At the end of the day, the battle was lost in 1453.
The best chance there was to reclaim Constantinople for Christendom was in 1917.
Admiral Kolchak was to command an amphibious assault on the Bosphorus, spearheaded by regiments named after Tsargrad and Admiral Nakhimov (amongst others).
Instead, it was Russia that was taken over by proto-SJWs, who a decade later would topple statues of Admiral Nakhimov to avoid offending visiting Turkish sailors (yes, really).
At that time, there were ~180M people in Russian Empire in 1916 (~95M Russians), as well as 10 million Greeks and Armenians in the region, vs. just ~13M Muslim Turks in Ottoman Empire. Today, the relative numbers hardly need recounting. The fantasy only exists in Alt Right memes.
So who really cares if it’s a museum or a mosque at this point. Tourists will still be able to go there and snap selfies, so it’s not as if anything will really change with this reversion to the pre-Ataturk norm.
The contrast between Turkish-Islamic civilizational vigor vs. the sight of the Western world toppling the monuments of its founding fathers obviously begs to be made, though the cynic may rejoinder that it’s more of a banal ploy by Erdogan to divert attention from the state of its Corona-wracked economy.
That said, I suppose if one really wants to assign it cosmic significance, one may view it as God’s righteous punishment for reserve Turkish Army officer Bart’s pretensions to inter-Orthodox primacy and support of the heretical Ukrainian schismatics.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Punishment for Pope Bart, punishment for Greek Orthodox modernism. At least we still have the great and ancient Russian sobors.
I will also allow that there is a prophecy by an Athonite monk who said that one day Russia would fight Turkey, killing one third, driving off one third and converting one third. Russia has nukes, Turkey does not. USA and China take each other out and suddenly strange things can happen.
To be expected from Al Jazeera:
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2020/07/hagia-sophia-matter-sovereignty-narrow-minded-act-200711195332236.html
Meanwhile the Great Mosque of Cordoba remains a Cathedral despite being mostly empty in the modern age secularized Spain (unlike Hagia Sophia that would certainly be filled up for the next Friday prayer).
Muslims have often asked the Catholic Church to get the Cordoba Mezquita back and were flatly rejected every time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_campaign_at_C%C3%B3rdoba_Cathedral
“Turkish-Islamic civilizational vigor”
Very unlikely.
Despite Erdogan’s baby boom campaign, the number of births in Turkey dropped by 3.6% to 1.248 million in 2018 versus 1.295 million in 2017. The overall fertility rate fell to 1.99 from 2.07, meaning Turkey is now reproducing below the replacement rate. Those numbers include very high fertility 20 million Kurds. Sunni Turk fertility levels are probably more like 1.6-1.7.
Another example, is that a recent survey found that even conservative, pro-Erdoğan youths have no faith in either their own country or other Islamic countries. SODEV, a Turkish foundation, asked young people between the ages of 15 and 25 whether they would live abroad if given the chance. Almost half (47.3%) of those youths who said they supported Erdogan’s AKP said they preferred to live abroad. Half of Erdogan’s youth have no faith in Turkey’s future. SODEV also asked pro-Erdogan (pro-AKP) young people whether they would rather live in Switzerland on $5,000 per month or in Saudi Arabia on $10,000 per month. As many as 60.5% of them said they would prefer Switzerland.
Turkey may seem vigorous but its actions are driven by an increasingly narrow Islamic elite and rural mercantile population which has increasingly relied on debt (often short term external debt) to sustain their growth.
Still, is it so bad that a Cathedral turned into a Mosque? Muslims are pious people.
In contrast, the churches in Ireland went globo-homo. They were turned into homosques.
It seems the same fate awaits Poland. Young ones are all into globo-homo, pornification, and diversity, especially Afro-worship. Do Poles even realize that these are proxies of Jewish Power?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/poland-right-andrzej-duda-pyrrhic-victory/
Rod Dreher laments the fall of religion, but the problem with the Right is their creative laziness in relying on tradition. While religion and tradition must have their place, the future can only be secured by new vision and imagination. As insipid as globo-homo and BLM are, they have confidence, passion, energy, and restless vibrancy. They buzz with excitement. In contrast, reliance on faith is about solemnity, which is good but not winning with restless youth.
What can capture the hearts and minds of restless youth in the digital age?
That’s what matters. There must be a place for religion, but the Right need and should not rely mainly on religion for its support.
That’s the ticket Brother, a modern day crusade directed this time from Moscow, where Turkey is nuked into Christian submission – are you for real???……..
As alternate history, it is nah.
All alternate historians worth their salt know that way to liberation of Constantinople starts with early death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and presidency of Henry Agard Wallace.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/foralltime/images/Europe1955.gif
What happens when FDR kicks the bucket few years early?
For All Time ensues.
One of the most famous, most creative, most detailed, most cinemactic, most cannibalistic, most nuclear happy alternate world timelines ever. Makes you really appreciate the world we live in!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ForAllTime
Full threadmarked timeline here.
https://hestories.info/its-a-good-speech-just-a-little-too-long.html
Nakhimov’s victory at Sinop led directly to Crimean War and Russia’s humiliation. Had Kolchak succeded in 1917, the history would’ve repeated itself.
England and France could not allow Russia to control the keys to the Mediterranean and Middle East. Germany would’ve gone along with them in hopes of getting revenge and recovering the WWI losses. Hence, Crimean War 2.0 would be all but inevitable. It would be like WWII, except in this reality Russia would have had even more enemies and no allies. It’s not hard to imagine how this war would’ve ended.
They are importing sunni arabs and putting them in kurdish areas in Turkey, probably with the aim of long term turkisation.
Do not crap on Ron Dreher, he is one of the few right wingers who understand that climate change is real and catastrophic.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/arctic-heatwave-global-warming/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/global-warming-judgement-by-fire/
He sees that global warming is as destructive for the body as homosexuality and transgenderism are for the soul, and both are advancing with accelerating speed.
He also sees through Trump fraud, and groks that the virus is not a hoax and not just a flu, which makes him even more unpopular in the right wing sphere.
You can understand why he is so downbeat and grumpy at most times.
My theory is that the Islamic world is in its WW1/WW2 phase – tearing itself apart internally.
Superficially vigorous, like Europe in that time, it’s the last explosion of fireworks before it subsides into senescence. I’m shocked at the low birth rates of Sunni Muslim Turks!
So you may yet have your chance, Anatoly. You may yet.
Russian Civil War was far more devastating for Russia than World War 1. English, French, and Germans were bled out. They attempted intervention but it didn’t amount to much.
If the choices are:
Civil War and how every unfolded historically.
Option 1 is best for Russia hands down. If storming Constantinople united the people of the country, even destroying American armies would have been worth it, and less costly.
The Blue Mosque smells so strongly of feet that it makes you gag. I really hope Hagia Sophia doesn’t go the same way.
Good. To hell with Christians.
The sooner people drop that pathetic religion and realize that it is conductive to failure(s), the better.
I’m becoming Catholic. The Greek Orthodox can get stuffed and burned out by their buddies at BLM.
Greeks are little sissy whiners.
Just try to find one Greek movie that isn’t gayer than a tranny who just got chopped.
And what about the rest of Spain? Belonged to muslims, so unfair that it was violently stolen by Christians.
If you’re feeling exhausted by the vigorous Turks and perhaps the emotional labor required to deal with them, no need to wave the white flag. Just let someone more energetic take over, for a while or permanently. In this case, I hear even the EU condemned their latest antics.
Please, no sudden movements or raised voices, everyone, but this is a great moment in birdwatching. Right above we can see the long considered extinct David French voter.
Welcome, time traveler from the ougties!
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/311/989/7af.jpg
I have some news for you – the Great Internet Christian-Atheist Wars are over.
Good news for you: the christians lost, the atheists won. Christianity is dead.
Band news for you: there is no peace.
Just like after WW2 the victors split into communists and capitalists and continued to fight among themselves, after the end of GICAW the winners split into SJW and alt-right factions and the struggle continues.
This is grim dark future of the internet where is only war.
Why? Because we want it this way.
Nice one. 😀 😀 😀
Mr. Dreher is a nice man (seriously), and a very good writer, but he’s also gullible. The things he gets excited about are an interesting sort of barometer of something — not sure what, but something.
These days he’s almost a kind of Walter Sobchak of the Orthodox Church, but I predict he’ll go back to Catholicism before it’s all over. You (maybe) read it here first.
“though the cynic may rejoinder that it’s more of a banal ploy by Erdogan to divert attention from the state of its Corona-wracked economy”
that’s what MSM says, following their usual agenda. Yet isn’t is funny, how such “diverting of attention” always movies into distinct directions? You could also over attention by allowing both christian aswell as muslim religious activities in the building or anything else.
This has been fully expected ever since Erdogan and his backers set about the long, slow task of undoing the work of Kemal Ataturk. Anybody who is surprised at this either doesn’t know much about Turkey, or is play-acting.
As Mr Karlin correctly points out, the building last changed owners in 1453. It was a mosque from then until 1935, when Ataturk made it a museum, which was not all that long ago. Considering that it is still the property of the Turkish government, I suppose they’re fully entitled to turn it into a hockey stadium if they want.
So I am puzzled by all the public moaning and hand-wringing over this. Even Pope Francis, normally so chummy with Muslims, remarked that it made him “sad”.
Here is my conspiracy theory: the moaners are really dog-whistling, and what they are saying is — “Go for it, Reccy. The most we’ll do is whinge. Enjoy your mosque.”
It’s weak, but I don’t have anything better at the moment.
There is a theory the the October Revolution happened in order to allow Palestine become a Jewish Homeland.
The October Revolution and Balfour Declaration happened within a week of each other.
Holy Russia would never have agreed to Palestine becoming a Jewish Homeland. The Bolsheviks could not care less.
80IQ Slav barbarians like Karlin are impressed with strongman shit from people like Erdogan, but more rational folk should be worried about another Islamized failed state on Europe’s doorstep.
BUILD THE WALL!
No, allowing Christian activities in it would be contrary to the entire ethos Erdoğan has been encouraging in Turkey. A subtly and not so subtly anti-Christian one. When the Turkish police raid establishments of whatever kind, they sometimes plant stuff in the media about finding Turkish translations of the New Testament on a bookshelf, because shock, horror Christian missionaries were about! Don’t forget that American clergyman being jailed for over a year, and it took repeated entreaties by Trump to get him released.
Trying to divert attention from Corona and a myriad of other problems in Turkey is what this is about. Erdoğan is a Turkish Trump in some ways, but smarter, more skilled in pushing a religious agenda and more consistent.
The Tsarist government was too weakened by WW1 to do anything, the Provisional government likewise. If there was one power stopping both from doing anything re Constantinople, it was Germany.
There’s a basic asymmetry because Christianity is true and Islam is both wrong and evil
This isn’t some “sovereign matter” by Turkey, but an act of aggression against non-Muslims. An appropriate retaliation would be a ban on constructing new mosques in Russia, taking down every minaret in Russia…Instead, Putin will probably invite Erdogan to open a new mosque! Putin’s orthodox posturing is all for show.
In “orthodox” Romania turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque was not big news. The patriarch issued a statement expressing the wish it will remain a museum, but the statement from the pope got more media coverage.
The romanian church is still reeling after their failed attempt to stop compulsory sex ed in schools.
The law that banned some transgender identity stuff was blocked by the president and will probably be struck down by the Constitutional Court.
With a german president and a hungarian prime-minister is the first time in history when romanian leadership is not even nominally orthodox (except the communist period of course but Dej and Ceausescu had been born in orthodoxy and didn’t do much to oppress the orthodox church compared with Russia) and the rising star of romanian politics, the USR party, is pretty woke and many of its supporters are the I-fucking-love-science type with accompanying aughts antitheism.
Ten times as many mosques were constructed in late Tsarist Russia in Moscow and SPB in per capita terms (about two) as in post-Soviet Moscow and SPB (also about two).
Everyone steals something from someone else in this world of ours, except for those who use photosynthesis to grow. I don’t think that Muslims belong to this photosynthetic category.
Muslims imposed themselves on a largely Christianised North Africa and by the Almohad times drove the Maghrebian Christian community into extinction. Muslims imposed themselves upon the Zoroastrian Iran, the Buddhist and Manichaean Xinjiang and the Buddhist Afghanistan.
From where I stand, from a purely historical perspective Christianity and Islam are quite similar in their tendency to force themselves down the throats of the people that fall under their control. This is what Abrahamic religions do.
From where I stand, from a purely historical perspective, all three Abrahamic religions look similar in their tendency to force themselves onto the populations that have fallen under their control. This is the norm for the Abrahamic Monotheisms: assert dominance by any means available. Be meek if you have to, act violently if you must.
This is a rather vague statement that has been used to describe every Russian leader since Vladimir the Great
What is the point of screaming at Turks and dreaming about declaring war on them and retaking Hagia Sophia when Christianity is under heavy attack and on the decline in Orthodox Countries?
And on this matter he has performed perfectly fine, from Church construction to honoring Christian Holidays and allowing the ROC to influence the military, it is not a perfect record but compare and contrast to major Western states and suddenly it seems a lot better
What about Chechnya and Tatarstan?
If whites and Christians were willing to act like Muslims, or like Crusaders during the Crusades, the West would actually be in a lot better shape, has that thought not occured to anybody? You cannot have things both ways, and you cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, regardless of collateral damage, has that thought also not occured to anybody?
That word is a marker of an NPC bugman if I ever saw one.
Lol! This piece of shite loser cancelled me. Rofl!!
If there is any mass converting, anywhere, it will be only the pagan polytheist mangods-worshippers converting to the religion of pure unbending monotheism… Islam!!
God willing!
The future is yet to be written.
Shai-Hulud will rise at unexpected moments etc.
Despite massive state propaganda and funding, Turks are merely a few steps behind the rest of the decadentists, and like other countries it will be driven to a large extent by generational change.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/turkish-students-increasingly-resisting-religion-study-suggests
Every year that passes the Kurdish population grows larger and larger in comparison to the Turks.
The few million Arab refugees problem has still not been resolved despite the creation of the Northeast Syrian jihadist statelets.
Erdogan has provoked EU, Israel, US, Egypt, UAE, Russia, Syria, etc. at various times during his reign with little to show for it. So far his only victories are a few pieces of Syria, slight weakening of the Syrian Kurds, Qatar as an ally (Libya is still inconclusive).
Erdogan has only pyrrhic victories to show for his efforts.
In reality, Erdogan is like a third-rate version of ROC officials who build new churches without working to actually get any people in them.
And let us not forget the attendance of the glorious presidents of Albania, Guinea and Senegal!
https://www.dailysabah.com/istanbul/2019/05/03/erdogan-inaugurates-turkeys-biggest-place-of-worship-grand-camlica-mosque-in-istanbul
In Britain it’s common to turn churches into bars and nightclubs, so is a mosque really so bad?
I have to laugh how British civ nat types on Breitbart complain about the Hagia Sophia being turned into a mosque, yet usually don’t say a word about churches in Britain being shut in their dozens each year and being removed of all spiritual significance and turned into nothing but tools of capitalism.
What you lose you can gain back.
The Muslims will keep it up well.
Many low Anglican churches are already indistinguishable from cafes or social clubs on the inside.
What, a post with almost nil rabidly Islamophobic venom?! Where is all the shrill pathetic bleating about, IslamoSoros, IslamoFacist, IslamoEvil…, your signature lines?
You are getting soft, you pagan zio-chrizzie faeces-for-brains.
PEACE 😉
Whoops, meant say Northwest.
Where you are headed, you will be puking out your insides… pagan godless scum.
that’s what I mean. MSM tries to downplay this but of course the AKP has a islamist agenda.
Well it seems like the corona hoaxers and skeptics are a lot more aggressive in pushing their views, compared to the corona accepters on this site, I mean Steve Sailer has just basically pretended that corona stop existing? Probably pandering to his audience, but then fighting with 95 percent of your commenters in the comments section, and them tuning you out and stop donating to you must be dispiriting.
Why do you keep switching pseudonyms and why do you keep posing statements as questions?
10 years of Facebook did what hundreds of years of the crusades couldn’t.
The mosque at Cordoba was made from the masonry of an earlier Visogothic church and other Visogothic buildings. The fight over it is just a proxy fight for immigration.
Muslims are always looking for legitimacy in Europe, so that they can facilitate their continued invasion. It is one reason that Turkey is promoted as being a part of Europe.
On the one hand, the following batshit polytheist abomination is “true”…
…which is basically plagiarised from the extremist pagan hindoo Trimurthi, about the dawn-age delusions of Triple Deities such as, Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva. The following is another resource about this age-old polytheist plagiarisation…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_deity
—
On the other hand, the following truest definition of Monotheism, is “wrong”;
—
Lol! Pagans!
Doesn’t the existence of Albania more or less give Islam legitimacy as a native European religion? Obviously Christianity has been in Europe longer but both originate from the Middle East at the end of the day.
I suspect one of the main reasons Serbs in particular are so desperate to “prove” that Albanians are non-European in origin, transplanted by the Ottomans as they often claim, is because if you accept that Albanians are as native European as anyone else then you basically have to accept Islam as a European religion.
Erdogan being obnoxious is positive. Imagine if he had been obsequious to the EU from the start.
Hmm, ach so –
1) Islam is a legitimate native European religion 2) Britain, however, is a fake country with no legitimacy as a nation state 3) European whites should distance themselves from Jews.
Very, very naughty of you not to declare at the outset what you were. Bad boy.
If the West were culturally and spiritually vigorous, it would be in better shape. The Crusades were a symptom of civilizational vigor, not a cause. If we Crusaded today, we would just be LARPing, our hearts wouldn’t be in it.
Is there anything existing in this whole Creation that Allah the Almighty and All-knowing does not want being a part of the reality?
Is there anyone alive that Allah does not want to see alive?
Anyone born without Allah willing him to be born?
Albania is kind of a mixed bag, since it is only about half Muslim and was communist for many decades. I’ve known several Albanian Christians but no Turkish ones. I don’t think it has the importance or the psychological impact of Turkey, as these other Muslim states or statelets in Europe, Albania and Kosovo are really just offshoots of the original Turkish power, and the Turks were mainline civilizational antagonists and have formidable numbers compared to Albanians.
