Tag: history
1939 description of Baltic region
click image for larger
Religions are concept-ularies, vocabularies, tools to speak about spiritual subjects. In this sense, almost all religions are good and say many of the same things.
I read a passage in Epictetus’ Discourses that closely touches Buddhist thinking (as a lot of Stoicism does). He said that friendships based on ‘appearances’ (Buddhist form) are always liable to disintegration. But friendships based on a will that is good and strong can be fully relied on. ‘Appearances’ in Epictetus means external markers like status, money, looks, tribal or familial relations, etc.
The Buddha said that it takes ‘long association’ with someone to fully know them. I am not aware of a Buddhist emphasis on ‘the will’ in the way Epictetus emphasizes that word, but Buddhism does encourage Right Views, Thoughts, Speech, and Action. And it does have a concept that all sentient beings are capable of responding to the Tathagata, being attracted to the Tathagata, the enlightened logos.
I like the word logos because it bridges many apparent gaps between religions. Buddhism is 2,500 years old. The Buddha never asked to be worshipped and asked that no images be made of him. He also asked that his words never be written down and especially not in Sanskrit.
He did not want the deep power of his enlightenment to become a narrow doctrine, a sacred text that would be treated as infallible even when no one remembered any longer what he had actually meant. Buddhism is self-defined as a mind-to-mind teaching, meaning a teacher or ‘good friend’ who explains the Dharma must be sure the explanation has fully penetrated the mind of the person being taught.
This is one reason it is impossible to really get Buddhism from reading alone, though reading is good. I had two very close ‘good friends‘ who basically taught me everything I know about the part of the Dharma that is conveyed through words and concepts.
I encourage anyone who has a Buddhist friend to talk with them as often as you can about the Dharma. So why did I put an image of the Buddha at the top of this post when I know I am not supposed to? Isn’t that a charming side of this beautiful ancient tradition? For many centuries, Buddhists have been unable to resist the urge to portray and honor our original teacher. ABN
Good thread on the moon landing
While the shadowban is strong, I might as well take a trip back in photographic history.
The best photographers taking the highest quality pictures in full sunlight.
In 1968.
Jacob Rothschild on the Balfour Declaration and the founding of the state of Israel
Western Hunter Gatherer 6th millennium BC, Latvia
Incitement (by the cops’ bosses) to riot
At some point, thinking people realize politics is all theater, govt-power-aggrandizement, corruption and crime. Every war is started on false pretexts, including the Capitol ‘insurrection’. Compare to BLM and Antifa mayhem where cops were ordered to do nothing. I do not like the actions or demeanor of many of the cops in this and other vids, but they are trained to do as told and our real issue is with the people who ordered them to behave as they did. The deep cause was election theft, surely abetted by those same top people. Our government has been infiltrated and taken over. ABN
Professor Maximilian Ruppert Breaks 9/11 Silence (English Subtitles)
CAESAR’S MESSIAH: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus – OFFICIAL VERSION
Speaker Mike Johnson to release ALL videos from January 6 starting TODAY – and will blur out the faces of some of rioters
Speaker Mike Johnson announced Friday he would begin making all of the January 6th footage available to the public immediately, following through on a promise to right-wing conservatives that started under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The clips will be posted on the Committee on House Administration’s website and much of the more than 44,000 hours of security footage from Jan. 6 has already gone up. Around 90 hours of footage is expected Friday and the rest over the coming months.
The clips will blur the faces of private citizens to ensure no one is ‘targeted for retaliation of any kind.’ The speaker said roughly five percent of the footage would not be posted so as not to release sensitive security information ‘related to the building architecture.’
Scott Ritter: 80% of civilians were killed by IDF on Oct 7 and now Israel collective punishment Gaza
The Gospel of Gaza: What we must learn from Netanyahu’s Bible lessons — Laurent Guyénot
In a speech in Hebrew on October 28, Netanyahu justified the Israeli slaughter of civilians in Gaza with a biblical reference to Amalek.
