American Buddhist Net

This excellent essay provides an in-depth look at the various modes of resistance we unknowingly or half-knowingly employ when faced with new information. Some of the stuff detailed here will be disturbing to those who see themselves as being guided, at least most of the time, by the light of reason. But why hold on to false notions? As Buddhists, we should be constantly striving to understand the inner workings of our own minds. Robyn
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June 2007
Laurie Manwell

Imagine for a moment that you are trying to discuss the 9/11 truth movement with a family member, friend, or even a colleague, and are met with remarkable resistance (of course if you are reading this, you most likely do not need to use your imagination). On the rare occasion, perhaps you’ve heard, “Hmm, that’s interesting, tell me more.” More likely though, merely the mention of alternative theories of the events has of 9/11 drawn dismissal, joking, or even ire: “I don’t listen to conspiracy theories,” “Yeah I’ve heard some really crazy stories that the government did it,” or “How dare you mock the victims of 9/11!” You begin to wonder, why are some people less willing to examine all of the events of 9/11 than others? Is it really because they are obstinate or in denial? Is it because they are apathetic or judiciously lazy? Or perhaps is it because they are uninformed or purposely misinformed? Are there any other explanations? These are all very important questions to be explored if all of the properly investigated facts and evidence of 9/11 are ever going to reach the forefront of public consciousness.

...How much conscious, intentional control then does an individual have over the processes that govern his or her decisions and behaviors? In a review of the automaticity of mental processes, Bargh and Chartrand (1999) present a strong case that people have very little conscious control over most of their moment-to-moment psychological lives. Specifically, they argue “that most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes that are put into motion by features of the environment and that operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance”

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I am posting most of the preface to "Faulty Towers of Belief, Part II", in which Manwell points to the very conspicuous lack of curiosity about 9/11 on the part of those who should be MOST curious - namely, her colleagues in the academic community. I highly recommend that everyone, academics and non-academics alike, read these few paragraphs. Robyn
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August 2007
Laurie Manwell

...However, of the many nonreceptive answers I have received from professors regarding [9/11], that have ranged from unawareness to dismissal, the ones that concern me the most are those that are just plain indifferent. Being told that, although they believe that there is merit in such work, they are ‘too busy career-building’ or ‘cannot see how it directly affects them,’ is deeply troubling. In the aftermath of 9/11, it is strangely ironic that many academics still choose to remain within the proverbial ‘ivory towers’ of intellect, while the rest of the human population fights for truth from deep within the trenches. How can scholars, especially those who study the plight of people affected by deception, aggression, terror, and war, dispossess themselves of the responsibility to stop it, whilst accepting the publics’ money to further their own careers? Have we academics lost sight of the needs of our fellow man, to whom we endeavor to teach our insights? How long can we safely continue to believe that these towers too will not fail, as most of us believed on 9/11?

Thus, to those who would question the breadth and depth of Part II, which is absolutely more political than Part I, I respectfully ask you to consider the reasons why I endeavor to cross the boundaries of science and the humanities...

I see the Mahayana as mainly being a more positive statement of what enlightenment or nirvana is. The Mahayana was also a response to passive monasticism and a tendency to exclude lay people from deep understanding of the teachings. Much of the best Mahayana philosophy wends its way to statements of "pure emptiness' and thus leaves readers with something that much resembles Theravada teachings, with the changes mentioned above.

As for the Dalai Lama and his teachings on God and Christianity, as far as I understand, his main motive for being open to so many other beliefs and practices lies in his understanding that it is very difficult for most people to change religions, so to try to convert them to Buddhism will cause them to suffer while at the same time offending their traditional religious and political leaders. ABN
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2008-08-06 01:16
By Dr. Edward Perera

One of the acute problems in the Buddhist world is that there are so many Pundits with extensive Dhamma knowledge but their conduct is extremely contradictory to what they preach. In the past, the pious monks travelled from village to village, state to state, on some occasions also from country to country to carry the Dhamma message.