Once the door is open to Turkey, it seems as there can be no closing it.
It’s more basic than that. If Albanians are Turks, they are conquerors, invaders. Serbia is punching up at them. If they’re Europeans, then bigger Serbia is punching down at them.
From a propaganda standpoint, punching up is always better.
This proves just as little as Hinduism and Buddhism “proves” the similarity of Indians and Chinese/Koreans/Japanese.
Shqiptars engage in the same type of Balkan trashtalk one-upmanship ex. claiming that Greeks are an 19th century invention by “Romans”.
You didn’t respond to the accusation that it is a power play by Muslim settlers in Europe.
In any case your original equivalence is invalid, Hagia Sophia was neutralised as a museum. Converting the Cathedral of Cordoba into a museum obviously won’t satisfy the agitators.
Israel has the same demographic dilemma. Instead of Kurds it’s Arabs who could become the dominant ethnic group.
Bizarre that you attack Christianity in a way which is inconsistent with the paedophile plagiarist who invented your religion
There are Europeans who convert to Buddhism; does that make Buddhism a European Religion?
An Albanian boy I went to school with is the only self-declared Muslim I have met who has said eating pork is in accordance with Islam, despite this I think, if my memory serves me faithfully, he did observe Ramadan.
I agreed that his accusation is correct. This is indeed a valid accusation. Muslims dreaming of recapturing Al Andalus is a well known fact.
It shows generally a lowered civilization level Turkish politics of recent years, and can have at least a positive political effect in the sense of further reducing Turkey’s possibility for EU membership . In relation to Jesus, obviously – he would be shocked or lamenting about the argument, rather than being interested in the building, however well designed and opulent.
So it is not strange that in modern times, where there is open access to the New Testament – the reaction of the subsection of Christians who read the New Testament fully and absorb its teaching, will be more like the reaction of Buddhists, than of Muslims, who might have burned down their own cities in anger if their most historically impressive mosques were converted to another religion.
In early parts of the texts, Jesus begins preaching in synagogues (on Sea of Galilee – there are still ruins of those modest buildings), but after the beginning of his career, he preaches itinerantly outside in fields and other peoples’ houses – all the time he is without any interest in buildings and insensitive to such things.
Jesus is not only starting in modest buildings, but by the time he has followers, he does not use buildings at all. Obsession of grand buildings and ostentation, is very far from him.
A one time someone could argue Jesus shows reverence to buildings is when he is Jerusalem, that he becomes angry about the buying and selling bazaar outside Herod’s Temple in pesach. But he was angry about meaning of the selling and trading (probably scamming), and the quote “‘Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”” is a paraphrase https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+11%3A15%E2%80%9319&version=NRSV of the old testament.
Jesus is paraphrasing old testament and failure to follow its message, rather than proposing that the building itself is important.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+56
As a youth, Jesus himself has first developed his religious ideas in those courts outside the temple at passover. So he had childhood love of this area, but it’s sitting around in the courts outside (as he did years later, on his return to Jerusalem).
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%202:41-Luke%202:48
Jesus preaches equally everywhere, and one of his main teaching to followers is that “kingdom of god is within them”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+17%3A21&version=KJV
On the other hand, Muhammad would find this interesting, as he was primarily a tribal warlord of the Arabian peninsula, and for people who identify with his tribe to capture opulent buildings belonging to other tribes – is a greater symbol of power, than to build such a building.
Islam was a Arabian nomad’s adaptation of Christianity/Judaism, and had originally valued things which were captured from other tribes, – which for nomadic cultures can be more valued than things which had been constructed by itself.
Also, the TFR of the highly educated secular Jews is close to 3.0, compared to Turkeys 1.6
In this experience, how really similar young Jesus was (or perhaps intentionally written like this, considering a high extent of Hellenization of the epoch) to Socrates.
https://i.imgur.com/Vsb4Rij.jpg
Young Jesus’ parents had the experience of friends of Socrates, who are sometimes complain they cannot find him for days, as he was lost outside in the city teaching about philosophy in the courtyards.
Yes, so what was the meaning of the irrelevant historical anecdotes when this is the only salient point?
And why should this be the only salient point?
Psychotic much?
Having tremors and drooling?
This should help:
https://www.drugs.com/pro/prochlorperazine-suppository.html
And yet Jesus paid the highest compliment and deference to the great and Holy Temple in Jerusalem when he made a direct analogy comparing it to his own body, inferring that he would take its place within the New Jerusalem after His death and resurrection:
Wonderful to see your calm Zen/Chan principles in action 🙂
And so interesting that what leads you to totally lose your Zen cool is defense of Islam… 🙂
You good friends with Europa Europa buddy?
So nice to see, umm, non-Abrahamic principles in action…
Belloc?
Obviously you didn’t lose anything, because you are no more a Zen/Buddhist guy than Talha is a Sufi 🙂
Yes, of course, it’s bigotry that bothers you. Now lets hear some more anti-Jewish comments and angry attacks of people moderately criticizing the aggressive, intolerant aspects of Islam.
You do a good job, ano2-4 🙂
Good guess.
The first is Gladstone, the second is Cardinal Newman
Watching him interpret you as a Polish supremacist is one of the more entertaining things on Unz.
Anybody knows whether retired captain of Turkish army Bart, who calls himself patriarch of non-existent Constantinople, said anything? One would think this concerns him more than anybody. Or is he too cowardly?
A self admitted ignoramus, I was under the vague impression that Hagia Sophia had been a mosque for quite some time (perhaps even centuries), although I understood that since Ataturk, it was used as a cultural/tourist attraction.
Surely, Sunni Islam has regained some vigour in Turkey, a country that now uses it to spread its influence abroad, but I think that it is not a united nation and that there are fault lines that may ultimately lead to either its division or its (re)taking an altogether different course.
There are four major nations in Turkey, all of which could run states of their own and two of which have very recently ruled the whole lot or are doing so now; additionally, there are smaller nations and minorities that have a certain weight in the equation.
Churches in the West are often turned into mosques, although some do end up as night clubs, zumba class halls or converted residences for the socially aspiring and innovative, so it comes as no surprise that a church that became a mosque that became a museum is turned back into a mosque in the present Sultan’s country and in his very city. Worship places change religion and purpose in accordance with the wishes of the powers that be; today’s elected rulers in the West don’t care much about Christianity and neither do most of their constituents, while the Muslim world is very much defined by religion.
Constantinople first fell in 1204 and then in 1453; if there had been a power with enough will and strength to keep it or recover it throughout the centuries, it would have occurred already; Christendom hasn’t been united for many centuries now and hasn’t been a thing for a while either; it is true that the Turks slowly retreated from the rest of the Balkans but as Russia’s influence grew in the region, so did support for the Turks by other Western powers interested in not letting her dominate; First there were the British and French during Crimea, then the BBB era Germans and finally the NATO Americans.
Gallipoli 1915 didn’t work out and no one even seemed to think of doing a simultaneous Russian landing on the northern straits, possibly because of lack of capabilities; Bosphorus in 1917 would probably not have worked out either; amphibious assaults are a tricky affair, it took the combined might of the US and the British Empire to achieve what they have in 43-44; this occurred with most of the Germans trying to resist the Red Army; now imagine assaulting the Ottoman capital from the sea with the means and conditions of the later WW1 Russia. Or perhaps it would have worked as these old empires turned out to be more fragile than thought and Constantinople could have been given to a larger Greece, become an Orthodox Christian Israel of sorts or else become a gigantic proto-Kaliningrad of the south.
Interestingly, in the biopic “the Admiral”, Kolchak is said to have been descended from Turks but that’s just trivia.
In the long run, it’s a vicious circle: more backward, more religion, more children, more supporters, more cohesion, keeping or taking cities and places of worship vs more enlightened, less religion, less children, less supporters, less cohesion… you can apply that to West vs East or to Kemalist vs Erdoganist Turks etc.
What, you mean you don’t believe the below?
“Russia has
almost always stood for tyranny and lawlessness whereas Poland has for
centuries been based on habeas corpus and the Roman law (not the British
common law).”
Poor formatting choices of Anon 2 preserved.
Islam teaches that the Koran is uncreated (!) and co-eternal (!!) with Allah.
Yes or no? One-word answer, please.
Well, I was actually enjoying the fact that you and Chieh seem so triggered by this nothingburger, but since you asked me nicely and politely I will tell you.
You are both Eastern Europeans who claim to be inspired by Asian spiritually, are both anti-Jewish, and your handles differ by one number. I also find its much more common for Poles to be anti-Jewish these days than Russians, although there are many Poles who are friendly to Jews, so I don’t want to slander an entire people.
But I have no idea if you’re the same person – its entirely possible I made a mistake. It seems very important to you to deny that you are ano2, however. So I’ll give it to you – because I am, really, a generous guy.
On this thread you have provided quite enough material on which to mock you and invalidate you on this handle alone, so we can proceed on that basis 🙂
Carry on.
These sectarian feuds that we get on these threads…
Do you guys reasonably expect to convince each other? The objects of these disagreements are often tied to identity or religious beliefs; things acquired either at birth or during formative periods; what amount of reasoning or verbal conflict could change that?
Your sanity is genuinely worrisome; I’ve wondered about your accusations of Mr. Unz for schitzo prospects. Now, seeing your amazing leaps of pattern matching, I suspect that you may be projecting that as well.
You really should get help.
You certainly are in no position to provide insight.
Westerners complaining about Hagia Sophia being turned into a mosque would have more credibility if they were equally concerned about the fate of churches in their own countries, sadly most aren’t.
They seem to be more motivated by being anti-Muslim than pro-Christian, which isn’t really a particularly strong position. I’ve read there are churches in Britain that have been converted into Hindu temples, but I’ve never heard any complaints about that because I suppose it doesn’t fit the narrative.
Sophia cathedral is not a provincial building in England where Indian convenience store workers need a Hindu church, but somewhere with a lot of historical significance, and its conversion to a mosque was one of the important results of the invasion of Constantinople to Ottomans.
Under secular nationalism in Turkey, the cathedral was unconverted in the 1930s, and has been a officially “museum”.
I’m no expert, but I imagine this re-conversion to mosque, is symbolic mostly within Turkish politics, as the secular nationalism is currently unfashionable there – or viewed just as an ideology of the elite Turks – , and there is currently Islamist populism that attracts the redneck lower classes of Turkey.
–
Whether Erdogan’s Islamist populism is a temporary phase in Turkey, or something more long-lasting or multigenerational, can probably be answered simply – “perhaps no – if the Turkish economy grows to European per capita levels; perhaps yes – if the economy does not”.
Turkey is now still in a level where the majority of the population are not sufficiently middle class, for a Western European politics, and the majority of voters will have redneck views.
–
Economy in Turkey currently is at a per capita level of 1980s Spain. If Turkey’s per capita economic level climbs to levels of 1990s Spain, probably we can expect will be more democratic/electoral success of bourgeois liberal views in Turkey and chance of the cathedral would be reconverted to a museum again.
Probably if Turkey attains per capita income levels like Spain, there would be the elite secular “European” style of Turkish culture becoming mainstream in the country.
https://i.imgur.com/ajrJF5X.jpg
Even the liberals and leftists at Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Economist, etc. are against this. It is hardly a narrative if Erdogan chooses to alienate every major faction.
Erdogan has converted a lot of historical churches in his country with little outcry, there was no need for him to choose Hagia Sophia except to make a deliberate symbolic political move.
The Muslims in Albania (and Kosovo) are mostly converted Slavs which primarily follow Sunni Islam and Bektashi Shiism. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have battled it out for the hearts and minds of the Sunnis but given 70 years of Communism and general apathy towards religion, many Albanian Muslims are only nominal Muslims. There are also small communities of Alevis.
A lot of the north is Roman Catholic but Albanian in ethnicity and much of the south is Greek Orthodox. Most of that community is ethnically Greek with supposed autonomy but there are also ethnically Albanian Greek Orthodox scattered across the south and centre. The Greek Orthodox Church of Greece has made significant inroads by building schools and churches after 70 years of enforced atheism but the Albanian state does not adhere to its agreements and has allowed some Albanian nationalist to run wild.
Religion in Albania (less so Kosovo) is definitely a mixed bag. Even the Muslim community is significantly divided. We should also note fertility rates are fast approaching European levels. Muslims powers have made an effort but long term it is unlikely Albanian Islam will represent a problem for Europe.
I’ve haven’t eaten with Muslims in the U.S. frequently enough to judge their habits, but I have eaten with many Jews. Few of my Jewish acquaintances ever observed the prohibition against eating pork. Interestingly, those who did usually had a stereotypical Jewish phenotype – darker skin, etc.
I would say that it doesn’t seem to be directly important to identity, on an individual level. Those who ate it all had what I’d consider a strong ethnic identity. But I guess it is important on the level of religion. Without a strong religious identity, there will be more intermarriage, and less children, even where there is marriage with coethnics.
I’ve heard the regime in Albania was militantly atheistic, even by communist standards. It’d be interesting to know whether they had a policy of cultivating pork consumption, or whether such lapses were due to the area being on the fringe.
There are certain advantages of communist Albania having being so militantly atheist. Tens of thousands of Albanians migrated to Greece over the last 30 years. A significant proportion were like empty vessels. They had little concept of religion and even ethnicity. They simply spoke an Albanian dialect. Essentially, they were broken people with no real memory. This made it relatively easy for the various instruments of Hellenisation to work on these people. Anecdotally, I visited my cousin in Athens which I had not seen for a number of years and I noticed a young 8 year old boy playing around the house. I asked my cousin who was this kid. And she said he Panagioti. I spoke to the kid and his Greek was perfect for his age. I got to know him a little and he was very well-mannered. Later, my cousin told me Panagioti was originally from Albania but my cousin baptised him into the Orthodox faith on the request of his parents. At least superficially, this boy was completely Hellenised. He spoke Greek, was Orthodox and had a Greek name (they also Hellenised their last name). He only had a vague idea he originally came from Albania. His parent’s rapid acceptance of Hellenic culture, because they had very few religious and ethnic markers before, really helped this process. Of course, certain Albanian nationalist organs have infiltrated some Albanians in Greece but a good proportion have become Greeks. This whole process is predicated on a Helleno-centric state and Church. Unfortunately, this is rapidly changing.
If there’s anyone with a 100% accuracy of prediction, it’s the athonites.
Some of them, the really high level ones who live like hermits in the crags, nobody sees them for years at a time, they know your name, age, what do you do etc and they just saw you for the first time in their life. Weird shit
The world would have been so much better if none of these things happened. Can you imagine hiking or exploring the Algerian or Moroccan desert, the Afghan mountains with their giant Buddhas, without worrying about getting beheaded? A Christian Algeria or Morocco would have been a truly amazing place.
I believe you, and have read accounts of Orthodox monks performing even levitation while in the state of prayer in a church, in front of holy icons. Why do you bring this up, however? You’re not suggesting that Boswald Bollocksworth is an Athonite?
I agree that much Antique culture has been lost due to Islamic conquest. But much culture has also been created and for a while the overall quality of living was higher in Muslim lands than in the Christian territories of the former Western Roman Empire.
I have already commented elsewhere about the Islamic Oumma being in a state of increasing disfunction and decadence since the end of the XI century CE. Of course today I would much rather hike along the Santiago de Compostela path, instead of trying to walk the path to the place of birth of Saint Augustine in Thagaste. Although nearly a century ago Allister Crowley and his lover have hiked into the beginning of the Algerian desert to partake in an occult magick ceremony without being harassed by the locals.
Today the West is the best, the question is for how much longer will it last given the current state of affairs and demographics. We might be the last generation benefiting from the riches of the West both economical and cultural. My feeling is we are entering an age of increasing disfunction similar to the last hundred years of the Latin Roman Empire. I would wish Russia to become the new Byzantium and keep more or less functional for some 500 yearslonger, but the chances are small for it to happen.
Of course that’s Aleister Crowley (a cellphone corrector is a terrible thing).
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html
“Still, is it so bad that a Cathedral turned into a Mosque? Muslims are pious people.”
Yes, because it was of the west. To see filthy Turks defiling former Byzantine architecture is reason enough in itself to invade, never mind religion.
Eastern Europe is getting Pozzed real fast. Faster even than I expected.
The West still does act like that, but not for religious reasons. Western imperialism is alive and well. The West is still imposing its values on the entire planet. They’re just not Christian values. But the arrogance is still there.
I agree, Hagia Sophia was lost way back then, bad on Orthodoxy for allowing it but now it is what it is, and with the balance of power as such it will not be held by Christendom ever again. No sense hating on Turks for beating us fair and square, and now it’s theirs and they are to do with it as they please. What they choose to do will reflect on them squarely, but still it is their choice to make and everyone else is to respect their sovereignty. I would rather they didn’t but in the end it will be a cosmetic change, they wont bash the mosaics or vandalize it like back when they took it.
The prophecy is of Elder Paisios.
The event, is actually WW3, and the Mideast theater get particularly shitty.
He sees 200 million Chinese soldiers on the Euphrates, going towards Jerusalem, that’s how extreme it gets.
At that point, starvation sets in probably, and a mass migration starts… Towards Mesopotamia. This indicates Europe will either be unable… Or unwilling to take them.
The entire mess is because Russia and Turkey will be on opposing sides when this war begins. Turkey has a very good performance in the beginning, but gets too cocky and overconfident. This causes a catastrophic loss and after that descends into a giant mess
Here’s a link to em but the translation seems shoddy tho.
Basically SOMETHING happens, and Greater Greece is restored, but only because the lands in question become such messy shitholes nobody wants to do anything with them
https://sites.google.com/site/thevoiceofthechristians/home/9-prophecies-elder-paisios-the-athonite
The sack weakened the Byzantine Empire, which allowed neighbouring groups such as the Sultanate of Rum, and later the Ottoman Turks, to gain influence (see the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople
Shows how pathetic and cucked the online right is that most of the reaction here amounts to “meh.” I hope you enjoy the world you’ve created, secularist swine.
