tales from the dishwasher

[uki]

the act of washing dishes is attributed to being a medative activity which can lead to enlightenment(make light your burden)... today while i was washing dishes, i had a most stunning revelation and so i decided to start a thread for those of us who might on occasion have a mental orgasm while washing dishes...

according to christianity(and more than likely most other propagated religions), man existed in a state of perfectness before "the fall", or an incident resulting in mans ability to discern between right and wrong, good and evil... at this point(an inflection mind you), man was punished and thrown out of paradise to till the ground and live and die thru sweat, blood, and toil. yet... in modern society, the books of law governing the nations of mankind, define the concept of "insanity" in defense, as lacking the ability to discern between what is right and what is wrong.

so... hopefully this might set of a chain reaction in someones elses synapse's causing them to overload into a mental eruption of thought. :)

[David Jamieson]

insanity is also the inabilty to form intent and a few other things as well.
ability to distinguish what is real is also part of it. And by real I mean that objective reality which is extant and wholly separate from any persons feelings, emotions, projections, distortions etc.

as for the fall of man, it can also be viewed as the rise of man. whereby we break from our animistic selves, rise up and become the dominating species.

the greatest tool being our minds and in support of that, our languages whereby we can exchange information across generations, across time and build as a species in that manner as opposed to being beasts who act only instinctually and have limited information to pass along from generation to generation and break that generational line once (taming) and you destroy the instinctual learning path.

in a judaeo/christian/muslim sense:

"In the beginning was the word and the word was god."

Language and sentience are extremely important ingredients in what we are.

In my opinion. :)

[Scott R. Brown]

Learning right from wrong, that act of making distinctions, according Buddhism, creates clinging, which creates karma both of which binds us to the world of samsara.

So, in a sense, distinctions lead to a type of fall within Buddhism as well.

Also, any activity, performed with a certain mindset could be a path to enlightenment/realization! But in the end, it isn't the activity, it is the mindset that leads to realization. The activity would merely be considered a useful expedient!