So-called Buddhist scholars talk on Buddhism to make themselves popular or if possible to have more money in their pockets. It is quite interesting to listen to the speech delivered by the white gentleman on Four Noble Truths and I am pleased to hear this sermon from someone brought up in the West. ( Buddhist Society of Western Australia - Forum)

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Dean Radin

...Our perceptual system unconsciously filters out the vast majority of information available to us. Because of this filtering process, we actually experience only a tiny trickle of information, by some estimates a trillionth of what is actually out there. And yet from that trickle our minds construct what we expect to see. So when we pay attention to our favorite white-shirted basketball team, the likelihood of clearly seeing darker objects moving about is substantially reduced. That includes even obvious objects, like gorillas. Psychologists call this phenomenon "inattentional blindness," and it's just one of many ways in which our prior beliefs, interests and expectations shape the way we perceive the world and cause us to overlook the obvious.

Because of these blind spots, some common aspects of human experience literally cannot be seen by those who've spent decades embedded within the Western scientific worldview. That worldview, like any set of cultural beliefs inculcated from childhood, acts like the blinders they put on skittish horses to keep them calm. Between the blinders we see with exceptional clarity, but seeing beyond the blinders is not only exceedingly difficult, after a while it's easy to forget that your vision is restricted.

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Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

Vaclav Havel
1936-, Czech Playwright, President

By Neal Grossman
When researchers ask the question, "How can the near-death experience be explained?" they tend to make the usual assumption that an acceptable explanation will be in terms of concepts—biological, neurological, psychological—with which they are already familiar. The near-death experience (NDE) would then be explained, for example, if it could be shown what brain state, which drugs, or what beliefs on the part of the experiencer correlate with the NDE. Those who have concluded that the NDE cannot be explained mean that it cannot be, or has not yet been, correlated with any physical or psychological condition of the experiencer.

I wish to suggest that this approach to explaining the NDE is fundamentally misguided. To my knowledge, no one who has had an NDE feels any need for an explanation in the reductionist sense that researchers are seeking. For the experiencer, the NDE does not need to be explained because it is exactly what it purports to be, which is, at a minimum, the direct experience of consciousness—or minds, or selves, or personal identity—existing independently of the physical body. It is only with respect to our deeply entrenched materialist paradigm that the NDE needs to be explained, or more accurately, explained away. In this article, I will take the position that materialism has been shown to be empirically false; and hence, what does need to be explained is the academic establishment's collective refusal to examine the evidence and to see it for what it is. The academic establishment is in the same position today as the bishop who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Why is this the case?

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From "Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology", Jeff Greenberg, Ed., Copyright © 2004

Constantine Sedikides
Tim Wildschut
Denise Baden

...The central thesis of our chapter is that nostalgia is a process that facilitates the implementation of the above-mentioned distal strategies, namely, enhancement of the self, support of the cultural worldview, and bolstering of relational bonds. Nostalgia soothes the self from existential pangs by solidifying and augmenting identity, regenerating and sustaining a sense of meaning, and buttressing and invigorating desired connectedness with the social world. We review theoretical notions next and offer our own as well.

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It is clear to me, and I am sure many others, that representative democracy as practiced in the USA is a horribly wasteful and inefficient system. It has been entirely compromised--taken over--by big money, greed, secrecy, blackmail, and corruption. Mainstream media has long been folded into the mess and has long been incapable of offering any relief. Ordinary voters can NEVER be expected to understand the in-and-outs of the system or to vote wisely (on rigged machines) for candidates who almost never fulfill their promises anyway. I believe this basic state of the nation must be taken as a given. It is square one. Once this is fully accepted as being more or less the way things are, we will be able to move on to square two--figure out ways to change the system. The website described below can give some insights into how we might go about doing things differently. Basically, politics is an information system. If the system is well-made and well-controlled, and if good information is input, the output will be good. If the system is clogged with corruption, bottlenecks, and special interests as the US political system now is, we will ALWAYS get bad output; that is, bad government, mismanaged resources, bad laws, stupid policies, and so on. Please take a moment to consider the position we are in as a nation. Then consider how it is simply IMPOSSIBLE for this system to fix itself through "better leadership" or whatever. The biggest problem we face today is our system of government does not and cannot work unless it is modified. I have made a few preliminary proposals for ways we might consider changing the US system by making a few changes in the Constitution--basically greatly expanding the size of Congress by replacing fake "representatives" with millions of QUALIFIED citizens. I do not expect everyone to agree with the changes I have proposed, but I do hope that people will consider the basic idea of changing our present system of government by amending the Constitution so that Congress can be expanded enough to allow for much better information input and output. ABN
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By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: July 22, 2008