Easily one of the worst comments I’ve ever read on this site.
This is one of the gayest things I’ve ever read.
They don’t have real confidence. If Andrew Jackson, he’d order in the US Army to bust their heads open, and they would run away. These people are pussies. They continue to cause trouble only because they have the support of our legal system, which generally refuses to stop the chaos.
Faith is about contemplating the divine. And if you had studied any religious outburst literally ever, you would know that it’s by far the best way to win restless youth.
The Tridentine Mass. I should know. I was a restless and sin-stricken digital age 20 something loser until I found the truth.
The rest of your comment is a disgusting embarrassment to your European ancestors.
It’ll become “Gagia Sophia”.
I’m sensing that you would choose another “Dark Age” regime to live under, someone other than the Visigoths, if you were stuck in that era. A new regime is often attractive at first. Of course, in time, as the Moors cemented their powerbase and got rid of the turncoat middlemen, they became rather less benign.
Jews ended up moving North. Though, I don’t know if I would use their movements, and what gates they might have opened to pick sides, in a moral sense, at least certainly not based on today. But if you are trying to make the Jewish case, I think it at least depends on the year. Maybe, they welcomed the Visigoths when they first came. Who knows?
IMO, the Visigoths are unfairly maligned since their architectural legacy was demolished by the Moors while that of the Moors still exists to admire. You seem to say the Visigoths were quite savage, but so we’re the Normans at first. In time, the Normans became faithful, mainstream Christians and led notable Crusades. As to the fact that the Visigoths lost Spain, there were many people unprepared for the Arab conquests. I suspect that Spain was relatively easy to invade in ancient times, for large, organized forces, especially those used to fighting in arid conditions.
England and France already promised Constantinople to Russia in the 1915 Constantinople Agreement.
Orthodox Cherubim Chant.
Two different renditions. The first is a Northern Russian Old Believer Znamennyi rendition (I find it is somewhat closer to the Western European Latin Church Chants)
https://youtu.be/B8NlDchzjpw
https://youtu.be/dBc0pE4f50g
The Znamennyi Chant can also be performed on a lesser scale by one or two performers. Here by Hierodeacon Herman of the Valaam Monastery and one of future novices:
https://youtu.be/ppAT0f2YCyM
I think if you better understood it you’d know this is kind of like the Orthodox Christian Temple Mount and the mosque is like the Dome of the Rock. It’s really not a small matter although it would be a lot easier for Turkey’s Muslim’s to do the People of the Book a solid and retreat to the Blue Mosque, than for Muslims writ large to give up the Dome of the Rock.
As Douglas Adams said, every religion would tell you that murder is sin. And every religion would kill you to prove its point.
The Devil himself would have left Crowley and his lover alone to consummate their orgy of the black arts and magical occult that recoiled the likes of even Madame Blavatsky.
Curious as to what sort of Truth you may have discerned within this showpiece of homo-erotic literature? 🙁
The people living in Turkey seem to owe roughly 80% of their DNA to the people who always lived in Turkey. In the Western portions in particular, they’re more like Greeks than anything else. Their ancestors paid for and built Hagia Sophia, not your or my ancestors (if your heritage is Northern European).
No Truth at all.
Although Crowley certainly was an interesting figure. Many modern Western Occultists trace their lineage to his Thelema, including some practitioners of Chaos Magick.
My interest in Crowley was mainly that he traveled to Himalaya (he was very adept at alpinism)
where he studied Tantric Buddhism and Bön, which are both somewhat tangentially related to Dzogchen Buddhist tradition, the Tibetan branch of Cittamatra/Vijnanavada/Yogachara school of Mahayana.
I also found it quite interesting that Crowley visited Moscow and Berlin in the mid-30-ies. I wonder if he was the inspiration behind the description of Woland in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.
You are right.
Modern Turks are a Levantine/Mediterranean/Anatolian population.
Those among them who trace their ancestry to Central Asia (let alone the Orkhon Valley) are an absolute minority.
Another wrong turn?…Perhaps your parents had the right idea in the first place:
(1 Cor 6:19).
Adam and Eve were curious too, and thought that they’d gain great “wisdom” and be as knowing as God himself, and we see where that got them…..
At that time one would have been better off living in China. And even there the An Lushan Rebellion was a terrible affair.
The Andalus Caliphate was great for all its populations, but when it fell after a Berber uprising, the Chaos ensued. The Taifas period was very unstable and weakened the economy and defensive capacity of the Islamic Spain. After that Al Andalus went progressively downhill despite the Almoravid and the Almohad attempts at restoration of the former glory.
They were quite privileged under the Caliphate, not so much afterwards. Still it took them time to side with the “Amalekite” Christians. Moshe Ben Maimun (Maimonides) wrote in the XII century that when there is a conflict between Muslims and Christians, a Jew must always side up with Muslims if left a choice, because Muslims for all their errors are true Monotheists and are not Idolaters, while Trinitarian Christians are polytheistic idolaters (using icons and statues). They basically only switched sides after the Almohad attempted a forced conversion of the Sephardic Jews.
All in all, Al Andalus was more prosperous and better organized than its neighboring Christian kingdoms. But Spanish Muslims become soft and at the end fell pray to more aggressive Spanish Christians.
Some of their buildings survive in the North. They are quite simple but well built.
Not at all, I think West Goths were a great and noble Noble people. Their reign in modern day Ukraine brought prosperity, their reign in Italy under Theodoric the Great was a successful one. They were disunited in Spain and split along religious lines, that is why they got defeated.
Islamic forces under Tariq Ibnu Zyiad were not so numerous and probably not very organized, but they received significant aid from Spanish Jews and Christians who were unhappy with the rule of the last Visigoth king. Muslims have done an intervention in a Civil War and seized the power when their side was victorious. Everywhere it spread Islam used internal weaknesses of its enemies to conquer them. Spain was no different.
I’d be content not to communicate with you at all, and know that you’ve been saved.
That was almost a thousand years ago. Times and conditions change. I don’t think any Jewish religious authority would rule that today.
In the early years of Christianity Jews considered them idolators. By the Middle Ages, that changed.
Also, this kind of stuff started happening with increasing frequency.
Things change.
Despite my Agnosticism, my ultimate belief is that Reality leads everyone towards salvation.
The paths are many, but the ultimate destination is the same for all
In Zen we have trust in the Absolute Reality, which is the true Reality of Everything, us included. It is what other people would call God, but we prefer not calling it anything and avoiding talking about it.
Therefore, we have an absolute trust in God’s saving grace even if never talk about God.
Valentine the Gnostic said: ” Sun shines upon both good and evil and rain pours equally upon both “.
Origene said that at the end even the demons will be saved and Satan brought to Salvation.
Mahayana Boddhisattvas work to save everyone in this entire Universe, evil spirits and demons included. Even Mara (Satan in Buddhism) will attain final and total Liberation.
Everyone will get there in due time.
As the Muslim saying goes: God guides (to the Right Path) whomever He pleases.
I agree with this take on the Salvation.
Omar Khayiam, famous for his apparent Agnosticism, wrote in one of his Rubayiates : “after this world there is either mercy or nothingness “.
I am okay with both.
Whatever is – is God’s will, and therefore is right with me.
There are a fair number of ethnic Greeks in Albania, mostly in the south. Although not one himself, Enver Hoxha had some grasp of the Greek language because in his home town of Gjirokaster about a third of the people were ethnic Greeks and it is likely Hoxha would have heard the language while growing up.
Albanians, particularly in Kosovo are genetically distinct from the Slavs
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup_I2a.gif
https://www.eupedia.com/images/content/Slavic_Europe.png
Proverbs 14:12 (HNV) There is a way which seems right to a man, But in the end it leads to death.
You may continue pursuing your path to death or complete emptiness, but I shall continue along the path of Theosis, where “God became man so that man could become god” I pray that there is still time for you to change your ways, so that you too may enjoy life eternal.
They are closer to Greeks. A lot of Y haplogroup E going all the way back to Neolithic Mediterranean populations who inhabited the Balkans and Peloponnese prior to Achaean migrations.
They are the real natives of that area.
Huh
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup-E1b1b.jpg
There are signs that Muslims are beginning to accept Israel and even have positive attitudes towards it. Israeli Muslims are volunteering to the IDF at ever increasing numbers.
The Islamist extremists on this site do not represent all of Islam. There is a good side to Islam which I think will increasingly come to be developed, even as the Islamic world in general wanes in influence. Perhaps the two must go hand in hand – the aggressive side of Islam must wane before its Sufi side may come to the fore.
This I don’t see happening, frankly. I am friends with many Orthodox Jews. I sometimes discuss Christians – I have heard only positive things from them on Christians. The general attitude is that they are good and moral people who are serving God in a way that may be appropriate for them. Today at least, the attitude towards Christians is much more positive than towards Muslims, but even towards Muslims the attitude is nuanced and not entirely hostile.
Of course if Christians started persecuting Jews again that would change – but that chapter of history seems to be over.
He wasn’t the last Visigothic king, the Visigothic realm had more of a century of history after him left, and any conflict between Arians and Catholics was long past by 711 (and while my Christological knowledge is shaky, iirc Arians can’t be described as monophysites, the issue with them was about the relationship between God the father and Christ, not about Christ’s two natures). In the 7th century there was very close cooperation between the Visigothic kings and the Catholic church, manifested in the great councils of Toledo (which were important for later canon law); in many ways it was a continuation of Late Roman models on a lesser scale. The late Visigothic kings were also anointed decades before Pepin received royal unction in 751, so it seems like Visigothic Spain might have even been in the vanguard of developments in Latin Europe, before the Islamic invasion interrupted everything.
Re the Islamic invasion: There probably was some civil strife in Visigothic Spain about a disputed royal succession (the kingship was elective, if maybe limited to certain lineages iirc; but there was no clear father-son succession), and one faction may have foolishly invited Islamic mercenaries for aid (hard to know for certain, the sources are bad). But the internal conflict didn’t have any religious dimension and it’s pure speculation to state that anybody greeted the Muslims as “liberators” (not even clear regarding the Jews; there was severe anti-Jewish legislation by the Visigothic kings, but some scholars claim there weren’t actually any large Jewish communities in Spain before the Islamic invasion).
Roger Collins, Early Medieval Spain: Unity in diversity 400-1000 is good on this period imo (despite what one might suspect from the title it isn’t a multiculti propaganda piece).
Anyway, you were wrong about a lot of issues, so don’t be so excessively self-confident towards other users (“Other than that you are absolutely correct”).
I’ll be off again, though I found it touching that Dmitry misses me, thanks! Greetings to “Hyperborean” and “Songbird” too, always liked you guys.
That does not make them the natives of the area, there is also the absence of Albanian toponyms and a lack of even medieval structures
They aren’t even mentioned until like, what, the 10th Century?
Thanks for the input. We clearly have dissenting opinions, but I will look into the information you provided.
They were probably there in the Neolithic. Isn’t this native enough? Before that some Y haplogroup C hunter gatherers roamed Eurasia, but they went nearly extinct in Europe. Haplogroup I was also present in small numbers and did increase during the Atlantic Megalithic Culture times before getting largely replaced by the Bell Beaker folks.
Bottom line Y haplogroup E-V13 was there before Mycenian Greeks. Greeks brought R1b and R1a. Celts brought even more R1b and Romans did too. Finally Slavs come from modern day Russia bringing R1a and I. So Y haplogroup E-V13 got diluted a lot, except in some mountain strongholds.
About toponyms, are there Illyrian toponyms, Thracian toponyms, Celtic toponyms, Roman and Greek ones surviving in the area?
If not, it simply means that Slavs did a great job at erasing anything that was there before they invaded.
But white people today are such pussies that they can’t produce another Andrew Jackson and run away even from tranny mobs. Look at Mike Pence. He claims to be a good Christian, but he cucks like a toad before the cast of HAMILTON and kowtowed to globo-homo in Indiana. Pence, so afraid of the Jews, relented to globo-homo demands because Jews demanded it. If whites are so strong in heart and mind, why were they so easily goaded along by Jews?
No, you dammy. Restless youth in this day and age can’t be expected to go for deep religion. They may come to that later, but the Culture War for the youth has to be about something exciting in the here-and-now.
Don’t think what appealed to you will appeal to most youths. Also, Catholic Church itself is a total joke these days, and the Orthodox Community isn’t far behind. Over 50% of Orthodox folks are for ‘gay marriage’. It’s all a sad joke.
So what? Culturally, most of those people (except Kurds, Alevis, Laz) have become Sunni Turks.
Yes, I know. Those ethnic Greeks are still there but occasionally hassled by the Albanian para-state sometimes murdered by thugs.
Thank you, your erudite comments regarding historical matters are always interesting. Shame about the German censorship law.
I enjoyed his commentary as well. I wasn’t aware that there was a “German censorship” law in place at this blog?
Of course they did, but this Turkish culture too is not Central Asian.
Not to mention Samara, Saratov, Rostov, Ingushetia, and Ufa. Islam is the religion of the future in Russia.
There’s nothing at this blog. It’s part of the BRD’s escalating suppression campaign (without, of course, any significant outcry from those international gutmenschen who often express heartfelt “concerns” about Poland or Hungary).
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/19/germany-tightens-online-hate-speech-rules-to-make-platforms-send-reports-straight-to-the-feds/
Yes, it is. I am just waiting for the racialised AZN, Latinx and Blaq Folx soldiers of the Glorious USSA to launch missiles in the shape of buttplugs and dildos towards Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt am Main, Dresden, Leipzig and Hamburg.
Oh, and let’s not forget the rainbow-coloured mushroom cloud.
AaronB, you wanted to know what White American culture really is? Rejoice, for your tax money has given you the answer!
https://2qkhyt1u78lw1ll02a1kxrzq-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/whiteculture_info_1.png
That’s really too bad. I always found German Reader’s responses here quite well measured and rational, with no malice being exhibited to anybody. Could it be that he’s not being specifically singled out, but only by the act of commenting at this blog, that’s been undergoing further censorship elsewhere, that he feels that he’s being monitored?
Jews are pragmatic opportunists, as soon as they will understand that cooperating with their Ishmaelite cousins is in their best interest they will switch sides again.
Demographics is destiny.
The demographic change that will come in the next generation is tremendous. Subsaharan Blacks will be way too numerous for their economically backwater countries. They will be outpouring on the MENA territory, Israel included. This is already happening.
On the South shore of the Mediterranean, in the Maghrib by 2050 the population would reach 100 million people, these Arabo-Berber Muslims will live less than two hours by plane from their 30 million cousins in Western Europe. By that time, the Western Europeans will be way older with way less children and completely demoralized. The Globalised Elites will be blamed for the degeneration that is eating up the West and the Jews will be pointed as responsible for the destruction of Europe. This too is already happening.
When tens of millions of Blacks will start to migrate towards the North, MENA people both Muslim and Jewish will cooperate to block this mass migration.
When Western Europe becomes completely demoralized and disfunctional, Muslims and Jews will cooperate to ensure their comfort is not affected by the overall morass.
Moreover, the Jewish-Muslim cooperation will also bring both shores of the Mediterranean closer. The Mediterranean will again be seen as Mare Nostrum to be protected at all costs against the Negroid tidal wave.
Christian faith, especially Catholic Church will be in its terminal state of decay in the West. A new religious consensus will be needed. Jews, Muslims and the remaining Christians will create this consensus with Jews bringing brains, Muslims bringing violence and the Christians bringing everything else.
By the end of 2050-ies an Abrahamic confederation, dominated by the sons of Isaac and Ishmael will rule the Mediterranean area and continental Western Europe.
Jews will keep their privileged status, Muslims will climb a few social levels, and the former Christians will lose privileged status. This is also already happening.
Also, see Kalachakra Tantra for the following events up to year 2400.
I would be careful to overly conflate genetics and culture. Culture does not always follow genetics. Turks; particularly, western Turks, resemble Greeks genetically with some additional western and central Asian admixture but culturally the difference with Greeks is immense and unbridgeable. And those western Turks are not going to suddenly wake up one day, after doing a 23andMe test, and realise they are really Greek or Armenian genetically and go out and convert to Christianity, start learning Greek or Armenian and behaving like Greeks and Armenians.
This is actually an extremely accurate description of American white Protestant culture lol.
There is much that is noble and good in it, but much that I think makes clear why people are frustrated and fed up with it. It is extremely stifling and materialistic, harsh and competitive.
My thesis is that the white Western intellectual class tried to reform this culture through movements like Romanticism – but they failed. The ideals of Thoreau and Emerson did not take root in America, and the ideals of Blake and Wordsworth did not take root in England.
In desperation, white Western intellectual elites are now destroying Western culture root and branch, the good and the bad together. Because this culture failed at producing happiness. It has lived past its time. Figures like Elon Musk no longer contribute to human happiness.
On the other hand, if you made a similar list for modern China it would be quite horrifically worse. Or the modern Islamic world. So what choice do we have but to support America and the West?
Thanks for posting this.
I agree. A question one must ask though is what is more important: nature or nurture (or genetics or culture)? For the proponents of the HBD the genetics are more important. For the social constructivism types, the culture (socialisation) is paramount.
I believe both are important and interlinked. Fact is, despite their “muh Islam” modern day Turks are a Mediterranean people fully compatible with their neighbors, with whom they co-existed for 500 years.
If we remove the bad memories (you killed my gran gran grandpa and raped my gran gran grandma a.s.o), Greeks, Armenian and Turks have a lot in common. This is evident for any neutral outsider observer who is not part to their feuds.
If they don’t start another war in the next 25 years, these three ethnic groups will probably progressively come closer despite their cultural differences. This will help all of them on the geopolitical, economic and social level, making them an important feature to account with in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black sea area.
To some extent it would bring back some of the Byzantine greatness.
To a certain extent, yes – but that can be said of everyone who is trying to survive. Christian European countries were plenty pragmatic and opportunist when necessary. Christian countries would often side with Turks against other Christian countries.
