Mad World: Two Paths to Knowledge (video)

Slipknot; Bhikkhu Bodhi; Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

(Slipknot with Corey Taylor) "Vermillion" Part 1. See lyrics below along with Part 2.

It's not bleached!*

It's a crazy world gone mad. So one might ask, Can blondes be Goth? Where have you been? Blondes can be anything! We have more fun, get more dates, nab richer partners, and are generally hated by everyone...who are jealous? That's what I tell myself. Who knows if they're actually jealous. If only there were a way to know things! What is the path to knowledge, religion or science?

• *And so what if it is?

Two Paths to Knowledge

In the Buddha's Words

Many of the formidable social and cultural problems we face today are rooted in the sharp divide that has caused a schism in Western civilization between science and religion.
 

Science claims invincible knowledge based on the empirical investigation of the natural world, while religion can do little more than call for faith in supernatural creeds and obedience to codes of ethics that require restraint, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice.
 

Did religion come from space and weird aliens?

"Religion" as traditionally understood (a set of practices we yoke ourselves to) often rests on little more than big promises and bigger threats. So its appeals to our allegiance seldom win out nowadays.

The ethical ideals it advocates stand hardly a fighting chance against the constant injunction -- pushed on us by media and ads -- to enjoy life to the hilt while we still can.
 

As a result, a vast portion of humankind has become alienated from religion and spirituality itself as a meaningful guide to life, left with no alternative but to plunge headlong into the secular religion of consumerism and hedonism.
 

Too often, those in the religious camp, sensing the threat secularism poses to their own security, feel driven toward an aggressive fundamentalism in a desperate bid to salvage traditional loyalties.

 

Bhikkhu Bodhi translates lots of books.

The quest to establish a sound basis for conduct in today's world has been made particularly difficult because one consequence of the dominance of the scientific worldview has been the banishment of values from the domain of the real.

While many scientists, in their personal lives, are staunch advocates of such ideals as world peace, political justice, and greater economic equality, the worldview promoted by modern science grants to values no objective grounding in the grand scheme of things.

From this "modern" perspective, their root and basis is purely subjective. So they come with all of the qualities the notion of subjectivity suggests: being personal, private, relative, even arbitrary. More

LYRICS: She seems dressed in all the rings of past fatalities. So fragile yet so devious, she continues to see. Climatic hands that press her temples and my chest enter the night that she came home forever. Oh! (She's the only one that makes me sad!) She is everything and more, the solemn hypnotic, my Dahlia bathed in possession, she is home to me. I get nervous, perverse, when I see her it's worse. But the stress is astounding. It's now or never. She's coming home forever. Oh! (She's the only one that makes me sad!) Hard to say what caught my attention, fixed and crazy, aphid attraction. Carve my name in my face, to recognize such a pheromone cult to terrorize. I won't let this build up inside of me... (Yeah!) I'm a slave, and I am a master, no restraints and unchecked collectors. I exist through my need to self-oblige. She is something in me that I despise. I won't let this build up inside of me... She isn't real. I can't make her real...