to win in Go and that is why Confucius would've been a world champion at this game, he thinks before acting and he doesnt nessesarily attack since you can attack by deffending yourself.

That is another characteristic i liked about the game, that if you maintain yourself attacking your opponent, you dont have time to defend yourself and therefore you'll loose. I kept seeing in the page that it mentioned that Go is a sharing game and you have to learn to yield and make sacrifices in order to win, in fact I'll post these very own words from the webpage down below.

"Keep in mind that Go is a sharing game - you can't get everything. You have to yield, you have to sacrifice, you have to apologize if you were too greedy. If you were too aggressive, you will lose everything, literally!"