That being said, Jews certainly have a pronounced Romantic and Quixotic streak. The modern creation of Israel was a very Romantic and Quixotic project at root, and Jewish history is full of that kind of stuff. But again, many peoples have a Romantic streak, so there is nothing unique here.
As for the rest of your post, that is a very detailed and vividly imaginative forecast 🙂 I don’t agree with it, but it is interesting.
I think Islam will undergo a contraction and diminishment similar to what the Christian world has undergone – I think it is spiritually very sick, and its current behavior suggests internal exhaustion and bankruptcy.
I do agree with you that a new spiritual consensus will be reached eventually. That always happens. But it will surely have strong Buddhist and Eastern elements – our current elites are very enamored of these traditions, just as China seems entirely consumed by the authoritarian strain in the Western Enlightenment.
Whatever influence Islam plays in this new dispensation, it won’t be the aggressive and primitive Islam that we know now, which is played out. And Christianity – particularly Orthodoxy – has its heyschast, monk, monastery, and wandering Fool for God tradition, which has clear analogues in Eastern traditions and which will position it to be influential in the new synthesis.
I think the elite class will likely have a religion distinct from the masses as well – or at least, continuous with the religion of the masses but with such a different emphasis as to be practically a different religion. But perhaps all religion is like this.
In the end, we will become disciples of Alan Watts 🙂
LOL…..Hungary I can accept, to include the Polish people in that is cretinous. Poland is the biggest prostitute state there is, millions of them living in Germany ( and UK), giving absolutely nothing good in return, the country is basically semi-nice Warsaw and Krakow with the rest of it basically being Albania.
It has such abysmal cultural achievement over 500 years for such a relatively big European country….the chances are that this post I am writing now is superior to any cultural success obtained by a Pole, ever.
“Turks are a Mediterranean people fully compatible with their neighbors, with whom they co-existed for 500 years.”
You must be out of your mind. I would not call the enforced subordinate status of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire as co-existence.
“If we remove the bad memories (you killed my gran gran grandpa and raped my gran gran grandma a.s.o), Greeks, Armenian and Turks have a lot in common. This is evident for any neutral outsider observer who is not part to their feuds.”
Unfortunately, this is what neutral outsiders do not understand, those so called “bad memories” are borne of significant political and cultural differences.
There is absolutely no chance Greeks and Armenians would come together with Turks unless it was like it was before, enforced subjection.
.
All the “decolonization byproduct” nations whine a lot about how hard it was being under foreign control.
Greeks and Armenians are no different, they whine about the Ottoman past because “muh subjugation “.
But if you want to really know what subjugation is, then ask Spanish Muslims about how it felt after the Reconquista. That was subjugation for real, a subjugation into annihilation.
Compared to this, the Ottoman Milliyet system was quite benign even before the Tanzimat. After the Tanzimat the statutes of the Dhimmi in Ottoman Empire were greatly liberalized becoming quite similar to the status of the Indians in the British Raj or Algerians under French colonization.
Generally, a civilization based on violence always reaches an end point. Islam was based on conquest, but it’s last great age of conquest ended in the 17th century. Since then its been spinning its wheels. It’s turning its aggression inward, because it has no serious external outlets.
To survive into the future, Islam will have to reinvent itself. The aggressive element is played out – if it persists, it will just self-destruct completely.
Happened to Rome, to Europe, to Japan. Even Jews had to reinvent themselves after the Exile deprived them of a national home they could defend with arms.
When a channel is blocked, water has to flow through a different channel. Or dry up.
The types of people who are hard core Islamists today are not the idealistic Romantic types anymore – on this board, you have people like Talha, AnonStarter, Kevin Barret. They all seem mildly sociopathic – especially the superficially charming Talha, a noted sociopathic trait – and with anger management issues. Also grim and humorless. This is not the exuberant, idealistic type that sweeps all before it and leads a civilization to new heights and represents its best. They also seem boringly conservative, preoccupied with gays and what not instead of more exciting spiritual things. Conservatives never win.
I think we are seeing the twilight of the Old Islam. And the new Islam – based on Sufism – will be a weak element in any new synthesis. Orthodox Christianity already has everything needed to be competitive in this new environment. Islam will also have a bad odor from its recent violent past.
I don’t think the current animosity with China will lead to any rejection of Buddhism or Eastern spirituality in general – just as Christian animosity to Jews did not lead to rejection of the Bible. The French and British elites, for instance, were quite friendly throughout their wars.
Also, the Esoteric traditions of the West are practically the same thing – just a question if semantics and expression.
Alan Watts of course would not want disciples, true – but he won’t have a choice in the matter. Sadly, because when you institutionalize the Free Spirit – and that always happens – you kill it. All the great religious figures warn of this. Still, there will always be a few genuine Free Spirits.
You can’t recreate the past. Christendom is not coming back.
Yes, of course Ottoman subjection was just one big happy party!
The thirty-year genocide: Turkey’s destruction of its Christian minorities 1894–1924
https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/96/1/247/5697493
“They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691147307/they-can-live-in-the-desert-but-nowhere-else
The Greek Genocide In American Naval War Diaries
https://www.uno.edu/unopress/the-greek-genocide-in-american-naval-war-diaries
I certainly do have some idea how painful this must be for Orthodox. But that pain began in 1453, when the Hagia Sophia ceased to be a church; I do not see why their pain over this would have begun only last week. (In fact it might be noted that Roman Catholics have been in pain over this building for far longer, but never mind.)
Ataturk made it a museum, which is a little better than a mosque perhaps, but it is hardly a church. It was the property of the Turks then, and they could always have done with it what they liked; and so now they have. Does anyone seriously think that there has ever been the remotest chance that the Turks would have made it into a church again, while they still owned it? It would cause a civil war. They are just as likely to rename Istanbul back to Constantinople.
There is something quite poetic, and tragic, about all this. Ataturk was part of the wave of enlightened republicanism which swept over the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But no matter how beautiful and strong it may have looked then, republicanism was never strong enough to withstand the ages. It is at last crumbling away in Turkey, just as it now is in the rest of the world. Like everything human, it was always destined for the dust.
You’re nuts if you think China is somehow “Dharmic”.
There is no common ground between Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Christianity is much closer to e.g., Chinese traditional religion than the gnostic Satan-worship of the Jews and Muslims. (Except for Twelver Shia, they’re insane but at least they’re pointed in the right direction.)
The Kurds seem to be doing very well. But I think the Leftist ideology influence will suppress that.
The past doesn’t come back, but Christianity has a certain knack for not staying dead.
Secularism and modernism are threats that no religion in the past ever had to face. They are much more dangerous threats to religion than invasion, schisms, the rise of competing religions or heresies.
Every religion is crumbling before the onslaught of secularism and modernism.
The fact that Christianity may have survived other threats does not offer us any guide as to how it might survive this threat.
It’s not so much that we’ve entered a post-Christian world. We are entering a post-religion world. It’s a whole new ball game. In the past it was always a matter of competing religions or competing heresies. Now it appears that most people simply no longer need any religion at all.
Said the Mohammed-worshipper…
Yeah, technically Mohammed is not a demigod, but in practice… He’s worshipped as one. You have to write pbuh, can’t draw him, 90% of muzzles are called Mohammed or some variation thereof. No, thanks. No Arab religion for me.
Private individuals and entities can flag content, essentially big fodder for various types of activists.
Right, but this is a state museum for blacks, I don’t think the state teaching them that things like cause and effect, delayed gratification, politeness, hard work, time management, respect for property and authority, and proper English are haram will have any positive effect on them.
What is progressivism-wokism-liberalism if not a religion? Although I’d call it a suicide cult.
I disagree, if anything in the future there will be new religions, as well as temporary belief fads (UFOs, witches, elves, whatever)
Also, I think we overestimate the grade in which Science and materialism can really become a worldview. Most people understand little about science and technology (it’s like magic), and they’ll continue to believe in crazy stuff, and need rituals, etc.
I agree.
The total destruction of our civilization is extremely harsh medicine. It should not have been necessary. Romantic themes and ideals should have been gently introduced into the culture to balance out and moderate the achievement-oriented, scientific culture that had developed.
An English author – C.P Snow or something like that? – mid last century introduced the concept of “two cultures” in the Western world, one scientific and materialistic, the other aesthetic and spiritual.
He thought at the time that they were increasingly incomprehensible to each other and being driven further apart, with the scientific culture likely to dominate.
Science began in the 17th century, and the Romantic criticism of the new materialistic culture emerged the following century. What was supposed to happen was that the scientific culture would be balanced and softened by Romanticism, and a more whole and balanced culture emerge. But that didn’t happen.
Instead, the two cultures grew increasingly hostile and apart. By mid last century, scientific culture completely dominated and drove out Romanticism.
But Romanticism did not die, just made a comeback in a more extreme form. Romantics now understood that it was war to the death. There could be no accommodation with the scientific culture – one would destroy the other.
The xenophilia of our times is a major theme of Romanticism. The Romantics all fled to exotic locales and championed exotic cultures. They tried to promote the aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual virtues of cultures that had not yet embraced the scientific mindset.
So there is nothing new here. The fight between the two cultures is just in its final stage – and it is the materialistic scientific culture that is now being defeated.
The tragedy is that the Romantic had failed in softening and balancing out scientific culture. In reality, the two cultures are not supposed to be enemies – they are supposed to exist in fruitful harmony. Achievement is important, but so is fun. Creating is important, but so is enjoying what you create. Reason enables you to secure life, but what is the point of that if your emotional and aesthetic life is undeveloped and you cannot enjoy living.
The tragedy of the West is that two natural human attitudes to life which should exist together to make a whole human being, got separated and started fighting each other. But since the scientific culture tried to eradicate Romanticism, tried to eradicate the emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual realms, and substitute a life devoid of the emotions, Romanticism had to destroy it.
Because emotions are primary – if you war on them, as science did, you will lose. Emotions are the bedrock of life – the whole point of living is to feel good in the many ways possible to us.
When science tried to eradicate emotion, it sealed its own fate.
But after this, hopefully a new synthesis will arise where emotion and science are not in opposition. Good comes out if the ashes.
If you analyze this through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, science is primarily concerned with the lower rungs if the ladder – surviving and securing life.
But the value of surviving is that you enjoy life – which is the province of the emotions. Once life is secured you move on to higher rungs on the hierarchy of needs. What happened in European culture is one rung of Maslow’s attacked another!
The lowest level, the level of survival, represented by science, did not understand that its purpose was to make way for higher levels. That it existed as part of a nested hierarchy – that science derived its importance from securing life for the purpose of joy.
Instead, the lowest perspective – that of survival – wanted to dominate over all other perspectives and destroy them. Life was supposed to be entirely about survival and securing life. Man was to remain forever stuck on the lowest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
This was surely one of the strangest movements in the history of the human spirit!
I actually see on a day to day basis people stuck on the lowest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy – people who think the point of life is to make more and more money, and people who think technology should be pursued to the neglect of everything else. Such people are stuck in survival mode, and they can’t see beyond it.
The Covid panic – far in excess of the actual dangers – is a natural reaction of a scientific society trapped on the lowest level of mans hierarchy of needs.
That sounds like the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy, I wouldn’t say he introduced this concept.
I guess you disagree with Karlin’s view regarding the newfound subhumanity of the Anglosphere and Russian-Europeans?
Colonialism is never fun for the colonized. Wasn’t fun in India, Algeria or Congo, wasn’t fun in Dutch Indonesia, Spanish South America or Portuguese African colonies. Why should the Greeks and Armenians fare any better under the Turks?
Oh wait, but they did fare better: the poor Dhimmi Phanariot Greeks ruled Romania for the Turks (Quislings much) and were the core of Istanbul business community for centuries after the conquest only to be rivaled by the Armenians who spread to Syria, Lebanon and Cilicia and traded as far as China and Tibet (not a joke, they really traded as far as Tibet in the XVI century).
That only happened when the Ottoman Empire reached its nadir. And frankly, Belgians massacred in Congo, French massacred in Algeria, and again I fail to see why Armenians and Greeks should have been spared harsh treatment from their Turkish overlords while they conspired with Russian and British to destroy the Empire and fought against Turkish rule arms in hand (Greek independence war and Armenian Dashnaks).
Interestingly enough, many of the worst incidents of mass killings and abuse have been committed by Kurdish mercenaries in the Ottoman service and Albanian troops. Never heard Armenians and Greeks complain about Kurds and Albanians being evil bloodthirsty monsters.
The worst massacres against Armenians and the expulsion of Phanariote Greeks happened after the Ottoman Empire demise under the Young Turks. Those Westernizers that have transformed the Hagia Sophia into a museum are the ones who have committed the worst massacres. But Westernizers always do, just ask Native Americans.
Bottom line, it was hard, it hurt, but now more than a century later it is time to move over. Learn to live with your neighbors because they are here to stay.
Unless Greeks and Armenians want to try fighting the Turks just to prove a point. Perhaps this is the plan, like the current situation in Karabakh. But frankly, I don’t think it is such a good idea.
You sound exactly like a Jew playing the role of Jew-blamer to keep the system as is.
The only thing that terrifies those many bad Jews is also the only thing that terrifies the many white Gentiles who have sold their patrimony for a culturally suicidal mess of pottage: the revival of Christendom.
It is either Christ and Christendom or Chaos.
Russia would have re-taken Constantinople in the 19th century if not for England allying with Turks to save their empire.
Of course, anybody but a damned fool (like the VDARE crowd) could see that at least by the dawn of Victorianism that WASP Empire is Anglo-Zionist Empire. And Jews, through money and counsel, have always used Islam as a battering force to destroy anything that even hints at Christendom. Therefore the Anglo-Zionist Empire had to save the Ottoman Empire – and then the Anglo-Zionists could win The Great Game.
From Gladstone
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-53007083
He will be cancelled.
Lol.
I like Karlin, but his primary orientation is technological, and thus he sees the world primarily from the point of view of how to survive and how to secure life – not how to enjoy life or increase joy.
Such a person will naturally be prone to a particular kind of irrational panic.
It also comes down to cognitive distortion – if you are extremely preoccupied with survival, you will be prone to overestimate risk. Even small risks will loom extremely large in your imagination. Its like people preoccupied with racism, even innocuous actions seem laden with racist overtones.
So people who ascribe extremely high importance to something are likely to have cognitive distortions with regard to it. Its why Eastern spiritual practices say that you cannot accurately perceived something unless you are detached.
One cannot properly estimate risk unless one is somewhat detached from survival….and that is the last thing that can be said about our society.
a) The world of the late Roman Empire before the barbarian invasions was very much secular and modernist.
b) What we have today is in no way secularism and modernism. We’re living in a world where bargain-bin Gnosticism is the official state religion.
Lol, I think you’re too stuck in the past and don’t have a sufficiently dynamic view of history. And I think you’re too focused on genetics and not enough on culture and intangibles – a common enough failing in these parts, and I suppose you’re quite upfront about it with your quote demographics is destiny. Although that is usually applied to groups as they are now, and not to predict group relations today based on ancient origins.
Groups from a common genetic source can develop really different cultures and can really diverge in their long term development. Someone here pointed out Greeks and Turks. I might point out Anglo-Saxons and Germans. There are a million examples. Even Cavaliers and Puritans, within a single nation, represent opposite spiritual types, making their shared generics irrelevant. Any genetic group is composed of nations within nations.
I wouldn’t necessarily call Jews Arabs (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but they are certainly Levantine.
Oh, I’m sure the Muslims will eventually accept us – but first the religion will have to reinvent itself as about something other than conquest. And since the Muslim world today cannot conquer anything anymore, they will find new outlets for their energies. Already its happening.
As for Russia, that wasn’t primarily a Jewish led thing, or a Jewish motivated thing, although Jews were heavily involved. Whether the Revolution was necessary is always a hard question to answer – is today’s revolution against scientific culture really necessary? Won’t it bring a lot of suffering?
Yes, but then the Romantics had tried to reform that culture for 200 years without success, and with the scientific war on emotion winning almost completely, making life empty and sterile.
There were many good and wonderful things about the old Tzarist world, many things worth saving. But we also know there were many, many horrors, and it obviously failed to provide a happy way of life to millions of discontented people.
Ideally, the Tzarist world should have been improved with reform. But I wasn’t there at the time, so I don’t know how things seemed to people.
The Revolution was definitely a tragedy and many great things were lost forever.
As opposed to other religions which spread through… what? Something more “organic” than force? Because you just have a fondness for the noble savage myth? Or you genuinely believe that other religions weren’t compulsory before “Abrahamic” (idiot term) religions wrecked everyone’s good time? All religions (including, and especially, secular tolerance) are and always have been compulsory, from a purely historical perspective you sound like a teenager on r/atheism.
But since you’ve made the asinine comparison between the three “Abrahamic” religions, it only takes a minute to see how full of utter crap you are. Islam has spread almost exclusively through conquest (even in the “core” islamic world of the near east and North Africa), whereas Christianity has spread primarily through conversion (almost exclusively through conversion outside of the Americas, and no, Kings converting isn’t conquest). Talmudism hasn’t spread much outside of the Jewish diaspora at all, so I don’t even know what you mean to say there, other than that religious Jews who gain power follow their religion? Meaningless statement if so, would apply to anyone, regardless of what one thinks of the particulars of jewish influence.
True to a certain extent of theistic religions. But not true of non-theistic ones such as some forms of Buddhism and, in the West, various Marxist heresies. Belief in God is not being replaced by some sort of “objective” secular “scientisism” but by wokism and/or Earth-worship complete with dogmas, rituals, self-sacrifice, etc. as other religions have. They are actually more ignorant of and hostile to science than traditional Christianity (Catholicism and Orthodoxy) has been and basically reflect weird Protestant sects in their science denialism.
Russia, which was brutally subjected to an early form of the Marxism virus, is so far showing some “immunity” towards the latest forms of “white privilege” Marxism and is experiencing a bit of a revival in theistic religions. There also seems to be a some progress in China, with growing numbers of theistic believers. These countries underwent the ordeal of the first wave and have achieved something of a herd immunity, while the West, having having avoided the first wave, is victim to the strong second wave.
Yes, time will tell.