John Davis, a chemist in Bloomington, Ill., knows about concrete. For example, he knows that if you keep concrete vibrating it won’t set up before you can use it. It will still pour like a liquid.

Now he has applied that knowledge to a seemingly unrelated problem thousands of miles away. He figured out that devices that keep concrete vibrating can be adapted to keep oil in Alaskan storage tanks from freezing. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute of Cordova, Alaska, paid him $20,000 for his idea.

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The beauties of religion need to be saved from both the true believers and the trendy atheists, argues compelling religious scholar James Carse.

By Steve Paulson

July 21, 2008 | Take a snapshot of the conflicts around the world: Sunnis vs. Shiites, Israelis vs. Palestinians, Serbs vs. Kosovars, Indians vs. Pakistanis. They seem to be driven by religious hatred. It's enough to make you wonder if the animosity would melt away if all religions were suddenly, somehow, to vanish into the ether. But James Carse doesn't see them as religious conflicts at all. To him, they are battles over rival belief systems, which may or may not have religious overtones.

Carse, who's retired from New York University (where he directed the Religious Studies Program for 30 years), is out to rescue religion from both religious fundamentalists and atheists. He worries that today's religious zealots have dragged us into a Second Age of Faith, not unlike the medieval Crusaders. But he's also critical of the new crop of atheists. "What these critics are attacking is not religion, but a hasty caricature of it," he writes in his new book, "The Religious Case Against Belief."

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Sunday July 20, 2008
By Austin Cline

One of the more popular myths about atheism is the idea that it's some sort of ideology, philosophy, religion, or creed. Some religious theists just can't understand how atheism can be anything less than that; in fact, some are so much in denial about what atheism is that they will go to great lengths to insist that it must involve some set of beliefs, assertions, and ideas about the world which is analogous to their own.

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Saturday, July 19, 2008
Lee Witting

...Call me crazy, but is it beyond imagination that Satan and his surrogates hold the politics of this world in one hand and its economics in the other? Just consider for a moment what lies we’ve been told to make the greedy even richer — at the expense of what once was a relatively well-educated, relatively comfortable middle class. Satan is described as a liar, and therefore a murderer. To catch the meaning of this description, just add up the deaths caused by these liars and murderers:

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Jul 15, 2008
By Spengler

Is morality possible without religion? Since German philosopher Immanuel Kant offered a "what-if-everybody-did" rule in 1788, modern philosophers have cracked their skulls against the problem without success. Kant's rule requires you to tell the truth at all times, for example, when a pederast inquires as to your child's route home from grade school. It was not a popular idea. Twentieth century secular philosophers declared the problem irrelevant. According to existentialists like Martin Heidegger, another German philosopher, authenticity rather than virtue is what is important, even if leads to Nazi party membership, while pragmatists like the just-deceased American philosopher Richard Rorty assert that we cannot make objectively true statements about anything.

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Saturday, July 12, 2008

At some point, time travel will be invented and your future self will come back to warn you about something. Be prepared by following these tips.

1. Have a secret question
Be wary of evil future selves or clones. If it is actually your future self, they will know the answer to the secret question; something only you would know. Like where you masturbated for the first time (in a bedroom closet.) Don’t make up a secret word (this can be figured out with future technology and “ditto” has been taken.) If your future self doesn’t remember the secret question, kill them with the really sharp knife in your boot.

