Those things are not sacred but a mere manifestation of our limited mind. So what is sacred? — Benjamin Dovano

Anything I post is but a mere manifestation of my limited mind. So do not expect either a definition or an answer. But perhaps in the silence that follows, the sacred will manifest itself.

I am expecting a different POV :) is there anything sacred ?

Of course we would have to define what sacred means for everyone first. — Benjamin Dovano

Er ... yes ... that would be kinda helpful, so where's your take. At the moment you might as well be asking "Is there anything gezornenplat in life?" (Don't bother looking it up; I fabricated this word as a placeholder in a humorous article many years ago!) for all the context we have available to us.

I was expecting to build this definition together with other people, I'm not the authority...or at least I don't want to be. So again, what is sacred?

I'll try a broad definition then: That which is sacred is that which the nature of which is that it cannot be denigrated without denigrating the nature of the one who denigrates it.

Is beauty something that can be considered sacred?

Well, beauty is also difficult to define uncontroversially, but following my definition above, that form of beauty which cannot be denigrated or degraded without a concomitant degradation of something beautiful in the self can be considered sacred.

when we say beauty, the quality of beauty in a painting?is it in it's colours shapes and geometry or is beauty to be found in our trained eye? or is it something else? where is the beauty ?

Not trying to avoid your question, but that's leading into a discussion of aesthetics, which seems a bit off-focus here. Anyway, the beauty is in how the painting, the poem, the story, the sculpture functions in the contexts in which it does so.

thanks for the kind answers!

Oh, no problem, I think it's an interesting issue.

Is there anything sacred in this life? Of course we would have to define what sacred means for everyone first.
We created books, icons, statues, symbols, cathedrals, and other images that we worship and consider sacred which are only products of our own thinking and prejudices. Those things are not sacred but a mere manifestation of our limited mind. So what is sacred? — Benjamin Dovano

You are a troublemaker. Your question stirs up a lot of old debris and clouds of dust, but to what end?

We can dispense with your objection about mere manifestations of limited minds, since there are no other, unlimited, minds. We can also dispense with plea for a definition, since the word has a specific definition:

• connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration: sacred rites | the site at Eleusis is sacred to Demeter.

You also dismiss books, icons, statues, symbols, cathedrals, and other images which are only products of our own thinking and prejudices, so we can dispense with that too.

There's nothing left but the question.

Not in my life. Nothing sacred, no sacred cows.

Do you understand my question? Apparently you are doing a word recognition of my post.
I asked a question and stated my own opinion, therefore I was asking for other people's opinion about what is sacred, not someone to corect my question or beliefs.

I don't care what you think about my own opinion, but I care what you think of the subject itself... I want to see other perspectives. If you don't understand it there is no need to answer in the first place. Confused, we are / clarity we need... So please don't make it personal calling me troublemaker and so on.

Is there anything sacred in this life? — Benjamin Dovano

In a secular -- desacralized -- world, nothing is sacred. Not Mecca, not Jerusalem, not Eleusis, not the Black Hills in South Dakota, not the Bible or Quran, not the Mona Lisa, not the earth itself. Nothing.

Take Eleusis, site of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the birthplace of Aeschylus. It is also the site of the largest oil refinery in Greece. The sacred bit is an excavated ruins; not much to look at. It was sacred, once. Once sacred, always sacred?

What about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Sacred? Hallowed ground, the ultimate sacrifice, all that? John F. Kennedy's grave with the "eternal" gas-fed flame? How long is that eternal flame going to burn? The World Trade Center was hard to ignore, and a lot of people did not think it was an especially attractive building. Thanks to it's spectacular demise, and the deaths of several thousand people -- especially firefighters and policemen, the ruins became sacralized.

Sacredness doesn't last. It's transitory. Sacredness is always a product of our mere minds [see Richard Feynman: "nothing is 'mere'"] and only through multi-generational efforts is the sacred maintained. Interrupt the maintenance for a few generations, and it is gone.

Out in South Dakota the Lakota people are resisting an oil pipeline being laid to serve refineries in Chicago. They say it's sacred land. Is it really? I wouldn't want a big fat pipeline carrying noxious liquid hydrocarbons running under my yard (and nobody else does either). I'd be happy to claim that my patch of ground was sacred, if that served as an adequate obstruction. (There is a thin little pipeline carrying gaseous hydrocarbons under my yard, but I like natural gas. It fuels the sacred eternal flames in my furnace, hot water heater, and kitchen stove.) Whether their claim of sacred ground works or not remains to be seen. My guess is that the sacred rite of Eminent Domain will trump tribal religion.

