To say that enlightenment is impossible for the uninitiated is little more than dogmatic tripe.

As for the urban zennites & taoists in their quest for freedom from wanting, I recently read a very precise sentence in the introduction of _Haita the Shepherd_ by Ambrose Bierce: “From this – for he must be thinking if he would not turn into one of his own sheep – he drew the solemn inference that happiness may come if not sought, but if looked for will never be seen.”

That aside, I’m not a big Zen fan. Sure, I enjoy Li Po and Tu Fu as much as everyone else, the poems about getting drunk and watching the sun rise, or getting drunk and watching the earthworm, etc., but most Zennies I meet seem to be so hypnotized by the notion of no ultimate meaning that they have trouble working with agression or conflict on a daily level.

Ok, so in the long term, especially in the REALLY long term, we don’t know the exact outcome of our actions. So what? Let’s talk about generalities. We do know that good intention, compassionate intention, generally tends to lead to compassionate action, causing people to suffer less. And then this leads to those helped people being more likely to have good intention themselves.

Whereas negative intention tends to lead to negative action, which leads to negative intention, and wars tend to be passed on to our children. Can anyone look at the world and dispute this?

actions snowball, into further agression, or further sanity, or whatever. Not only that, but within an individual person, intentions snowball, building up,likely leading to more of the same intentions in that person, ever increasing the liklihood of acting from those intentions.

So moral, compassionate intention is relevent. Vitally relevent, even.

I’m not a theologian, so I might be way off, but isn’t this sort of begging the question here? Right action is right action, regardless of motivation. Or are we now judging action based on intention?

It seems to me that in the longview, intention is virtually irrelevant, as no one can determine how the passage of time will affect the way we view a) the quality of our decisions and b) the ethical implications of the outcomes of these decisions. There are several taoist fables regarding this(I’ll post one below). It really boild down to time, circumstance and the perception of what the best decision is. As in Zen, the answer is that there is not an answer. One acts or does not act. The perception of the “goodness” or “badness” of the effect of an action is coincidental.

But that aside, it seems a little strange to be complaining about someone feeling superior because of their beliefs by stating that, actually, your beliefs make you feel superior.

Isn’t the fact that we can imagine an atheist (as well as a theist) endagering herself to save a child more interesting? That morality seems accessable by all people, regardless of belief?

Theism, in its best sense, is a structure that engenders and supports moral acts. When any system of beliefs (including atheism) is used as a crutch for egotistical claims of superiority, I think it loses its bragging rights in that same moment.