I’ve heard of the Kalachakra Tantra – I’ll check it out, thanks. Although I’m not sure how much credence ill give it.
Interesting times lie ahead, that’s for sure.
Take care.
Shalom.
Gerard’s Pole bashing is far superior to his Ukraine hate.
Setting aside the mass death form epidemics (which were not deliberate) the Spanish influence on Latin America was on balance very good, particularly in Mexico and Central America where a religious culture based on genocidal human-sacrifice, that literally worshipped demons, was transformed into a decent and civilized semi-European one with beautiful and sophisticated music and architecture, mass literacy, familiar concepts of human rights, etc. Mexico of 1800, for all of its shortcomings, was far superior for its people than Mexico of 1500.
Music from 17th century Mexico:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZParkjE-KMw
100 years before this was composed and played in newly-built beautiful cathedrals, the people were ripping beating hearts out of sacrifical victims on crude pyramids, before alters of demon-gods:
https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/back.png
Bolivia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV1GcuiMZH4
Music from early 18th century Peru:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPfwfxspyRA
AK wrote about pre-Spanish Americas:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/skulls-for-the-skull-throne/
::::::::::::::
In contrast, Muslim conquerors tended not to elevate, but to destroy or degrade beautiful places and cultures. Islam was the Communism of the first millennium.
Eastern religions, especially the most native ones such as ancestral worship and Shintoism did not go on wars of conversion at all; Ano4 is demonstrating more knowledge on this rather than less. Western fondness for “evangelism” is something that that Confucians have been almost lamblasting for eons, with some but not total accuracy.
Obviously from a neutral standpoint, all of the major religions are indeed evangelical. It is evolutionary in that sense; religions that seek to propagate themselves replace religions and faith systems that do not. This is true even of Buddhism, of which there are major sections which believe in “saving the world” through universal Buddhism such as in Mahayana Buddhism.
As such, it began to ultimately manifest many of the other features of powerful religion: wealth(Inexhaustible Treasuries held by monasteries), power(Righteous Armies, Shaolin Academy, etc), and politics(lamas, gurus, etc). It is generally less violent, but really quite fervent considering the historical fondness of suicide as a form of religion participation(self-mummification, self-burning, etc).
Islam is the cult of subhumans, and I’d like to think that Russia’s future is better, than that.
I agree that Buddhism also has some craziness about it. But given that it is empirical psychology (or perhaps psychiatry?) parading as a belief system, it is still useful for the understanding of the human mind and the theory of consciousness. Buddhists have done a great job exploring our mind space.
Even more “Good News” is evident in the mass movement of “Mayan Orthodoxy” within Guatemala and Southern Mexico, as this ancient Christian church is finding deep roots in the Central and South American countryside. This new (old) faith has been unraveling for several years now:
https://youtu.be/Glk2OrfVMCQ
More information about how Orthodoxy has taken root in Guatemala:
https://youtu.be/4Qg26Yy2lqI
http://www.mayanorthodoxy.com/media
I was responding to your comment –
Other than for a genocidal sadist, Mexico after colonization is a lot more fun, including for the “colonized,” than Mexico before the conquest. (I’m assuming you were thinking of all of Latin America when you typed South America, but the Incas while not as over the top as the Aztecs weren’t very mild either).
Sure, that may be an exception, although I am unfamiliar with pre-Islamic Indian history. Islam ruined Egypt, Constantinople, Persia, etc. India may have been better before Islam, also.
India was definitely better before Islam!
The Muslims destroyed the beautiful and thriving Buddhist universities, destroying many priceless texts and setting the religion back centuries.
The architecture left by the Muslims in India is beautiful. I have seen it and it is amazing. But how much of it is Muslim? It is really pre-Muslim Persian and Indian in influence.
And the version of Islam that developed in India was before modern times heavily syncretic and influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism – especially in Kashmir, which had many Hindu-Sufi saints.
Indian Islam became the most attractive version of the religion because it was a hybrid-Islam. Modern times sadly changed all this.
But certainly overall the Muslim conquest was a tragedy for India.
Orthodox Church are correct to try and resist this as emphatically as they can, but the facts are that plenty of the great western Cathedrals do exactly this – conduct active services, whilst also being open to tours/museum visits that are shielded off from the services if they are run at the same time, or just close tourists visits during this time.
Of course it’s impossible to run alternate Islamic and orthodox services there so this decision is reasonable and in line with many examples around the world.
Turkey treats us Russians, many millions of us each year, very well, it’s tourist driven economy deserves the respect to make people think this move can work as they say it will, preserving all of both religions heritage in it.
Plenty of formerly beautiful churches in the west have been converted into nightclubs or bars….this decision by Erdogan is hardly a disaster
You launch elliptical, vulgar, repetitive and generally incoherent against Ukrainians, Poles and Balts but Turks is where you decide to be “reasonable”?
You should kept your sex change, it would have been more honest.
https://agakhanmuseum.org/programs/islamic-architecture-past-to-present
Buddhism in India was already in decline before the Islamic conquest.
The main reason for this decline was the resurgence of the Vedic Brahmanism.
Buddhism in Central Asia was greatly weakened by the Hephtalite/White Huns (Spenta Huna).
Muslims finished off what Beahmins and Mithraists have severely degraded and weakened.
And it took them 300 – 400 years to finish of Buddhadharma in the Greater India and Khorassan despite the strong assistance they received from the Brahmin.
Sometimes, Muslims were more tolerant towards Buddhadharma than the Brahmin. It was notoriously the case in Nava Vihara which was connected to the Abbasid Vizier Barmakid family whose ancestors were titular lords of Balkh and Nava Vihara in pre-Islamic times.
At other times Muslims were outright destructive, as in the case of Nalanda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Buddhism_in_the_Indian_subcontinent
Buddhism in India had already influenced Hinduism. Vedanta was basically Buddhism in Hindu guise. So in a sense it had done its work in India.
And this element also infiltrated Islam in the form of Sufism – which is contrary to mainstream Islam and Indian in origin. So it wasn’t entirely a calamity.
Still, a syncretic Hindu-Buddhist civilization would have been a more attractive culture than the Islam that replaced it. And it would have developed in a more organic fashion in ways we can’t anticipate.
Islam was a net negative for India culturally and civilizationally. Thank God, not to the extent that it was in Egypt or Constantinople, where it completely eradicated a beautiful ancient culture.
If the universe is guided by a rational Being, one can maybe see the purpose of Islam coming to India was to acquire the Sufi element, which will be the catalyst for the next leveling-up of Islam – away from its primitive violent past and towards something aligned with the more evolved world religions.
If God loves all His creatures, it would have been unfair to leave Islam alone of all the religions without that inner seed that allowes development beyond primitive notions of violence. That seed has not really sprouted yet, true, and Islam has retrogressed – today’s Islam is easily the most hideous version of the religion yet.
But sometimes you have to take one step backward before you can leap forward.
There are many Tatars in Saratov Province especially on former German territory and a huge mosque in the city. On Friday people walk there in large numbers. The University of Kazan has an outpost there. I sometimes go to the market and I am the only European in the cafe where they serve a lamb broth a lot like the one we eat in Wales. It is served in a pot with a norrow neck.
All this said, I see no sign of a cultural take over. There are several cathedrals and many restored churches, my favourite is in a bakery. They bless the bread. I guess they did before the revolution.
Everybody seems to get along.
In my humble opinion, this whole Islam thing comes with the kind of environment that saw its birth.
Aridity, less well defined seasons, irrigation, centralisation, nomads, brigands in the wild, merchants etc. brought about this system based around the lunar calendar, where you have to live like a monk by constant prayer, waterless fasting and where women are either in the tent or wear it. The incompatibility of the harsh rules with human nature and the scarcity of resources has made the Islamic society Manichean, fanatical, yet hypocritical with people doing all sorts of things that they aren’t supposed to.
Surely, because of the conquests, an urbane high culture developed with cities that in their day were far superior to any in the West, but they were to a great extent fuelled by the civilisations that already lived in the conquered lands: Levantine, Persian, Greek and others, and by countless captives, slaves and other new additions brought from the ever expanding frontiers, but then the conquests ran outside their ecological environment and stopped, while within , uniformity set in and the steam ran out.
What had worked in the East centuries ago is not meant to work in the West of tomorrow unless we are talking of similar conditions -perhaps it works well in carceral conditions; that old culture, high and beautiful as part of it was, was set to become a distant memory in the form of folklore or artistic revivals by orientalists but the West made the world modern and the technologies, nationalisms and socialisms that it had spread failed to bring fast success – contrary to the prevalent belief, impatience is a trait of the East- so came back the idea of greatness based on puritanism and religion.
Then, there’s the oil to pay for it and the poor pre-modern people teleported from their villages to the vertical villages of the Paris’, Brussels’ and Amsterdams.
In Paris, there is a Moorish mosque, called the Paris mosque; beautifully built in an age when Islam was a novelty patronised by rich colonialist bachelors of nature, it still has the feel of a place of culture with a library containing far more than just The book, also Mrs Dicentim wasn’t asked to cover herself when we visited and Jews are said to have been hidden inside during the occupation. It all should have stayed that way; only the few interesting should have crossed seas and oceans to tell tall tales of their distant lands; modernity would have worked, the moustache would have displaced the beard and the scarf to the domain of the elderly and of folklore and with time Turks, Arabs, Persians and others would have been nations without having to try again to solve this whole religious problem that others have solved almost four centuries ago.
All of this wonderful conversation regarding world religions over the last few days here, has finally got me to think of an old film that I’ve viewed several times over the years, “Lost Horizons” directed by Frank Capra. It’s really an excellent “adventure drama fantasy film” about the location and meaning of the lost and fabled “Shangri-La” somewhere just beyond in the Himalaya mountains. Within the melange of religious syncretism displayed within this film is a strong whisp of Christian sensibility, as it seems to me is evident in most of the comments here. If you haven’t seen it, do so, if you have, see it again. I can’t wait to get the newest 2016 4K restoration, to view on my new TV. Also, I’d be interested in hearing what others think of this great film:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Lost_Horizon_%281937_three-sheet_poster%29.jpg/320px-Lost_Horizon_%281937_three-sheet_poster%29.jpg
The world is becoming hipernationalist
Turks convert the hagia sophia in a mosque
China is putting muslims in concentration camps as they replace native uighurs from their territory
India is governed by an ultra-nationalism, casteism, populism, authoritarianism, nativism party
South africans are expropiating farms and other properties in racial basis
Jews have created an apartheid state in israel
……
And this are the people that once that came to the west have the courage to alectionate us of racism xenophobia and a million bullshit like that.
INCREDIBLE
Here’s the complete film, I don’t understand why those that provided it decided to show it in this strange, “highway configuration” (it’s free, so don’t complain):
https://youtu.be/ZiNVerU1hBA
When I first read the Qur’an it was a very fine French translation by Hamza Boubakeur who was both the grand Mufti and the father of current rector of the Grande Mosquée de Paris Dalil Boubakeur.
Hamza Boubakeur was a student of the exceptional Louis Massignon, a great Catholic Islamologue and Orientalist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Massignon
My Arabic is quite weak (it is a complex language) but Mr Boubakeur translation presented the Arabic and French texts on opposite pages. So I could try to read the original text.
These two gentlemen, the father and the son are an example of what Algerians might have become under French guidance, if only the colonial politics were more balanced.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamza_Boubakeur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalil_Boubakeur
Instead there was the mai 1945 massacres of the Algerians (named les Français Musulmans at the time) demanding equal rights with the Pieds Noirs (Algerian Europeans and Jews), the 1954 – 1962 war of independence with its litany of mutually inflicted atrocities, the socialist FLN dictatorship, the Arabisation of Algeria and the Algerian civil war 1993 – 2003.
At the same time there was a massive migration of Muslims to France starting with the Harkis who fought on the French side against the FLN. My opinion is that today people of Muslim descent form probably 15% of the French population. In a generation they might well be 20 or even 25%. Those of Algerian descent are probably at least half of them.
There are people in France who do all their possible to prevent a dialogue between Muslims and other religious affiliations. In fact these people gleefully rub their hands each time violence flares in Islamist terrorism or the troubles in les Cités.
French Muslims are quite numerous and they are not going to just disappear somewhere. Their incessant dehumanization is not conducive to anything positive. Quite the opposite. The times when Europeans successfully practiced ethnic cleansing are long past.
Of course it would have been better for France to stay away from the Maghrib and Africa and for the Muslims to never come to France, but it is too late now. People should do the best they can in the current situation.
This morning I have posted links to the Lancet articles describing the demographic projections for the XXIst century. The only region where the population will significantly increase by 2100 are the Maghrib and Subsaharan Africa. Algerians will be 75 million by 2050, same population as France. But if we keep in mind that at least 15% of French citizens will have family connections with Algeria, we understand that France is facing a problematic future.
Maybe it would be well advised to ensure and enforce integration at last, before the situation becomes absolutely intolerable. Maybe it is time to prevent those who work against integration from seeding seeds of discord…
I find the strength and depth of your advocacy of Islam – and the multiple levels on which you do it, and against everyone, Jews, Orthodox, etc – to be out of place, weird, and suspicious.
You are not who you say you are. I do not say you are a Muslim, although I would not be surprised, but you have for some reason decided to take sides with Islam against everyone else – and to advocate strongly for it in all ways, including “predicting” its supremacy over Christianity.
The one thing you are not is a disinterested, objective Russian with agnostic tendencies whose primary religious interest is Zen….and you certainly are not someone who does not take sides in the conflict between “The House of Ishmael”, etc, etc, as you have repeatedly said. That is just a deflection. You take very strong sides and are a deeply committed party.
You are manipulative and dishonest, and do not declare your loyalties and political commitments.
The thing that have surprised me is the caste style remarcs that ano 4 have done refering to the abrahmanic religions and putting islam as some kind of kshatriya caste in his 2050 europe .
Superficially anti jewish but really anti european to the core ,i have perceived the same not only in muslims but in asians, indians ,north africans….
Is a liberation for them to see europeans fall even if it mean to declare jews as the absolute kings of the world.
I suppose there are too few jews and even when they see one they could view him as another european soo the mental extress of being judged by “the achieviment and supremacy of the west” dishmish
Problem with Europe is that it has grown weak. It doesn’t have the moral or physical strength anymore to enforce Western ideals onto the rest of the World.
Muslims are in general rather primitive, like those Barbarians who have invaded Latin Roman Empire, but sometimes a lack of sophistication is not a bad thing. At least primitive people tend to have children. Moreover, Muslims’ history is proof of their ability to conquer and abide. The only region that they have relinquished after having settled in was Al Andalus. The Northern Spaniards of the time had the cojones big enough to score against the Muslims of Al Andalus who have grown effete.
Today it is the Western Europeans who are effete in their majority. And they do not reproduce, children are a burden for them, they prefer “safe sex” on Tinder, that is when they are not of some sexual deviant kink.
The solution to prevent this sad situation was available prior to 1917. If not for the revolution, Russians would have today numbered around 400 million and would have united the Slav in a Eastern European confederacy of some 500 million people. These Slav Europeans, both Orthodox and Catholic, would have protected Europe from all harm and kept Muslims under the heel, as Russians did in the Russian Empire.
But Western Europeans did their best to weaken Russia and prevent Slavic unity. Maybe they did not want to live with 500 million Slavs as neighbors.
That is why they will have as neighbors 100 million Maghrebian Muslims. Tough luck, but karma is a hammer, not a feather.
No guide at all? Two thousand years of continuous attacks from every side, plus astonishing levels of internal incompetence, heresy, and corruption — and it’s still standing not merely as a set of ideas, but as a continuously operating institution? How many human institutions have survived even half so long under far easier conditions?
Perhaps now we’re at last witnessing the final blow — the one that will finally finish it off! Though I wouldn’t put everything on that bet. Whatever finally does for Christianity will have to be really, really spectacular.
Watch: when Christianity looks finished, utterly done for, dead and gone — turn around, blink, and you will see it alive again, smiling, stronger than ever. It takes after its Founder that way.
This has been said so many times through the centuries that it is a bit surprising that it hasn’t come true ever, even once, even temporarily.
It certainly isn’t what’s happening now. Religion is more powerful today than it’s ever been, and its influence is only growing. The religions of socialism and atheism are certainly doing quite well at the moment.
“But those aren’t religions!”, you say? I say that if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it might just be a duck. The worship of man is no less a religion than the worship of God (even if it always collapses into worship of the devil).
But isn’t 1071 the Christian year? Don’t Muslims use a different calendar?
That’s pretty fake and gay.
Here goes my prediction
Whites have became the sacrificial lamb of the new world order.
Muslims will side with the west it doent matter how many muslim the west kill,how many of their woman are raped and their children mutilated they know they will never have a chance to prospere ( and became a khsatriya caste ) in a chinese dominated future like they think they can do in the west, thats aplicable to the rest of the non whites too
Non whites will became the biggest enemies of china no matter what they publicly say they will fear china for the same reasons they fear a proudly western white world they cant parasitice it and only as parasiyes they can prospere .
in the end china will be alone completely alone against the entire world , they cant sacrifice their own soul like the west have done .
The only people left not integrated in the western vs china paradign will be whites , to some extent is already happening looking how whites are abandoning the cities and bunckering in the rural areas,
Whites are the only TRUE revolutionary people left and will became heroes out of necesity or die trying .
I hadn’t thought of that, that’s actually rather funny.
I dont normally comment here, but as a Buddhist man of Buryat-Mongolian heritage, I get very angry about your comments, for you dont know jackshit about Buddhadharma nor Hindudharma and Im forced to comment here if I want keep my sanity. First do you even know what Vedic Brahmanism means? Historians use that name for describing the dominant religious tradition in India during the Iron age. So 1000BC-500BC more or less. It was vastly different from the religion that Hinduism later developed, that is sometimes called as Puranic Hinduism. It didnt have temples nor statues, even the major worshipped gods differed from the later periods, it was centered on open air ritual altars, singing of Mantras and religious songs, and different kind of purification rituals and it was totally oral, without any holy texts.
