Here is the Easwaran translation:

3:33: Even the wise act within the limitations of their own nature. Every creature is subject to prakriti; what is the use of repression?

3:34: The senses have been conditioned by attraction to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant. Do not be ruled by them; they are obstacles in your path.

How can I not be ruled by prakriti (and attraction and aversion) if I cannot help but be subject to it?

I have trouble doing the right thing instead of the pleasant thing. Resisting doesn’t seem to work, not resisting doesn’t seem to work… I want to understand Krishna’s advice on how to change.

I philosophically understand that the senses are fleeting and illusory while the dharma is eternal… but I continually listen to my senses instead!

Why is my love of God, which is immense, not enough to keep me from being a slave to pleasure and pain?

I’d like to disnguish between two approaches to relious faith: Socratic and Abrahamic. These are just useful names but I don’t mean to generalize and say that everyone in any given group thinks some way or other. I’m just trying to illustrate two paradigms.

the first I will call Socratic, because it is championed by Plato’s Socrates. Socrates is supposed to be the wisest man in Athens because he knows that his wisdom, as human wisdom, is worthless compared to God’s.

Socrates does, however, believe in the Logos of God (if he didn’t, philosophy would be impossible). He trusts that reality is logically ordered for the sake of the good, even if he doesn’t think humans can ever fully understand this.

Yet, even if he can’t necessarily come to knowledge, he nonetheless dedicates his life to using reason for the sake of God. Since God is the Truth (the way and the life), Socrates is happy to be proven wrong because he wants to get at the truth.

So, Socrates does not claim to have certain divinely revealed knowledge of how the world is. Timaeus’ creation myth is called only ‘a likely account’, not revealed historical fact…

But he seems to have unshakable faith that God exists and that however the world is it must be maximally good.

The Abrahamic approach, on the other hand, takes their own religious tradition as supreme.

‘Abrahamic’ faith (as I’m characterizing it here for the sake of dichotomy) does not simply trust that whatever God is planning is good. Instead, this faith requires that the believer’s own particular tradition’s view of God’s plan is true.

For instance many Christians do not have faith in God in general but in ‘the God of the Bible’. They may believe that the Bible perfectly describes God… but if it turned out that it didn’t they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.

As a result, this kind of believer does not believe in God, per se, but in a particular human approximation or theory of God. They prefer their inherited cultural truth to God’s truth, which is cultureless and eternal.

This is at least what it looks like to anyone who doesn’t believe that a particular book is perfectly inspired above all the rest. This doesn’t mean that the sculptures don’t contain abundant wisdom because they do.

But why should we think that any of our books perfectly reveal God’s truth, which is unknowable in its infinite glory? The only reason is because we do not have adequate religious faith, and so we require revealed ‘knowledge’ that we can have faith in.

Such a person is not open to being proven wrong, and as a result they are not open to God, who is the Truth.

It is my personal belief that someone who truly loves God selflessly is comfortable not having revealed knowledge, but always strives to live in truth to the best of one’s ability, always aware of one’s fallibility.

I’m poking through book X of the City of God and I’m not quite following his arguments.

Leaving aside the problem of theurgy, what exactly is it that the Platonists failed to understand?

On what grounds does he say that it is out of pride that they do not accept the incarnation?

Would Augustine have had a different perspective if he had been able to read Plato’s more humble and socratically ignorant dialogues instead of only the Timaeus and later Platonists?

All insight is appreciated!

Hi everyone! I’m more or less a Platonist and I’m interested in Christianity but I find it very hard to accept that Jesus was physically resurrected three days later. Tl;dr is below.

I’ve spoken to some Christians (who are philosophers) and they said that the whole thing falls apart if we don’t believe that this literally happened.

They say that even if most other things (Adam and Eve, flood, Babel, etc.) are taken analogically, the resurrection on the third day cannot be taken anything but literally.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in resurrection in general. I just don’t believe in miracles. So I don’t believe in dead bodies coming back to life and then ascending into heaven—unless this is symbollic.

I don’t think this is an unfounded reading of the gospels either, because the conditions of his ressurection are very strange. To me this points to something non-literal going on.

For instance, the disciples do not recognize him when he first appears to them. If his body was reanimated I really think his friends would recognize him when they saw him!

But the resurrected body is supposed to be rather different! And somewhat magical. I could believe in a supernatural ressurected body at some future time (like the second coming)… but I just can’t believe that a supernatural resurrected body like that roamed the earth 2000 years ago before ascending into heaven.

It seems to me that this historical anchoring automatically wraps Christianity in a certain ethnocentricity which I do not think is conducive to good theology. What I am trying to find out now is whether I can hold this belief and still identify as Christian.

Likewise, I want to explain Jesus’ miracles as representing the way in which the Logos purifies us of sin and imperfection, rather than explaining it in a way that would contradict any laws of physics.

I understand Jesus’ miracles the same way I understand the revelation at mount Sinai… in that I do not think that God literally and physically passed by Moses to be seen from behind… but that this represents something real nonetheless.

I think the main difference between the Christian perspective and my own is that I believe that if Jesus really did not do any miracles or anything supernatural that this does not make him any less God. He would be God to me regardless, so long as he really lived according to his two commandments.

Thanks for reading. All insights are welcome!

Tl;dr: If anyone could recommend some Platonic theologians who have offered a non-literal reading of the resurrection on the third day and the risen Jesus’ appearing to disciples, that would be very much appreciated!!

Maybe Origen or somebody had something to say? I’m not terribly familiar with everybody.

Sincerely, doubting Thomas

5/8/11 looks a lot like 5/8/77 lol

Robert Johnson is of course the legendary friend of the devil who’s got the walkin’ blues!

Robert Johnson played a song called ‘last fair deal gone down’ which corresponds nicely to Cornell’s deal and loser.

(P.s. I was listening to the road trips with Cornell 5/7/80 yesterday and fuck I love Bobby)

I’ve heard this or something like it a few times but I don’t know enough enough about history or anything to judge for myself whether it is probable or just speculation without much force.

Wikipedia for instance says he is probably responsible for Indian (especially Samkhya) influence on Plotinus. How likely is this?

(I’m also curious about the Plato-India speculation but that is another topic.)

Reading Hesiod’s Theogony I came across Electra (an Oceanid) who procreates with Thaumas (a sea god).

I immediately thought of Mountains of the Moon with Electra and Tom (presumably Thomas) Banjo.

It would almost seem like a reach, except that I don’t know where else Hunter would have pulled ‘Electra’ if not from Greek myth.

So I believe this is where Tom gets his name.

(If you’re curious, their children are Iris, goddess of rainbows and messenger to the gods; and the Harpies: Aello and Okypete).