Not Everything Is A Ball

Short post is short.

I've been gone a long time working on other projects and seeing to some major life changes.  Some good, some not so good.  But here I am again.

So baby boy learned the word "ball" the other day at the beach (see "Beach Babe" post below to catch his little mouth in mid "aaallll").  He does know what a ball is--that is, anything remotely circular--but is so enthusiastic that after a week he started using the word ball to refer to everything.

"No, Afon," we say, "that's not a ball."

Not a dog.

It's funny how certain primal ideas and bottom-of-the-line assumptions are revealed to us when we are having to explain things to children.

After all, if you said to a Buddhist, "That is not a ball, it is a dog.  And a dog is fundamentally, intrinsically, most adamantly NOT a ball," he would disagree with you insofar as the ball and the dog are essentially the same but separated by the horrible dream of existence.

What do Buddhists, Neo Pagans, and other Eastern-inspired believers teach their children about balls and dogs and all else?

Practically speaking, they must act in everyday life as if these things are separate.  It would make no sense and make life a little bit unbearable to treat your dog like a ball or your wife like a dog.  So in a super-simplified  (and probably vaguely insulting) summary of their model, the Eastern philosophers live hypocritically.

It is the Western philosophies and religions that have the gall to actually believe the way they live, to say,  "Hey, Occam's Razor: if this is the way we do things, maybe it's because that's the way things are done."

And if a garment fits you like a second skin, it isn't too far of a jump in logic to assume that it was made for you.

Which just goes to show why Judeo-Christianity is still the most common sense philosophy out there.