-1- wrote: ↑Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:11 pm
Walker wrote: ↑Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:49 am
A tree has many leaves fed by a common root.
Cut the root and the leaves wither.
Good analogy.
But what if the leaves are in-fighting? Denying each other the right to call themselves "leaf" and declaring that they are the only one and only true "leaf"? It happens, my one and only true friend, and this is what is at stake: why affirm that your faith is superior to that of another? Why declare that yours is the only true faith?
The analogy is part of a teaching from Mahayana Buddhism, and it also has other implications.
Of what concern is in-fighting to an outsider?
*
Philosophy need not be faith-based.
The only reason to care about another’s philosophy is to evaluate it as a potential threat to well-being or life in regards to yourself or innocents.
If another’s philosophy requires the other to determine how you or others should live and think, then that’s a threat to you or others.
If another’s philosophy demands that you or others conform to their philosophy or else die, then that’s a threat to you or others.
Christianity requires nothing of you * the outsider, L'Étranger.
In the USA, if another’s philosophy demands nothing from you or others, and if another’s philosophy requires speaking the truth of that philosophy, then here are your options.
Learn tolerance to bear it, or suffer the hearing of it if you can’t learn tolerance, or physically stop your hearing, or silence the speaker either legally or illegally.
* The possible exception is the sectarian practice of shunning, however that’s a passive practice of not doing rather than doing.