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Graeme MacQueen
January 11, 2008

Abstract

On September 11, 2001 there were numerous advance warnings of World Trade Center 7's collapse, and many people have argued that these warnings are evidence that the building was subjected to controlled demolition. But other researchers feel the warnings are compatible with the hypothesis of natural collapse from damage that the building sustained throughout the day. In this article I examine the arguments of one researcher, Ryan Mackey, who argues, using the oral histories of the New York Fire Department, that the collapse was natural and the warnings rational and based on direct perception. Although I agree with Mackey that the damage to Seven was serious and must be acknowledged as such, I argue that a close reading of the FDNY oral histories does not support his claims and does not remove the cloud of suspicion that hangs over the collapse warnings. The majority of FDNY members did not rationally conclude, on the basis of direct perception of damage to the building, that it was in danger of collapse; they accepted that it would collapse on the basis of what they were told.

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Nicely written essay. ABN
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Austin Dacey

We often hear that some new scientific discovery has confirmed ancient religious teaching. It now appears that this hearkening back has gone full circle, and modern religion is coming around to ancient secular wisdom.

At the recent "Seeds of Compassion" event in Seattle, the Dalai Lama spoke of three paths to compassion and moral development in children: the theistic path of the Abrahamic faiths, the non-theistic religious path of Buddhism, and the "secular, scientific" approach. Surrounded by brain researchers and empirical psychologists, he recommended this secular way as the most promising. For some time he has held that if any tenet of Buddhism contradicts contemporary science, science must trump.

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“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” -The Buddha
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Book Review of "The Secret History of the World", by Jonathan Black
June 24th, 2008
John Evans

...The simplest way to explain his subject is to state that science has become a militant materialist philosophy that believes matter precedes mind. Some scientists have even called consciousness “a disease of matter,” as if it were an interloper in a senseless universe.

This view is the complete opposite of what a majority of the greatest minds throughout history have believed — or better, known.

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Well-worth reading. ABN
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By Chris Anderson

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."

So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now. Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don't have to settle for wrong models. Indeed, they don't have to settle for models at all.

Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition. They are the children of the Petabyte Age.

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The first country in the world that requires a test--similar but more involved than a driver's license test--as a prerequisite for voting will surge ahead of nations that continue to allow any citizen to vote, or even force them to do so. Following that, the first country in the world that vastly expands its legislative processes by using networks of WELL-INFORMED citizens to write and vote directly on legislation will surge forward even more. It's basic information management, and nations that do it best will be the most fit. Voting tests and expanded networks of citizens qualified to vote directly on legislation can easily be made as fair as the system we now have, and I for one am convinced that everyone will be better represented under a system like that. I doubt the US will be first in this, but a small country may find a way. Rather than have millions pin their hopes on a bunch corrupt "leaders" who do not represent them, why not empower the most informed of those millions through computer networks to legislate instead? Forget the past when voter tests were used as racist exclusionary devices. Think new. ABN
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By Bret Schulte
Posted June 3, 2008

The long Iraq war. The bungled Hurricane Katrina response. The credit crunch. A quick look at the newspapers will give many voters reason to doubt the wisdom of America's political leaders. Unfortunately, Americans are doing little to educate themselves about their leaders and their policies, says bestselling author and George Mason University historian Rick Shenkman in his new book Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter. Shenkman cites some damning facts to make his case that Americans are ill-prepared to guide the world's most powerful democracy. Only 2 of 5 voters can name the three branches of the federal government. And 49 percent of Americans think the president has the authority to suspend the Constitution.