Then you throw your infantile comments about Kalachakra that you have read from Wikipedia or equivalent, although Berzin is an okay source, although very shallow. But the historical or prophetic commentary of Kalachakra is very minuscule part of it, its main aim, like the aim of all Buddhist tantra is to gain swift realization of ones Buddha nature and to eliminate dualistic thinking from ones mindstream. How do I know? For I myself have attended Kalachakra initiation and long ceremonies under it by H.H. Dalai Lama.
But that Hinduism that gained victory over Buddhism in India was totally different from Vedic Brahmanism, it was centered in the worship of Shiva or Vishnu as supreme gods and it was very much linked with veneration of King and how the king was the representative of Ishvara’s/Brahman’s power on earth, philosophically it had core in Advainta Vedanta.
Also your reasons for disappearance of Buddhadharma are straight from wikipedia or equivalent, again showing your infantile nature, for a mature man does not comment about things that he has a limited knowledge. There are many different reasons why Buddhism disappeared from India, and there is no academic nor Buddhist consensus why it happened, but rarely in human history there is a one reason/caude that results overall change, normally, like all of you on this site know, its combination of different causes and conditions. What we know is that Advainta Vedanta was on rise, thanks to Adi Shankara, that for a common man there was no large difference between Boddhisattvas and Puranic gods, that Muslim invaders destroyed great Monastert-Universities of India, and that there was great economical structural change undergoing in India. Centrally administered large Hindu-Buddhist empires with their highly developed economies and cities were disappearing, Brahmins were more decentralized than Monastic institutions so they had easier time in safeguarding of their traditions that huge international Buddhist monastic brotherhoods.
I dont normally comment here because of my bad English but I couldnt stand anymore ano4 constant parading here as an expert of “eastern traditions.”
The simplest answer is probably that his views are influenced by his friendliness toward his Berber friends, though it doesn’t account for the strange Perennial-esque religious prophecies.
And you know what ano4? Mr Hack is correct you should return as quickly as possible back to the Orthodoxy, its the religion of your forefathers the religion into you were baptized. Your understanding of Buddhadharma is higly nihilistic, I base this observation on your previous comments about the nature of God his will and how in your opinion Buddhism is linked to that. Really its tim3 for you to save your soul and return back to the church.
Vedanta uses sometimes similar terminology with Madhyamaka philosophy of Mahayana, but its really not similar to Buddhism for it posits that only Brahman is truly real and everything else is an illusion. This is very different from Buddhism that does not believe in Brahman/Ishvara/God. Maybe i will start commenting how Islam is practically Judaism in disguise. Would that be nice?
My understanding is that the problem lies in the numbers, concentrations, socio-cultural origins and attitudes.
Yes, there are too many and too many live concentrated in the so called cités; most have parents or grandparents who rode donkeys back home and had no grand plan when crossing over.
The attitudes were formed by the lengthy colonial period and the subsequent violent conflict, so it is quite unacceptable for many of the so called Beurs to support the French national team, especially if it plays the old country; there are other things too, such as first names, pork, women’s “honour” etc as well as a certain way in which the European French view their former subjects and that is reciprocated by the latter’s contempt.
Nevertheless, there is a lot of passing and integration going on; many smarter, more or less European looking (not that it is that important in a country as swarthy as France) people change names and truly integrate; they marry Europeans and have European kids; the often mentionned here Zidane is an example, but there are plenty of half-Algerian celebrities who are so fully accepted as French that most audiences don’t even think of them as having some sort of other background: Alain Bashung, Etienne Daho, Isabelle Adjani, Jacques Villeret, Dany Boon and so on.
The religious figures that you mentioned do not represent what the so called “Arabs” in France should ideally have been, unless of course the argument comes from an Islamic point of view; moderate and learned as they were, they would have been as alien as the Hassidim or Tibetan monks besides the fact that scholars are always a tiny fraction and cannot be emulated by most people.
France is a secular country and should have projected its ideology and values more; dual citizenship should have been outlawed, millitary service compulsory (it was but many dual citizens chose to serve in Algeria or avoided it altogether in the confusion and fraud that such a situation created); of course, there should have been less of them and the housing situation should have been addressed better, but all is not lost, as said earlier, many integrate and when in third countries many Beurs act and feel pretty French.
It is the delinquent rabble with no prospects and raised on hip-hop and Tony Montana that usually turn to Islam, Wahabi variety of course as the parents can only offer folklore; as I stated before, it works well in carceral environments, also in pre-carceral ones; it gives discipline and legitimacy to thugs, past, present and future.
The point stands, Islam offers no answers to a modern civil society, be it of European, North African or any other origin; North Africa itself will grow out of it and France will be left with its social problem, not a colonial one, not a religious or ethnic one.
Now, I hope that you will not be offended if I bring the question to you: Why choose that? Or is it just with non-Muslims? Do you argue against Islam when your interlocutors are Muslim? Or is it pointless to do so? You are an intelligent and well learned person, you don’t descend from illiterate parents; Algeria didn’t send illiterate people abroad to learn complex technical things; you also had all the opportunities that your eclectic background offered; Mischlings are a complicated lot, some pick one side or the other, some pick both or something else. What is it then? Looks? Name? Or is it just easier to pick the lesser side so to appear bigger, like that last drunkard from Tula who would be king of the Pygmies.
I sincerely hope that you will find the path that matches your intelligence and soul for it can be different from the path that lesser ones (from both your sides) said it is.
I often agree with your well thought and well written comments. And I do not feel insulted by your take on my humble person because I do not think you meant to be insulting. And even if you were, I wouldn’t care much, that’s Internet and it ain’t real.
About taking sides, I have taken the side of opting out of Abrahamic faiths many years ago. But before I did, when I was in my early twenties, I read extensively on Orthodox Christianity and Islam and also on Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism (which in my humble opinion is the “original thing” that has been plagiarized by the Semites).
There were many aspects of Islam that were beautiful and all in all more convincing than what comes with the Christian “package “. One of them was of course Tawheed, the monistic take on the Nature of God, pure, absolute and total Monotheism. But it also came with the problem of Theodicy, the existence of Evil and suffering. This is the only really weak point in the Islamic theology.
From where I grew up and where I come from it was considered very dishonorable to gang up against a weaker opponent and kick him in the groin when he was already down. On this site, Islam is demonized and dehumanized non-stop and there is no one to remind people of the fact that all is not bad about it. And yes, when I debate with Muslims I always defend European culture, Christianity and even occasionally Jews and Judaism (although quite frankly it is difficult because of Jewish supremacist attitudes that prevail nowadays).
As a an agnostic very strongly influenced by Zen, I believe that we all share a common human nature that should be nurtured and respected if we want to live in a better society. Demonizing anyone is the wrong message and wrong tool to any situation. Muslims are over one billion people, they are very diverse and come from different traditions. Painting the whole lot of them with the same brush is unwise.
This is probably the worst possible attitude in France from all places, because of the historical background, the current highly flammable situation and the future that leads towards even more tension and conflict. Interestingly enough, the British seem to understand how to deal with their Muslims way better than the French do. This is nothing new of course, the Perfidious Albion has always been craftier than la douce France.
This is important. I do not believe that modern civil societies are here to stay. We are evolving but backwards. Archeofuturism is probably our unfortunate lot for the next decades. And in this case political Islam will be a force to be reckoned with. Especially in France. I frankly wish it was different because I don’t like Wahhabism, but I think the French will have to live through very interesting times. Faye and Houellebecq are probably unfortunately right in their controversial description of what lies ahead…
Ce fût un plaisir d’échanger avec vous cher Dicentime. Merci pour votre temps. Portez-vous bien.
I did not say that I am a Buryat, although I am partly. Also Prajnaparamita sutras are common and important for all Mahayana Buddhist traditions, Vimalakirti is not so important for Tibetan traditions but still part of the canon. And all Tibetan monks need to study Yogachara/Chittamatra philosophy in their curriculum and pass tests on it, or they can never become Geshe/Khenpo. See again? You probably have never studied under proper Buddhist teachers, so you continue blabbing your bullshit. And relations between authentic Chan lineages and Tibetan schools are quite good and warm, many times I have seen Chan monastics, especially nuns from Taiwan, celebrating with Tibetan monks Vesak and Buddha Purnima. Even some of them studying in Tibetan monasteries. If you would know something about real Buddhism that living people practice, you would know that there very rarely is problems between different Mahayana schools and the sense of unity is quite strong. Only with the Theravadas there are sometimes problems, for some of them are fundamentalists and believe that they only have monopoly on authentic Dhamma, but normally they are just noisy minority. And what you are blabbwring about “Tantric Tibetan Buddhism?” Again buzzword from wikipedia, if you would have elementary knowledge about living Tibetan spirituality, you would know that very few practice the way of the hidden mantra and Deity yoga practice. Almost all laypersons and most monks dont practice these kind of practices. How do I know? I have stayed multiple times for many months in the largest Tibetan monastery universities, both in China and in exile in Tibet. The Buddhist unity is much stronger than you think and similarities between different schools, even though tirthikas like you like to posit otherwise and postulate huge differences on superficial differences. But its probably understandable, for you have probably gotten your understanding from Japanese Zen, which most Buddhist monastics dont acknowledge as orthodox form of Buddhism. For like Buddha explains in monastic Vinaya, Pratimoksha/pattimoksha vows are the very basis of existence for Buddhadharma, when they are not followed there is no more Buddhadharma. In Japan there has been no monks since the Meiji restoration and almost all temples are family owned businesses, also Japanese Buddhism is hyper sectarian by its nature, no where else in the Buddhist world has there occured such splintering to hundreds of different schools, all who have taken some small part of Dharma and made it as their Central practice. Yes this is my metta/maitri/karuna and loving kindness towards you, stop spreading rumors and misconseptions to random people about Buddhism in internet. By the way I am a Russophile and I have lots of Russian friends who are earnest and good practitioners, but for most people converting is not good, for the symbolical and psychological space is very different between religions, one easily becomes spiritually homeless when changing religions. His holiness also discourages conversions without very strong resolve and years of pondering, for if we convert without strong conviction then one day our faith will disappear and then we are more lost than before. I am too lazy to search for that one comment where you said to Mr. hack how you understand Gods will and different religions, but it was clearly nihilistic. If you have developed nihilistic or nothing matters, all is good/everything will be well -view in your interaction with Buddhadharma then Buddhadharma is not good for you. Therefore it is better for you to practice religion that is psychologically more familiar to your mindstream. But you know what broke the proverbial camels back? That you are blabbering about Kalachakra, no proper Buddhist gossips about Buddhist practice in the internet to random people, thats what made me so angry. If you truly are Buddhist you should be quiet on such things in the future, for us Buddhist the respect of practice is paramount and we do not want that people build misconceptions about them in their minds.
There are four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, largest of them is Dalai Lama’s school Gelug, originally it was called Kadam and it was established by Bengali monk named Atisha in early 11th century. Atisha belong to Mahasamghika school of Mahayana, which is one of the most ancient schools of Buddhism. Gelug proudly continues the tradition of Nalanda and ancient Indian Monastic universities. Most historians nowadays believe that Mahasamghika Vinaya is the earliest extant Vinaya, for it is the simplest and has no traces of editing. Sadly Gelugs follof Sarvastivada Vinaya for historical reasons that I am too lazy to explain right now.
But people like ano4 love to spread 19th century European misconceptions about Buddhadharma. Oh yeah in Sri Lanka they have pure Buddhadharma and “lamaism” is just shamanism and Chinese Mahayana is just catholic style misunderstanding of early church.
Somehow, I think that developing a healthy amount of nihilism is the appropriate and sane response to 90s Russia.
Ano4 do you even have a Buddhist teacher or temple or community? Its time to wake up. Reading D T Suzuki and claiming of understanding something about Dharma or even Zen is equivalent of silly American who claims some understanding of Christianity after reading book by Billy Graham. All Chan masters are grounded on Buddhist tradition, on eightfold path, four noble truths, have proper understanding of Pratimoksha, Agamas and Sutras. Chan is something that can be called as advanced Sutrayana, its not its own school or system of philosophy, maybe some deluded hippies in Kalifornia think so, or some larping monks in Japan, who really are entrepreneurs. In traditional and healthy Buddhist society Chan was reserved to highly achieved practitioners, who had already mastered the way of Sravakayana and were quite far in their studies and practice if Sutrayana. Time to wake up!
Possibly. If so, he seems to have developed a deep loyalty to a foreign culture. The “leapfrogging” loyalty George Orwell described the Left of his time as having toward Russia.
He even dreams of Islam triumphing over Orthodox Christianity, supposedly his birth religion!
I honestly did not know that this kind of “transferred loyalty” existed among Russians – I thought it was a purely Western phenomena. Transferred loyalty is a nice way of putting it – a harsher way is self-hate and being a cuck.
I guess eccentrics and weirdos exist in all countries. Why shouldn’t there be some unfortunate sad Russian who has decided to identify with some foreign culture in decline?
On the other hand, why not be honest about your allegiances? Why the whole pretense of being neutral? Why pretend your primary affiliation is Zen?
I guess in Russia its still embarrassing.
And then the Europe Europa character who claimed to be British and suddenly vanished after telling us 1) Britain is a fake country 2) Islam is a legitimate European religion 3) European whites should stay away from Jews.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but its hard not to notice patterns.
Eh, whatever ano4 is his its clear now what he’s about.
Yes, I did not mean that Vedanta is identical to Madhyamika. Merely that it was heavily influenced by it, to the point where it transformed Hinduism.
The main lingering difference is that Vedanta still permits some positive terminology in describing ultimate reality (Brahman), whereas Madhyamika says no words whatsoever can capture it. (Nothing).
But Vedanta also emphasizes that one cannot use concepts and words to capture ultimate reality, as if in a net. So the two do remain remarkably close.
But where you place your emphasis is important – and there is a reason Buddhism is more influential that Vedanta.
As a Buddhist shouldn’t you be more chilled out 🙂
I try to explain this to you in a simple way. You are spreading confusion about the Dharma, for your knowledge and level of realization is not high enough for explaining it to people who have no familiarity with the Dharma. In Kalachakra there is not even once said that the mlecchas are muslims or monotheists, and the prophetical part of the Kalachakra is very minor compared to the actual practice that is more centered on balancing of ones energy with the greater cycles of nature and deity Yoga that is the bread and butter of Kalachakra. Actual Buddhist practitioners dont practice idle and speculative chatter with Dharma, especially with random people on internet, right now you are sowing seeds of misconseptions to the mindstreams of people who read your comments. You are making definitive statements about things that you have a very superficial knowledge. This is clearly a sign that you dont have a Buddhist guide nor teacher and you are not part of living tradition that we have, and it is very dangerous path to walk, for as long as our mind is deluded in samsaric existence it is not very trustworthy, it needs a community of monks that trace their lineage to the Buddha Shakyamuni and who follow rules laid by him. You clearly have read small facts there and there from the internet and you have build an erroneous view of Buddhist tradition. Proper Buddhists and Tibetan Buddhists cultivate non-sectarian attitude to Dharma, like there are many different diseases so there are different kinds of medicine, still one should not treat syphilis with insulin, right? Like your statement about Dunhuang, in those times there was no Gelug in Tibet and greatest Gelug masters have always learned from mamy different schools, even Je Tshongkapa himself said that one should learn from all (Buddhist) schools and see unity in all traditions. But for the medicine to work it must be applied in proper way under the guidance of the physician. For different personalities/beings are conditioned by different causes and relations. That is why we have different schools and only great masters can learn from multiple schools and even greater ones can mix the teachings. I have no desire to argue with you, but I am forced by your behaviour. I hope that you develope as a Buddhist, find a proper teacher and stop spreading half misconceptions half truths about the Dharma. There is a spiritual smugness in you, I have never met Russians with it, and I have Russian friends who truly are great Buddhist practitioners, some have even gone on the path of the Buddha himself and have become monks. This smugness is similar to American new age people. It is not grounded on our living tradition.
My Mongolian blood makes chilling out quite hard…
I can sympathize with that(part Mongol as well).
You give me no other option but to reproduce this masterpiece of a comment:
Is there even a city/town/village named after a “Ukrainian” place from the sadist Banderetard community in North America? Of course not. There is only the Novorossiyan areas and Kiev that have expatriated place names.i.e from the Russian world. You have got places in America named after Moscow, Saint Petersburg( Florida), plenty called Odessa, Kazan, Kiev……where is the ukrop place?….none ,because there has never been such a country. In 200 years of immigration to the “New World” there would be such names if such a country existed….which it does not
Did you even see the video that I linked you cretin- a load of ukrainian “top” officials..and not a single one speaking “Ukrainian”. I forgot that Turchynov was acting president..he might be even worse than Avakov in speaking it
There is no such thing as “Ukrainian nation” and certainly not this concept called “Ukrainophobia”. There is no “Ukrainianism” in the North American community…merely anti-Russianism, that is more than willing to destroy the fake ” old country” of Ukraine, again and again in pursuit of it, in their sick sadist minds
What there is though is Russian world, Russian people , of which Ukraine was and is a very important part for the last millennium. It has it’s different flavour of Russianian – just like in North Russia, Belarus,Siberia, South Russia- but it’s still undeniably Russian. Texans and New Yorkers and Californians have big differences in styles, food, dialect, lifestyle- bit they are all still undeniably Americans and could never be mistaken for anything else.For Russia/Ukraine this same point is a million times closer – clearly we are the same people
LOL “Ukrainian” words are so non-existent that the minuscule ones that are out there are basically cultural symbols or events in themselves in Russia! You see it in Runet all the time. Ironically using the very few Ukrop fews out there in some viral/meme thing taking the p*ss out of the latest tragi-comic thing to come out of Ukraine. Even for ukrop nationalists these small number of “Ukrainian” words are like cultural symbols. Does that strike you as being the characteristics of a proper language? Of course not
It’s nauseating for the UPA vermin community in North America to even claim to be Ukrainian. UPA was/is a sick cult– their flag was red for the “Blood lost by Ukrainians”, and Black for the rich black Earth. Seeing as practically all these UPA trash had absolutely zero connection to any of this “blood” lost over the centuries or these wars, and Galicia is the least Black soil part of Ukropia (most of these UPA trash would have lived in areas with zero of it)…what we have are sadistic CIA smuggled expats descended from an already pseudo-expat community (Galicia) claiming on some imaginary cultural heritage! WTF
Even for this stupid habit of anglicizing words in Russian that are not exclusively US/UK invented technology or cultural terms…Ukrainian follows the exact same pattern as Russia (well, directly after Russia). Seeing as most science, cultural, technology and everything else in “Ukrainian” is a Russian created word – this further emphasises my point
It gets even worse – the top sadist Ukrop historian, leading their Institute of National Memory (or whatever this nonsense is called)……the main guy until recently was the POS called Viatrovich. Barely in his mid-30’s. Where had he just spent 5 years of his infant career? In US , LOL, in this same Harvard Ukrainian Institute BS! Just some Soros-funded , lying trash . It’s inexcusable . An actual nation would have had people available to lead it who had spent 30+ years researching IN UKRAINE.