Maybe a better question than "Is nothing sacred?" would be "How much sacred are we willing to tolerate?" There are some forests, river valleys, rocky outcroppings, and such that I am very fond of that I would like to see protected from oil wells, pipelines, refineries, mines, clear cutting, damming, urban subdividing, freeway construction, et al. There have been some blocks in downtown Minneapolis that attained mixed use perfection, that I deeply regret being leveled for highly uninspired monolithic buildings. Are these places sacred? No -- but that doesn't mean they are not desired greatly, loved, or sources of pleasure, contentment, and satisfaction.

I don't care what you think about my own opinion, but I care what you think of the subject itself... I want to see other perspectives. If you don't understand it there is no need to answer in the first place. Confused, we are / clarity we need... So please don't make it personal calling me troublemaker and so on. — Benjamin Dovano

Oops, a failure to communicate on my part. Calling you a "troublemaker" was meant as a salute, not a criticism. I took your post quite seriously. And eventually I got around to addressing the question. I had to go through some preliminaries first, the way a dog has to spin around a few times before it can lie down.

thank you for your kind answer. ;)

I believe we are taking the " sacred " word to much into our materialistic world.
For me personally Life itself seems sacred, however we are trashing it in the worst ways possible nowadays in our so called "society"- I can barely use this term because for me it has a majestic sound, a music, SOCIETY, it's something that in a different dimension actually means something and society lives morally. It sounds like something we should be proud of.. not like today.

We praise buildings and pictures .... and kill life (animals and plants)....

:-*

What specific sorts of things, or ideas, do you hold to have the quality of sacredness, Ben?

I believe we are taking the " sacred " word to much into our materialistic world. For me personally Life itself seems sacred, however we are trashing it in the worst ways possible nowadays in our so called "society"- I can barely use this term because for me it has a majestic sound, a music, SOCIETY, it's something that in a different dimension actually means something and society lives morally. It sounds like something we should be proud of.. not like today. — Benjamin Dovano

We didn't ask to have the world secularized, but we've been on a secularization track for quite a few years, at least since the Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution, science, capitalism, et al have been desacralizing the world very energetically. This pervasive cultural process has created an enduring crisis for everything that is or was considered sacred.

Billions of people feel the effects of secularization and the loss of the sacred. Of course, it isn't all bad; some of the lost sacred stuff was oppressive. But with the loss of the sacred comes a devaluation of life, culture, society, the individual, religion, the arts, and so on. Everything has been, is being, or will be commodified (see Marx).

Secularization is not going to shift into reverse any time soon, short of world-wide cultural and economic collapse--something nobody should hope for. But there is nothing preventing people from building humane values within a secular society or actively seeking and constructing new expressions of sacredness or goodness.

I believe it goes beyond the field of thinking, because of the limits of thinking. Thinking is a movement that takes place in time. And what probably is Sacred, is beyond time and thought.

It is very unclear for me too right now, because I am experiencing some very strange emotions after some deeper research into meditation and thinking. I have not felt this emptiness in my entire life, and I am no stranger to psychological pain.

Then whatever you find to be sacred is unknowable. You might as well make up some other word to represent "X" and say that it has some sort of impact on you. If what is sacred is outside of "time and thought" as you say, then what is there to be done about it?

If what is sacred is outside of "time and thought" as you say, then what is there to be done about it? — Heister Eggcart

Try and find it ?

You can try as much as you'd like, but you won't be able to find it.

I believe it goes beyond the field of thinking, because of the limits of thinking. Thinking is a movement that takes place in time. And what probably is Sacred, is beyond time and thought. — Benjamin Dovano

Your formulation "beyond the field of thinking, because of the limits of thinking ... takes place in time ... is beyond time and thought" leaves you (and us) nowhere.

The sacred doesn't have to be unknowable, even can not be unknowable if we are to experience it, let alone carry on a discourse about it. When the Lakota say the Black Hills are a sacred landscape, they have a definite idea why: To the Lakota, they are Paha Sapa, “the heart of everything that is.” The Black Hills are the high point of the surrounding plains. For any people living in close relationship to the landscape (where landscape and people are one) sacralizing the landscape is first nature. As civilization progressed (thousands of years ago, already) agriculture -- using the land rather than living with the land or in the land undermined the land-people relationship. There are vestiges of this in the Old Testament where the indigenous Baal worshipers sacralized high places--hill tops, mountain tops, and built worship centers there. The Baalists also carried out fertility rituals in the form of temple prostitution. The God of the Israelites instructed the Jews to do away with all such relationships to high places and fertility. The Israelites we promised land, and oddly enough, the land was desacralized from the perspective of the people who already lived there (the Philistines).