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Saturday, June 21 2008 @ 07:29 pm BST

Tibet: The Lost Frontier
By Claude Arpi
Lancer Publishers, New Delhi, 2008
Pages 338, Price Not Specified

French born writer, Claude Arpi, is a zealous student of the history of Tibet, China, India, and their status in international politics. He has been living in Auroville, India, where he is married to an Indian. Today, he is well known for writing authoritative books and articles about geopolitics, environment and Indo-French relations. Tibet: The Lost Frontier unfolds the history of the Roof of the World and her political contacts with two giant neighbors, India and China. Arpi notes that history of these three nations demonstrate that Tibet and China constantly had a relation on the basis of force and power while Tibet and India had more of a cultural and religious relationship based on shared spiritual values. From the emergence of Buddhism during the reign of king Lha Thothori Nyatsen in the fifth century (AD) to border issues over Arunachal Pradesh between India and China in the 21st century, this book elaborates the importance of the Tibetan plateau, which not only holds the key to the well-being of Asia, but it also has a huge impact on the relationship between India and China.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Different cultures view humility in widely differing ways. Traditional and usually very religious societies tend to value humility as a desirable trait. More 21st societies see humility as a wholly undesirable character. The issue is even more complex as there are contrasts even within segments of given societies…

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Click here for a video of the Hartford hit-and-run to which the author refers in this essay. Robyn
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June 18, 2008
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth

Gautama Buddha preaches, "Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity." Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama advises, "Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive."

Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported, a streetlight surveillance camera captured the scene of 78-year-old Angel Torres being "tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver" on a busy street in Hartford, Conn. "Torres ... was not only left for dead by the perpetrator, but left unattended by dozens of passers-by."

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06/17/2008
Hoppy Kercheval

Rights that are not understood or valued can be too easily taken away. That’s why the results of a poll by Rasmussen Reports are troubling.

Rasmussen’s survey found one in four Americans (28 percent) believes it would be a good idea to ban hate speech. Rasmussen loosely defined hate speech as “comments intended to put down or incite violence against people on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and other legally protected categories.”

...Barring incitement, speech has broad protections, and those protections represent an essential freedom in this country. “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” Holmes wrote, “and that truth is the only ground which their wishes safely can be carried out.”

In other words, free and protected speech allows for ideas to rise and fall based on their merit, not some arbitrary bureaucratic decision.

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This is cool! For those of you who, like me, are not familiar with gaming jargon, I think MMOG stands for "Massively Multiplayer Online Game". Robyn
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By Promarcus

I was explaining to my Dad how death works in MMOGs when he brought up the idea of using Mahayana Buddhist cosmology to create a new death system.

In almost all MMOGs the player dies and respawns. MMOGs have differentiated themselves based upon how the player respawns and the consequences of dying. In some cases they are one in the same. This has lead to the creation of corpse running, resurrection sickness, and loss of experience points to name a few. It seems the only significant alternative is the controversial system of permanent death.

In Christianity when you die you end up in heaven or hell, sometimes purgatory. If you’re good you get to go to heaven for eternity. If you’re bad you go to hell for eternity. According to Mahayana Buddhist cosmology there are six realms of existence or paths of rebirth. The six realms are Deva, Asura, Human, Animal, Preta, and Naraka. When you die your karma determines in which of the six realms you are reborn. However, unlike Christianity, there are no final destinations. Once you use up all of your karma in one realm you'll move onto the next and thus continue the cycle of reincarnation.

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Interview With Author Father Thomas Williams

By Karna Swanson

ROME, JUNE 16, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Much of what atheists pass off as fact in their charges against God and religion is really based on myth, says Legionary of Christ Father Thomas D. Williams.

Father Williams is author of "Greater Than You Think: A Theologian Answers the Atheists About God."

“Though the atheists claim to represent the side of reason,” he asserts in his book, “their arguments more often than not are ideological rather than rational.”

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June 12, 2008

...David Bainbridge's description of consciousness (26 January, p 40), including, for example, the fact that we do not know where in the brain consciousness happens, was evocative. Scott McCloud, in his book Understanding Comics, describes a comic's story as whatever is happening in the blank spaces between the panels.

What if our minds function like a comic: they snap pictures, and our consciousness is simply the story the mind constructs around those pictures? - Saskia Latendresse, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

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