With Yandex restricted in Ukraine, I checked what the top Googled terms were – naturally, there were more Russians ( and Jews) than Ukrainians in the top 10 list
Turkey has easily done the same, or maybe even more, than Poland and the Baltics to deserve to join the EU. It hasn’t had the parasite free money handed to it like Poland
It’s immigrants in the west are far less proportionately criminal lowlifes than the Poles or Balts. Turks in Germany over 50 years are far better behaved than Poles in Germany and certainly Poles in UK. You will get more technically qualified professionals from Poland than Turkey ( Communist legacy) but a much more positive cultural impact from Turks.
Despite some despicable actions in Syria,Turley makes plenty of sensible, practical decisions in relationship with Russia….and takes good economic decisions – investment, including non-subversive investment in Tatarstan and Kavkaz regions with Russia, no problems ( in fact good co-operation) on gas pipelines and delivery, excellent trade and millions of us go there each year on Holiday and have an excellent time.
Turkey also has not elected 2 homosexuals to be president in the last 15 years – the rubber-faced creep Duda is blatantly one, as was the other in the plane crash
Poland,Ukrop and Baltics all do clearly anti-Russian policy….Turkey does not – of course I am going to back Turkey ahead of these nutjobs you dimwit!
Do you have problems with understanding of written English? Where I claimed monopoly of interpretation of Buddhism? My point is that there is no Buddhism without Sangha, and you cannot practice or be a Buddhist without the Sangha, if you disagree then you disagree with the Shakyamuni himself and all the different traditions and schools have consensus on this. Please if you want to practice Dharma then find a teacher and community to practice it and stop reading random stuff on internet.
I am tired of arguing with you, my aim is achieved, I have shown to others that you are not a legitimate representative of Buddhadharma with your eclectic views. And then when your mistaken views lead you to Avici the demons will have a big laugh when you say that it all will be hall of pure dhyana for you, BIG WORDS, BIG WORDS. One of the greatest sins in Buddhadharma is to claim spiritual realization which one is not truly capable, sure mark of those destined to Naraka. Very very few monks would even claim that kind of realization that Avici is experientially same for them as Tushita. But its great ano4 that you have achieved the eight ground/bhumi of Boddhisattvahood. Please think before you write.
Of course poland in the last 500 years became the capital of jewery after being expulsed from western europe , in 1600 30% of the population were jews and like everything jews touch trasform into shit poland would be no different , is only after the purification of 1945 that poland is starting to grow again while usa the central capital of jewery today is imploding for the same reason once poland did .
Bayarlalaa for your kind comment. I presume from Inner Mongolia? Which part? I hope to visit that wonderful place again in near future, I have some friends living in Hohhot.
AaronB peaceful Buddhist is just tiring western orientalist cliche, there are many different kinds of Buddhist people as there are westerners. Buddha’s own people Shakyas were known from their fierce temper and hotheadedness. For me Buddhadharma is most important thing in life, very salvation and solution to all lifes problems, so is it a wonder that I get flustered when some new age slav blabbers about it again and again. (No offence towards Slavs, compared to the westerners ano4 type is very rare) But now when I think about it, as a Jew you need to have a very thick skin.
I have stayed multiple times for many months in the largest Tibetan monastery universities, both in China and in exile in INDIA. Made a small mistake and wrote Tibet and not India.
I actually agree with you. And some Tibetan forms of Buddhism are very fierce. In Tibetan Tantric Buddhism there are many different approaches depending on temperament – some very fierce.
The idea of the calm Buddhist is as superficial as the typical Western motion of Emptiness as genuine Emptiness.
While I have at various times been inspired by all forms of Buddhism, I am most influenced by Chan and Dzogchen – to me, the original Buddhist idea of “no desire” logically must ultimately mean let everything be as it is, and don’t mess with your mind. Any attempt to change anything – including your mind – is a form of desire. Wanting not to desire is desire. But then, any artificial attempt to kill the urge to change anything is also desire.
So what are we left with in this absurd double-bind? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Which simply means everything you do – or don’t do – is a form of desire. Which means don’t consciously contrive to do – or not do – anything. Give up. Go with the flow. You can’t escape the trap. So be fierce, if you are fierce. Artificial calmness is not necessary.
What comes with this is an altered perception of the nature of reality. If you can’t do or not do anything, then maybe there is no separate you as an agent. The world of entirely separate objects is an illusion. And if everything is related to everything, then everything is ok. Whatever you do is on some level an expression of the underlying perfection.
I know on some level this can be seen as a repudiation of Buddhism’s fundamental principles – especially striving – and Chan and Dzogchen have an ambiguous, quasi-heretical status, but I think it is actually a development of its logic.
This of course is just my opinion and feel free to disagree. I am of course not a Buddhist, I have only been inspired by Buddhism.
I’m a bit confused but isn’t the European Union supposed to be composed of European nations? Plenty of East European criminals around but they are kind of European, you know; not that I care much about Eastern Europe and even less about Ukraine.
I also am aware of quite a bit of Turkish and Kurdish criminality going on in different European countries as in heroin trade etc.
Not that I’m a fan of the EU or of alternative lifestyles but I don’t think that not electing homosexuals to high offices is one of the criteria for joining that supranational organisation.
Same goes for friendliness towards Russia and investments made in its ethnic republics; Russia is not yet part of the EU.
And what is all that about positive cultural impact? Do you mean kebab joints? And you have a good time in Turkey? Sounds fascinating, please tell us more about it.
So you are a Russian campaigning for Turkey’s EU membership, right? Is it something like a Trojan horse stratagem?
Or perhaps, all those East European countries should leave the EU and so can the West European ones too, so a new EU can rise instead with Turkey, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia Herzegovina and Qatar as members pending other Arab League members’ integration.
I am a lay practitioner and I dont handle even the basics of Dharma yet, in Buddhism we believe in union Boddhicitta and Sunyata, of compassion and wisdom, without one there is no another. How I can truly help people if I dont know the causes of their suffering and means to eliminate it? One can help forever others without any results, and one can build intellectual formulations without any help to oneself or others. For truly to be wise one must know the causes of suffering and the means of eliminating those causes, but that knowledge will never arise without great compassion that drives being to help others at any cost. For truly to be compassionate one needs wisdom to understand ones nature that is dependent on others, but both compassion and wisdom cannot arise alone, they need each other and they rise together. Its still little bit hard for me explain these things in English, but it puzzles me how westerners start right away to study topics that in Buddhist context are reserved for those who have already some kind of state of realization. Or have studied long and hard. Our faith and worldview is not purely intellectual and our emotions and goodwill have a strong power on our perception of reality.
There is also constructive desire, like wanting to build school or well being of ones parents, Chanda in Buddhist texts. Of course Buddhas have desire to liberate all beings from Samsara. And sometimes there are good kind of delusions and afflictions that create better conditions for individual in future. Shantideva did write about them Bodhisattvacaryavatara. Buddhadharma very easily becomes poison if one tries to learn it alone without guidance, especially with westerners and Jews(Jews are not always in my opinion westerners) for language that it wields differs so strongly from what western psyche is used to. I cannot comment on Dzogchen, too high above my level. Although one of my relatives and one my good monk friend practices it. In this life Foundational vehicle/Shravakayana and Sutrayana are enough for me, and I would be happy if I would develop well grounded understanding of it. Although it would please me if I could one day learn about Buddhist logics, developed by Dignaga.
Chan and Dzogchen have heretical status only among the Theravadas, they are not part of my Gelug school, but many high Gelug lamas practice Dzogchen, even the Dalai Lama. In my limited understanding Madhyamika-Prasangika, Lamrim, Anuttarayoga Tantra is enough for enlightenment, oh its enough for me at least. Really guys we Mahayanists are one big family, except Japanese fakes. I have stayed in Vietnamese and Chinese temples and never heard that any monk says that Tibetan schools are heretic, nor when I have been in big Buddhist lectures or gatherings its quite common that Taiwanese or Vietnamese monks attend on lectures by his holiness. Among Theravada yes there is some fundamentalism and belief of being true or authentic Dhamma among heretics, but rarely there are complications because of it, and some Theravada monks have very open view towards Mahayana. But everything that I write is just anecdotal knowledge, or empirical based on my visits on all major Buddhist holy places in India multiple times(plus Lumbini in Nepal).
Oh if you would have a teacher you would know rhat you are using Kalama sutta in a wrong way and out of the context. Kalamas who are non Buddhist, are asking from Buddha, a criteria of knowing which holy men to trust, but once you have found doctrine and holy men who uphold these criteria, then you should follow loyally that one. Also pratityasamutpada/codependent origination is basic stuff in Chan. All phenomena arise from causes, the causes are taught by the Tathagata. The cessation of causes, as well, is taught by the great Sramana/seer. Therefore there are some complications in transmitting Buddhist terminology to a language that has no history of Buddhism and therefore has arisen from different conditions. Strange probably for you that ancient Indian translators pondered on these problems when transmitting Buddhist teachings to China or Tibet. They needed hundreds of years for proper translations. But after century by century of hard work they achieved high level translations. AND I am not saying that westerner cant understand Dzogchen or Chan, its just that in traditional Buddhism only people who have well grounded basis on Buddhist basics practice these kind of things, and oh there is a Japan, a fake Buddhist country, maybe they all there practice Zen no matter of level if realization
But ano4 I feel bad after bashing you, especially when I do it anonymously, that is one reason why I dont normally comment on unz.com. For I behave similarly in real life and there is a sense of honesty doing it under your real name, for I despise people who rant on internet but fear to do so in real life.
So ano4 you claim to be a Buddhist and practitioner of Chan of the Dharmaguptakas, that is praiseworthy ambition, sadly its very hard in Russia, for they have quite many Tibetan Buddhist temples and centers in almost every major city nowadays, and they have even Theravada temples, opened on in St Petersburg not long time ago. You should go and visit some of them, just stay away from “lama” Nydahlas”diamond way buddhist” centres. The Jonang and Nyingma schools of Tibetan Buddhism practice very much Chittamatra.
Wow, so many different schools, levels of enlightenment, Buddhist texts etc;
I’m not saying that Christianity is devoid of some of these features, but when it all comes down to it, after you melt away the copper and all that is left is the gold, this is what Christianity is really all about:
Is there anything within Buddhism that can similarly be pointed to as a verse or utterance for the uninitiated to get some semblance of the whole?
Lol Mr Hack they upload like that because they don’t want it removed by YouTube “Content ID” algorithm.
If you want to see online, then here is nice free version:
http://123putlocker.pro/watch/xqpEoO7v-lost-horizon-1937/mega.html
But if it is such a re-watchable film then people should pay for a 4K restoration. Future restoration projects of less famous classic films requires for there to be a market of fussy cinephile customers that pay, if such restoration industry will survive and improve in quality of their products, invest in improved technology, training of skilled labour, etc.
What is special about this music that means it could not be produced in Spain by the same recipe? And from around early 18th century forward?
Such harmonies you can hear in the composition like “I V I V I V”, are like a stereotype of this epoch in Spain and Italy. You could organize music students to compose this work, using just recipes from 18th century Spain.
Aside from a few great geniuses, most music of that time was only intended as not especially complicated background music, and the content is according to recipe.
Similarly rhythm, melodies and arrangement – it is all in Spain at that time. This is late Baroque music from Spain, with no particular feature to the South American region.
So, in South America they could produce music according to the same methods popular in Europe, but you could do that anywhere, to an extent instruments, musicians and musical formulas of the time could be transported across the oceans. It doesn’t say anything about an original culture that emerges in South America.
–
South American music we listen to today, emerged later, although it also relies to a significant extent on continuing of influences of the other side of the Atlantic ocean. It is mostly influenced by thing like habanera and also has many influences from rhythms influenced by West African dancers.
It’s an interesting question to ask when the different kinds of “South American sounds” we listen to have emerged. By the late 19th century, there are already very distinctive “South American sounding” compositions in countries like Brazil and Argentina.
For example, a lot of popular “bar room” piano music by late 19th century Brazilian composers, already sounds like some distinctive “Brazil”.
I dont have desire to argue with you Mr Hack, I am happy for you and your Christian faith, but the differences in the basics of Buddhism are smaller among Buddhist schools than they are among Christians. We have four noble truths and four seals of Dharma. Noble truth of suffering. Noble truth of origin of suffering. Noble truth of cessation of suffering. Noble truth of way to ending of suffering, which leads to Nirvana. Suffering is bad translation of Dukkha, that nothing in life truly fulfills and gives everlasting peace or joy, and that all things grow old and die and so on, but there is no better translation in my limited knowledge of English language. And before you say that you wanted an utterance for uninitiated, its quite chauvinistic for you to think that your phrase about God and his son is easily understandable for someone that does not come from Theistic culture, but maybe you dont think so and my conclusion is based on wrong premises.
Then the four seals, which are defining characteristics of authentic Buddhism
All composite things are impermanent.
All contaminated things are of the nature of suffering.
All phenomena are without inherent existence (another translation: all phenomena are of the nature of emptinesa and selflessness)
Transcending sorrow is peace/Nirvana.
But for you this all is probably too emotionally dry. I really dont have desire to argue with you, its better for us to praise each others religion and be happy for each other. It is a sin for a Buddhist to disparage other religions.
This one is quite simple, but i like it.
Buddha:
To set rolling the wheel of Dhamma
I go to the city of Kasi.
In a world become blind,
I beat the drum of the Deathless.’
Sure. The Heart Sutra is a very pithy summary of Mahayana doctrine.
In one line “everything is Empty” (does not have an individual essence separate from everything else. Even Emptiness is Empty – i.e is not “really” empty)
Functionally, it has a similar psychological effect to Christian salvation – it is another form of salvation.
Our fear and suffering come from imagining we can be destroyed. That we are seperate things. So we spend our lives defending ourselves. We fight wars, amass fortunes, develop powerful technologies.
But what if there are no “Beings” – no stable entities. What if there is only a single energy field that takes different forms.
Death vanishes. Fear vanishes. Seriousness vanishes. One can finally turn to enjoying life, knowing he is Saved – he does not have to spend his life clinging to things, trying to avoid calamity. Everything is OK.
Christian salvation similarly removes the need to fend off calamity. You are Saved – nothing truly bad can actually happen to you anymore. God – Being itself – has taken you under his wing. You are no longer a tiny individual threatened by destruction.
That is why Jesus emphasized not living a life of anxious, careworn planning for the future, nor being so concerned with responding to those that attack you – they can’t, actually, harm you.
The joy and liberation of such a life – Buddhist or Christian – is very different than the careworn anxiety and struggle of the average man.
Unfortunately, our dialogue here is turning into a mud-bath of claim and counterclaim of who possesses more knowledge of the “truth”. Instead, may I humbly suggest that we pause for a moment and give heed to the words of Patriarch Bartholomew, who being a very erudite man, has acquired quite a knowledge of Eastern thought and has suggested:
This article digests some of the more salient ideas presented within Buddhism (and touches on Hinduism too) in Patriarch Bartholomew’s view. Every sentence can give one a reason to pause and reflect. As I understand his position, one important difference between Buddhism and Christianity is the both faiths look upon man’s status within the universe:
Really enlightening, respectful and worth reading.
http://orthodoxwayoflife.blogspot.com/2009/11/on-india-and-buddhism-ecumenical.html
.
I like this one very much!
I hope that you go to a center with proper monks and not these Japanese Roshis or fake monks, okay they call tehmselves priests in English, but are monks in Japanese, Buddhism doesn’t even have priests. They and lineages derived from them have resulted so much spiritual confusion, especially in America. Fake and commercialized spirituality, in a spiritually fake and commercialized country, marriage made in heaven! There is no Sangha without monks and there is no Buddhism without Sangha. People who argue otherwise are similar to Christians who speak that there is no heaven and that Christ was just a nice dude. Really ano4 this is fundamental with our religion. Buddha himself spoke about the time when there will be charlatans who mix his Dharma and degenerate it. Beware impostors, Theravada is proper Dharma, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese lineages that have celibate monastics, Tibetan Buddhist major schools, rest is not Dharma.
As I indicated within my comment above, I will be ordering the 4K restoration. Others can watch a good internet version thanks yo you!
BTW, I finally finished the comparison exercise that you suggested, between Mozart’s 24 piano concerto and Beethoven 3. Comment #139 https://www.unz.com/akarlin/rzhev-dementor/
The exercise was fun. Were you able to watch “Lost Horizon”?…
I dont comment much on internet, I have account with same name on dharmawheel.net the biggest English language Buddhist forum, but its under permament occupation of Globohomo worshipping tree huggers, so to keep my sanity I never visit it anymore.
If my karmic seeds are conducive to meet a proper Master, then I certainly will. If not, then I will continue alone as written in the Rhinoceros Sutra.
Not so long ago I have discovered with amazement that I am no longer afraid of dying, maybe I will meet a proper instructor in my future life.
Anyway thanks again for your comments.
You’ve put a lot of time into them and I feel grateful for your efforts.
Sorry again to have upset you with my take on the Kalachakra Tantra.
Thanks.
Orthodoxy is really the closest to the Eastern faiths the West has.
