Journalists are scum of the Earth. Whether right wing or left they're almost all influenced by deconstructionism and POMO and are thus declared enemies of truth.
Pedophiles are better than journalists because at least most pedos recognize their flaws (to the point they'll sometimes kill themselves). Journalists are so low and so ignorant they don't even recognize their own shittiness. Fuck these people. The idea that they're the ones that get to the truth is just a fat lie.
@Tfmonkey Everything is truly...fake and gay.
@AKEmon869 Marcus Aurelius also said, "It is possible to be happy, even in a palace," which speaks to how ostentatious wealth really isn't that great.
@dander I think you're confusing what I'm talking about (the ego's highest and final calling is surrender) with people who try to, egoically, absolve themselves of personal responsibility.
What I have to say here has nothing to do with the latter. People have been corrupting the message of surrender for their own selfish gain since the dawn of time.
Further, I do not count myself a Christian, even if there are parts of their philosophy I agree with.
The key to happiness isn't to surrender to what you can't control. It's to surrender everything.
You can't choose your desires or what you find pleasant or unpleasant. Thus, even the things you think you control...well, the desire to control them or have them at all was put there by something out of your control.
Byron Katie says, "You 1st learn what's someone else's business, your business, and God's business. Then later, you learn it's all God's business."
Perhaps later philosophers and theologians had separate conceptions, where the West made God a person and the East made Nibbana into a psychological state, but to me the essential concept seems the same. Perhaps you have a different opinion.
There is, bhikkhus, a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned. If, bhikkhus, there were no not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-conditioned, no escape would be discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned. But since there is a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned, therefore an escape is discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned."
"Thus have I heard. At one time the Lord was staying near Savatthi in the Jeta Wood at Anathapindika's monastery. On that occasion the Lord was instructing... the bhikkhus with a Dhamma talk connected with Nibbana, and those bhikkhus... were intent on listening to Dhamma.
Then, on realizing its significance, the Lord uttered on that occasion this inspired utterance:
The Buddha of the Pali Canon repeatedly defined Nibbana, the goal of Buddhist practice, as the unconditioned. I'd like to know on what planet he isn't talking about the exact same thing as God. Here I have pasted a very short sutta, Ud 8.3, as an example:
"God cannot enter where self does not leave."
Maybe the word "God" isn't your cup of tea. The point sticks if you use "Truth," "Grace," or perhaps a more Eastern word like "Tao" or even "Nibbana."
Problems cannot be solved at the same level they were created from. When self is the problem, it is not self that will solve it. Self has to get out of the way. Not-you has to solve it.
From this day, may I turn to God, to Grace, to solve the grandest problem. I cannot solve it.
@Tfmonkey You might consider that Hermeticism had Hellenistic origins. Due to Alexander the Great conquering much of that region, over to India, there's a lot of syncretic exchange that went on. There were even Greco-Buddhist kingdoms that existed. The beliefs of the Gnostics, for instance, seem like an outright mashing together of Greek philosophy with Indian asceticism.
@Tfmonkey You are dead on. And that's the place Roberts essentially gets at: God enters when Self leaves. There's a viable, real spirituality running through some Christianity, particularly in folks like St. John of the Cross.
Most of it, unfortunately, is nonsense.
@Tfmonkey That said, Roberts has something more than salvageable. She literally became a Buddha herself (well, there's no "her" to become anything after the process, but ya...) through Christianity. But she speaks quite strongly against the Jesus Cult and that modern Christianity, with its paganization and literalism, is so offensive to God that he's already destroying it. Christianity is on the way out and membership is declining at record pace.
@Tfmonkey Modern Christianity is a paganized Jesus Cult. Bernadette Roberts is the only Christian author I've seen that makes sense of the whole thing. The last book she wrote, "The Real Christ" traces how Christianity became a Jesus cult through examining the theology of the early church and its councils. It all started early and as best as I've done to go through theology over the past few weeks, my conclusions of what most Xtians believe is that it's simply low IQ bullshit.
@Tfmonkey I know this is true in part. There's an established +correlation between IQ and delayed gratification. Most crimes are committed by IQ 80-85 (smart enough to value money/property, too dumb to properly weigh risk and consequences).
But dumb people can gain discipline through following established rules. Low IQ religious people for instance.
The key seems to be emotional regulation. IQ helps but isn't necessary.
@UncleIroh @rohrkrepierer It's not a specific sect I don't think. It's a sort of common opinion though...militant Christianity. I'll take a stab at it and say it seems most common among Baptists, Pentacostals, the occasional Catholic, and folks that go to televangelist revivals. I have several family members and their friends who hold this opinion: that the country must be made Christian by the sword, because they're not going to behave otherwise.
@UncleIroh @rohrkrepierer I think there is a movement, popular among fundamentalist Protestants, that could appropriately be called "Jesus Fascism." It's not a theological view, but a political one, which states that the society must be reformed so that their particular church's views are shoved down everyone's throats, with severe consequences for dissenters.
I object to that in particular.
And btw, I object to Cyril and Monophysitism in general. Def wrong. I'm saying something else.
@UncleIroh @rohrkrepierer Well, the no shade part is good to hear. I'm not sure if I'm saying the same thing as Cyril of Alexandria though (I think that's who led to the Oriental schism?). I honestly have a lot of reading to do to place things correctly as I've had my nose in Buddhism a long time trying to make sense of it as well.
I think I will engage scholars on this. I just need to find some that will hear me out.
@UncleIroh @rohrkrepierer The church has misunderstood this from the start. I get you've been trained to be intolerant of those that speak against the party line, but there's a paper trail running through the early councils that shows threats and political machinations at work in pushing what became the official view. It's all there. The man Jesus even discouraged worshipping him and would leave the crowds on such occasions.
A person can't be God. Only a non-person. I'll leave you be with that.
@UncleIroh @rohrkrepierer The moment before he cried, "Lord, why have you forsaken me?" he gave up his personhood, the sense of an individual self. Since up to that moment it is that self that saw God, he thought God had left him. But God didn't leave, of course.
It's tempting to say he became God, but that's the heresy. There was no more "him" to become. God Is. That's all you can say.
In this we are no different. No person can be God, but by giving up the self, God is revealed as All.
Joined Sep 2022
