It often seems to be said that "virtue is its own reward". How do others here feel about "sin"..............or "evil". Is it its own "punishment"?

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When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird.

I believe that it is......but can be moved passed when the lesson is learned....

There is no punishment...just realization of oh oh...I made a mistake...and then we learn.

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RevKathyV

http://www.myspace.com/divinelightinterfaith



www.divinelightinterfaithministry.com

I feel like i am following you Kathy...are you looking over your shoulder...lol.....I really dont think there are any mistakes....we have merely been taught this at a young age when somethign goes different then another thought then it is a mistake...life and all we do is but a journy...all choices bringing differences...some people get very angry and demand there is right and wrong...and as a society learning to get along we have set up boundries to follow to hope to live in a more peacful state.....but as hard as it is to register...nothing i think is wrong or right...but harder or easier lessons learned....

Maybe substitute wrong with inappropriate and right with appropriate.
Wrong and right are so final, so black and white, yet there are no final judges of what is ultimately right or wrong here on earth, nor has there ever been.
Just because one has the power of strength to kill, torture or imprison does not make them the "final arbiter", or the "great authority" who knows what right and wrong truly are.
But we must have some kind of rules of conduct as anarchy is not possible with the kind of "haywire" homicidal fools we have running around on this planet.

That's very much a Buddhist approach. Welcome to the club!

Namaste.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

Thanks for the responses. What I was trying to get at and express was the way in which our actions at any one time presuppose a subjectivety and self-consciousness that is its own "reward" or "punishment". (Personally I feel that the whole idea of post-mortem reward and punishment - let alone post-mortem "compensation" for suffering endured - is misguided) Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with this thought when watching some modern movie where some sort of "hero" (or is it "anti-hero"?) ploughs his or her way through a succession of horrendous scenes of mass destruction and mayhem, yet remains apparently untouched by such capacity for violence as they subsequently sink into their lovers arms with profound empathy and tenderness!! Such "realism" seems to me the direct opposite of the actual reality of what could be called the human condition! Anyway, so it seems to me.

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third
Were axioms to him, who had never heard
Of any world where promises are kept
Or one could weep because another wept (Auden)

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When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird.

"Sin" is a human concept designed to keep society "in line" and controlled. In my view, "sin"is its own reward.

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"The Lord can make you tumble, the Lord can make you turn, the Lord can make you overflow...but the Lord can't make you burn." - Randy Newman