You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember. And we fight. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza and in all other regions in Israel, are joining the chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago, from Joshua ben Nun, until the heroes of 1948, the Six-Day War, the October 73 War, and all other wars in this country. Our hero troops, they have one supreme main goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy, and to guarantee our existence in this country.
In Netanyahu’s Holy Bible, God gives his chosen people Palestine, and the same God commands them to exterminate the Amalekites, an Arab people that stands in their way. Yahweh asks Moses to not only exterminate the Amalekites, but to “blot out the memory of Amalek under heaven” (Deuteronomy 25:19).
It was left to Saul to finish them up: “kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey,” Yahweh instructs him (1Samuel 15:8). Because Saul spared the Amalekite king Agag, Yahweh withdrew the kingship from him and drove him mad: “I regret having made Saul king, since he has broken his allegiance to me and not carried out my orders” (15:11). The holy prophet Samuel, who had a direct line of communication with Yahweh, had to butcher Agag himself (“hewed Agag in pieces,” in the Revised Standard Version). Yahweh then gave the kingship to David, who proved a more obedient exterminator, for example when he put the people of Rabba “under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon” (2 Samuel 12:31).
I hope this essay will inspire Abrahamic readers to reflect on the actual words and meanings in the Old Testament. I respect all moral religious peoples of all faiths but am also aware that for many religion is a cult, sometimes a dangerous cult of Satanic violence. The ancient Greek, then Christian, and sometimes Jewish term that most unites the Abrahamic traditions with Buddhism is logos. If we see God as logos we can also see the Buddha as logos realized on earth and the Buddhist path a kind of worship or reverence for logos. ‘Theologically’, Buddhists are sentient beings who are attracted to the Tathagata-logos. It is their good karma to be drawn toward logos. Others are blind to logos and sometimes repulsed by it.
A core Buddhist teaching is clinging to words is dangerous. The Buddha prohibited writing his teachings down because he did not want them to turn into scriptures that would be worshipped without being understood. This is why Buddhism defines itself as a mind-to-mind teaching. Buddhists who understands the Dharma well enough transmit it mind-to-mind to others who want to learn it. Buddhists do not proselytize or believe others are lost for having different practices. Buddhists respect and support all traditions and practices that encourage wholesome, ethical thoughts and behaviors because they all lead to logos. ABN
Why Are Jews So Influential?
Jewish populations have always had enormous effects on the societies in which they reside because of several qualities that are central to the Jewish group evolutionary strategy and likely have been under genetic selection in Ashkenazi Jewish groups: First and foremost, Jews are ethnocentric and able to cooperate in highly organized, cohesive, and effective groups. Also important is high intelligence, including the usefulness of intelligence in attaining wealth, prominence in the media, and eminence in the academic world and the legal profession. I will also discuss two other qualities that have received less attention: psychological intensity and aggressiveness, and finally mention the Jewish guru phenomenon.
The four background traits of ethnocentrism, intelligence and wealth, psychological intensity, aggressiveness, along with strong charismatic leadership result in Jews being able to produce formidable, effective groups—groups able to have powerful, transformative effects on the peoples they live among. In the post-Enlightenment world, these traits influence the academic world and the world of mainstream and elite media, thus amplifying Jewish effectiveness compared with traditional societies. However, even before the Enlightenment Jews have repeatedly become an elite and powerful group in societies in which they reside in sufficient numbers.
It is remarkable that Jews, usually as a tiny minority, have been central to a long list of historical events. Jews were much on the mind of the Church Fathers in the fourth century during the formative years of Christian dominance in the West. Indeed, I have proposed that the powerful anti-Jewish attitudes and legislation of the fourth-century Church must be understood as a defensive reaction against Jewish economic power and enslavement of non-Jews.[1] Jews who had nominally converted to Christianity but maintained their ethnic ties in marriage and commerce were the focus of the 250-year Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, and the Spanish colonies in the New World. Fundamentally, the Inquisition should be seen as a defensive reaction to the economic and political domination of these “New Christians.”
American Buddhist Net 