The general thrust of many civilizations has been to desacralize the land.

Consider Bear Lodge or Bear's Tipi. To me, it is natural that Bear's Tipi would be a sacred site. Visually, it connects earth and sky n a very dramatic and singular way. There are not a dozen other features like it in the landscape. It stands alone. It looks "made" in a way that a plain or a hill doesn't look made. (Technically, it's a hard volcanic plug from which the surrounding softer land forms were eroded away.) I think a structure like this would be deemed sacred just about anywhere on earth among pre-modern, unsecularized people.

Bear's Tipi, aka Devil's Tower

It is very unclear for me too right now, because I am experiencing some very strange emotions after some deeper research into meditation and thinking. I have not felt this emptiness in my entire life, and I am no stranger to psychological pain. — Benjamin Dovano

You're probably depressed and should be on antidepressants. [JOKE ALERT]

Feelings of emptiness and psychological pain go with the territory of being a human. People who always feel full and totally happy have something seriously wrong with them. .

It seems that there are at least two different senses in which the word 'scared' is used, and that there are at least two different answers to the question "What is sacred?".

In one sense the word is used for things made sacred, such as cultural, religious, or political symbols. For example, famous art works, saints, flags. In another sense the word is used for things we discover as deserving our veneration regardless of whether it satisfies a function in some cultural, religious, or political context. For example, something beautiful, graceful, strong, skilfully made, good, or someone being alive after some terrible ordeal. For some people life, a starry sky, or a friend may deserve veneration, and they are then sacred, because of what they are, as ends in themselves, not means for something else. In this sense discovery is sacred like beauty is sacred.

One and the same object may be sacred and deserve our veneration in one sense but not in the other. For example, a work of art might be sacred in some cultural tradition simply because it was made famous, yet without being sacred in the other sense, say, because it's neither good, beautiful nor skilfully made (the art world is full of people who believe that all would be a social construction). However, one may find a colour or a spiritual experience as sacred and deserving veneration regardless of whether anyone else finds it as such.

I don't believe this is true. Perhaps the sacred cannot be determined by any means, which would mean it cannot be found by either empirical (in the sense of intersubjectively or publicly empirical) or abstract thinking. Does it follow that it cannot be found at all?

I think sacred things are fetishized by religion, the real is taken as the ideal in the sense that bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

On a secular basis man seems to need ideals, things to strive for, to hold as sacred. Baden's definition of the sacred, sounded very much like a description of virtue: that which

cannot be denigrated without denigrating the nature of the one who denigrates it.

The problem is that all men are of "limited mind", the only actions which we are capable of fetishizing are the imperfect conceptions of an ideal. such as justice. Perhaps virtue's 'sacredness' lies in humanity's own imperfect conception of itself, since what we fetishize for (virtue/justice/...),,,we seem to require because of our own imperfections.

Well, I'd ask you as I asked Ben. How might you or I actually go about "finding" what is sacred, that which is outside of time and thought?

Sorry, but I'm just not seeing how we can suspend the natures of our being in order to somehow ascertain not only sacredness, but what is sacred in itself - and to do so without thought or under the confines of time. To suggest that we can remains utterly incomprehensible to me.

Does it follow that it cannot be found at all? — John

I'll go out on a limb here and put my foot down on this one - no, you or I cannot ever find what is sacred, if what is sacred remains hidden away in a realm governed not by time, nor thought. If indeed you figure out at some point how to find this without thinking about it, and without there having been any time to have passed, let me know. That sounds like an adventure. Might even be fun...although I'd never be able to remember it, alas.

Forget about the hidden realm beyond time and thought. What is sacred, if anything is sacred (and I hope something can still be sacred) it is in this world, our time, and our thought.

My guess is that Benjamin Dovano thought he was merely emphasizing the specialness of the sacred by putting it beyond time and thought. In so doing, he made it so special it's the same thing as non-existent.

The sacred doesn't even have to be that special. The slightly secluded thicket where you first made love might be sacred to you but entirely ordinary otherwise,