All schools of Buddhism deny monism. If all is one, then why we are not all one? Monistic view of reality is regarded as clinging and dualistic in Buddhism, after all concept of one depends on external factors or relations. Our view is the middle way.
Arya Nagarjuna:
In dependent origination,
There is no ceasing, no arising,
No annihilation, no permanence,
No coming, no going,
No separateness, no sameness,
I prostrate to the consummate Buddha,
The supreme among all teachers,
The one who taught (this) peace,
Which is freed of elaborations.
In Chinese translation there is a verse that says :”not one, not many.”
I am not claiming that I possess the truth, the Big Truth, also I did not felt so from ano4 or AaronB. There were couple comments about Buddhism that were not Buddhist in my opinion so I tried fix the situation.
By the way Buddha taught that making of schism is one of the gravest sins, equal to killing of holy men. I hope that your Bart hasnt done things like that. And before you bark about disparaging others religion, I must say that I have utmost respect for Christ and I truly believe that Orthodox church is his true church. By stating this I have not attacked in any way the good religion of Christianity. That has done immensely in alleviating suffering of countless people, and has unparalleled achievements in that regard. But you probably are smart enough to not equal Bart with Christianity.
Also karma is not fatalistic, we have a power to change and we believe in conventional self, but not that we have somekind of essence or identity that never changes, so we do not believe in soul, but we believe in self that changes constantly under the flux of internal and external factors. For Bart there probably is nothing more inspiring than history, I can wonder what kind of Byzantine daydreams he has sometimes, but bah history is not terrible for us Hindus nor Buddhists, anymore than it was to the Pagan Greeks.
Mexico is still a highly violent place though. No human sacrifice anymore, but Mexico’s cities are ranked among the most violent in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
Pardon my ignorance, but this is the point I cannot get: who he sacrificed his son to? If He is the only God, an almighty God, as Christians believe, he could have sacrificed his son only to himself. What’s more, being almighty, He could have granted humans a chance of redemption without all this song and dance of sacrifice. Makes no sense whichever way you look at it. Any clarification?
Forgive me for commenting, for I am not Mr. Hack. But it was not a sacrifice, for god became a man so man could unite with God, he died on cross to redeem our fallen reality, to bridge something broken and limited with perfect and infinite. But there is the ransom theory in Christianity that believes that Christ was somekind of sacrifice to Satan, thst mankind could be freed from his clutches, its similar to your view and in my view it has quite many internal contradictions.
I’m no theologian, but thanks to the magic o the internet, I’ve been able to research your question. Read the whole article for a full clarification. If you still need some help understanding, visit a church (Orthodox?) and ask for some help. This, however, is s good place to start, and I’ll just copy and paste the conclusion:
https://www.gotquestions.org/did-God-sacrifice-Himself.html
Based on my very limited understanding of Christianity. So probably I am wrong.
For me this again sounds like nihilism. Good or bad are not truly existent nor even dualistic for they too depend on causes and conditions, and how one perceives them. And what you are blabbering about Jews and anti-semitism, so for Finns to exist there needs to be people who hate Finns? What the hell man?
In my observation people dont like moralistic people who are either hypocritical or proud. But at least in our Buddhist community humble people with strong morals are universally liked. And how being moral binds you to samsara anymore or less than being unmoral? Very strange leap of logic. So by liberating yourself from morality you liberate yourself from Samsara? I dont know, sounds little bit Satanic…
Buddha stated that amoralistic and fatalistic view points are heretical. I have trust in Buddhas kindness and level of realization so for me your ramblings are sometimes little strange.
Of course I don’t mean one should be immoral on purpose. That’s antinomianism.
The only reason one doesn’t murder is because 1) one doesn’t wish to 2) one fears the consequences
“Cultivating” morality means acting with desire for reward – of some kind. That is karmic action. You are clinging, attached. You have not “let go”.
Immorality – desiring to hurt without just cause – anyways only comes from a cognitive distortion. And compassion comes naturally from correct seeing.
It is equally true that this kind of thing cannot, present society being what it is, be spread too far and wide among ordinary people, who would reject it as incomprehensible anyways.
But what about Theosis, from Orthodox point of view union between God and man would not have been possible without Christ making human existence godly, thats why he is both God and man, he opened for us the way to Gods perfect nature. Thats why he died on cross and overcame death, so we too could make it.
@AltanBakshi
Evil people dislike good people. Selfish people dislike generous people. Ambitious people dislike content people. Unhappy people dislike happy people.
Christianity has a rich literature on how evil targets and seeks to corrupt good.
If you think being genuinely humble will make you universally liked you have a very important lesson to learn. Saints are persecuted. Also, see the character of Iago in Othello. That’s human nature.
Finns have certain qualities, and “represent” a certain attitude to life. People with an opposite attitude will hate and despise Finns.
Why? It is a profoundly life affirming vision. In its totality, Life is perfect and beautiful. There is nothing to fear – one is liberated and full of joy.
They are equal in this regard. Immoral behavior is done with desire for selfish reward. Cultivating morality is done with desire for selfish reward. One is binding oneself with iron chains, one with gold. In each case you are bound to desire for reward.
Desire is part of Samsara. Nirvana is when you “have arrived”.
Christianity also has a rich literature on doing good spontaneously – without desire for reward.
Satanic would be choosing immorality. But what about the total transcending of selfishness – you don’t desire – you don’t need – a selfish reward, whether it is the “golden” one of spiritual reward, or the selfish one of personal gratification. You simply act spontaneously, without purpose – a pure expression of the underlying perfection of Reality.
They are very strange from the conventional pov, yes 🙂
But they are just the philosophy of Dzogchen. And Mahamudra. And Chan.
But in the end, we should adopt the approach that best works for us. There are paths for every one. Converting another to a path is not really possible – you can offer someone an approach to life, but if it does not strike a chord then it isn’t for that person, that’s all.
“The only reason one doesn’t murder is because 1) one doesn’t wish to 2) one fears the consequences”
3) because he cares about people
Sorry but in psychological tests you would be probably profiled as a psychopath. Really dude mentally sound people dont think like you.
“Immorality – desiring to hurt without just cause – anyways only comes from a cognitive distortion. And compassion comes naturally from correct seeing.”
So its moral to desire hurting others for “just causes,” interesting…. Textbook case I would say….. but I am no psychiatrist, still worrying if you dont see any fault with your thinking.
Really you Jews need Christ, you Russians and westerners too! He is the only power that can stop your descent into a nihilistic madness! Woe is you! He can make you whole again and shine light on all your dark delusions. He can even return meaning and purpose to sciences, once again your men are not studying dead and irrational matter, that has no bearing on mans psychological being, but studying puzzles laid into nature by your creator, which hint on mysteries of his even greater nature. There will be once again a purpose and sense of destiny under your benevolent God, maybe even real love can flower in a world like that.
“Don’t want to” can mean because of compassion and love. See my remarks below that one is naturally compassionate if one sees reality accurately.
It is moral to hurt others in self defense, yes. Some Buddhists don’t hurt others in self defense, for Karmic reasons, but no Buddhist school thinks its “immoral”.
Anyways, there is a reason Dzogchen was considered heretical and dangerous 🙂
Forgive me, I was just probing to see if you were someone who could understand this philosophy. I do that every now and then if I think I’ve spotted someone who might be able to.
Thanks for your own comments regarding your philosophy, which is a healthy and good one.
Cheers.
Theodicy is a complex topic.
In the garden of Gethsemane, before his arrest by the Sanhedrin guardsmen, Jesus was in terrible moral suffering, he prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as You, not I, would have it.”
Moments before dying on the cross Jesus pronounced “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani” which in Aramaic means: “My God, my God, why did you forsaken me”.
Clearly, fear, suffering and despair are very present in these descriptions. Then comes death and burial. The apostles fled and hid in desperation. The darkest hour.
Why didn’t God do something to prevent all that, why didn’t he correct this situation? Anyone in his right mind would have acted to prevent an unwanted and unnecessary suffering.
This would mean that this suffering was indispensable, if God is good that is. For if He is morally neutral or downright evil, then suffering makes sense: He either doesn’t care or He enjoys the whole thing. Of course today Christian Faith does not accept either explanation, just stating something along these lines makes one a heretic.
But was it always the case? Is there some possibility that some earlier forms of Christianity had an approach where Jesus was truly sacrificed by an Evil Entity pretending to be God and then resurrected by the True God who saved Jesus from the Evil Entity? Well the answer is yes. Gnosticism taught that the world is born out of error committed by a pseudo God, the ignorant and pretentious Demiurge who usurped the power of Our Father and locked our souls in an illusory world in which we are bound to suffer.
Some Gnostics outright identified this Demiurge with YHWH who then was the one responsible for the murder of Jesus. Others were of a more moderate kind and avoided any references to the Jewish faith all together, and instead used Neoplatonicist, Zoroastrian or even quasi Buddhist mythological constructs. But they all organized their justification of the Jesus death on the cross along two lines: Jesus death on the cross was an illusion (docetism) or Jesus death was a ploy to trick the Demiurge into releasing the souls of the chosen ones who will return to the Father after being resurrected like the Son himself who opened the way to Salvation and therefore was the Saviour.
Of course, this is all evil heresies and the truth is that Jesus dying on the cross was indispensable for him to open the gates of Hell and redeem the people who died before his coming into this world. That would be all the great and good people who were caught in Hell since Adam and Eve got chased from the Garden of Eden, patriarchs and prophets included. So by his death, our Lord Jesus Christ triumphed upon Death itself, and through his Resurrection opened the way to our resurrection.
And if this sounds similar to the Gnosticism, well if course it is. One just forgets about the Evil Demiurge, avoids anti-Jewish mystical attacks and expands the Salvation to all good people obeying the Orthodox Church instead of these crazy Gnostic intellectuals.
The knowledge revealed within #296 doesn’t contradict Theosis, but steps on the way…
Theodicy is a complex topic and the one that I find absolutely fascinating.
In the garden of Gethsemane, before his arrest by the Sanhedrin guardsmen, Jesus was in terrible moral suffering, he prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as You, not I, would have it.”
Moments before dying on the cross Jesus pronounced “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani” which in Aramaic means: “My God, my God, why did you forsaken me”.
Clearly, fear, suffering and despair are very present in these descriptions. Then comes death and burial. The apostles fled and hid in desperation. The darkest hour.
Why didn’t God do something to prevent all that, why didn’t he correct this situation? Anyone in his right mind would have acted to prevent an unwanted and unnecessary suffering.
This would mean that this suffering was indispensable, if God is good that is. For if He is morally neutral or downright evil, then suffering makes sense: He either doesn’t care or He enjoys the whole thing. Of course today Christian Faith does not accept either explanation, just stating something along these lines makes one a heretic.
But was it always the case? Is there some possibility that some earlier forms of Christianity had an approach where Jesus was truly sacrificed by an Evil Entity pretending to be God and then resurrected by the True God who saved Jesus from the Evil Entity? Well the answer is yes. Gnosticism taught that the world is born out of error committed by a pseudo God, the ignorant and pretentious Demiurge who usurped the power of Our Father and locked our souls in an illusory world in which we are bound to suffer.
Some Gnostics outright identified this Demiurge with YHWH who then was the one responsible for the murder of Jesus. Others were of a more moderate kind and avoided any references to the Jewish faith all together, and instead used Neoplatonicist, Zoroastrian or even quasi Buddhist mythological constructs. But they all organized their justification of the Jesus death on the cross along two lines: Jesus death on the cross was an illusion (docetism) or Jesus death was a ploy to trick the Demiurge into releasing the souls of the chosen ones who will return to the Father after being resurrected like the Son himself who opened the way to Salvation and therefore was the Saviour.
Of course, this is all evil heresies and the truth is that Jesus dying on the cross was indispensable for him to open the gates of Hell and redeem the people who died before his coming into this world. That would be all the great and good people who were caught in Hell since Adam and Eve got chased from the Garden of Eden, patriarchs and prophets included. So by his death, our Lord Jesus Christ triumphed upon Death itself, and through his Resurrection opened the way to our resurrection.
And if this sounds similar to the Gnosticism, well if course it is. One just forgets about the Evil Demiurge, avoids anti-Jewish mystical attacks and expands the Salvation to all good people obeying the Orthodox Church instead of these crazy Gnostic intellectuals.
I’ll read the site you linked, but the passage you quoted does not make me optimistic. It has an obvious internal contradiction.
If we accept that
that means exactly that God sacrificed Himself to Himself to save us from Himself, which is denied in the first sentence.
As to visiting a Church and talking to a priest, there are several problems with this course of action. One is that in my experience priests tend to be intellectually inferior even to the worst graduate students we have. They remind me of “scientific communism” (contradiction in terms!) professors of Soviet period: they are totally incapable of meaningful intelligent conversation. They just keep parroting prescribed lines w/o a glimmer of understanding and cannot answer (or likely even understand) simplest questions. The other problem is that if there were an almighty, all-knowing, and benign God, such a deity would not need any churches or priests. A person would communicate with his/her God directly. All your good deeds and sins would be known to this deity w/o intermediaries. What religious organizations do is defame and degrade the very idea of God. If God existed, the first thing s/he/it would do is repurpose church buildings for a use beneficial for the society and send priests to do some useful hard labor.
https://reshenie.vcc.ru/magazine/issues/a652018/view/article/1478273
Why would an almighty and benign God need someone to die for this purpose? A deity, being almighty and benign, as Christians depict their God, could have achieved that in a non-violent way. Only someone with limited power and/or malicious would do this the way described in the Church dogma.
Like I said I dont know much about Dzogchen nor Mahamudra, but I know very well that they are based on Sutrayana and Four Noble/Aryan Truths and what you believe is demonic and false interpretation. They all together are Mahayana teachings, Dzogchen, Mahamudra and Chan. And each of them should only be practiced under a skilled guide and teacher.
“When a Dzogchen Yogi hears Shakyamuni Buddha turning the Wheel of the Dharma of the Four Noble Truths he hears Samathabhadra proclaiming the most profound Dzogpachenpo.”
And you constantly presume what I think and how I think or how others think, you have constant urge to make definite statements about thinking of others and working of reality, clearly a sign of mind that is under strong grasping ang clinging.
I’m sorry if I implied that Dzogchen was, simply, regarded as a heresy. Perhaps I did not emphasize it enough, but as I mentioned above, Dzogchen had an ambiguous and ambivalent status.
Some sects and periods regarded it as a heresy – particularly the Gelugpas. At the same time, it was often regarded as the “highest” teaching of Buddhism – but it was guarded, as extremely esoteric, and not to be approached until after much study and practice. Which means it was considered dangerous.
Which indeed it is. Because it destroys all practice and study, and is exceedingly simple. But the simplest things are hardest to grasp – or perhaps to accept. The things closest to us are hardest to see.
There is a kids movie that I love – Kung Fu Panda. In it there is an ancient scroll said to contain the highest wisdom, that only the greatest Kung Fu master is entitled to read – in the end, it ends up being a blank scroll.
This is Dzogchen. After all your study and practice, you realize it was never necessary – you were perfect all along. You always had what you were looking for. In the words of Chan master Huang Po, it is as if you were looking throughout the whole world for a gem stuck to your forehead. Or in the words of the Zen Mumonkan – to search for it is to lose it.
To me, that is the ultimate message of Buddhism. But the path to it may be circuitous for some.
That may be true. I sometimes assume people understand what I mean but it may not be so clear if you are coming from a different context.
I also know that my refusing to take absolute sides earns me the enmity of many people. I do take sides, often very vigorously so, but I don’t know how a mature, far-seeing person can be totally one-sided.
I even have sympathy for anti-Semites, and do not take them entirely seriously.
But very serious people – who do not see the Cosmic Joke – find this attitude very annoying.
Very likely. I am by no means a saint.
The best that can be said for me is that though I cling, I don’t take my clinging entirely seriously. To aspire to be a saint is to be a monster of ego. A natural saint is quite another thing, though.
I am not self-important enough to want to perfect myself. I’d rather laugh at myself. At the same time, if as Chan says my original nature is already perfect, then what need is there to not cling and grasp? To try and stop, would just be another form of clinging, grasping.
As the great Mahasidda Tilopa says, just relax, right now – No thought, no reflection, no analysis, No cultivation, no intention;Let it settle itself.
It does not matter that you are not taking anti-semites seriously, what matters that you are constantly writing about them, in other words you are preoccupied with them. In beginning I thought that you are somewhat masochist, for why else a Jew would go to a site where there really are people who believe that Jews practice human sacrifices and similar kind of non sense. Now I think that its better for you in that way for you dont need to confront your own personal shortcomings among antisemitic clowns. If you would have compassion you would notice that Muslims are on somewhat similar situation with you on sites on like this. Of course you think its their fault, but so do they think vice versa.
Mahasiddha Tilopa is a Mahasiddha who has achieved quite high level or ground of Boddhisattvahood, you cant learn or practice quantum physics without good grasp of mathematics. Same is in these things that you read from internet, they part of a living and extant tradition.
But I lost all my interest in discussing Dharma with you when you used Kung Fu Panda as an example of Buddhist wisdom. Once again some westerner brain washed by Hollywood reading random spiritual stuff from internet and claiming to have profound spiritual insights. Be well, I am not interested in discussing Dharma with you anymore, it will not be fruitful for you nor me. So lets stop!
The great philosophy of LSD burnout.
Spoiler: the Jews.
P.S. Or, rather, the people who became ‘the Jews’ later.
A meme answer, I know, but unfortunately a true one.
Spoiler: you can. It’s called “prayer”. Try it.
The idea of “society” is evil in itself; if an individual human can be good (theoretically), then in aggregate humans are collectively evil. This is one of the big points of the New Testament.
Well, did you have enough time yet to read the link that I posted that should answer your tough questions? It’s not very long. I would suggest that you read it slowly with an open mind.
Although you rail convincingly against your old sovok professors, I’ve got to admit that they seem to have been quite successful in convincing you that there is no God. 🙂
Almost none of this is true, you haven’t the slightest clue what you are talking about
There are two types of people in the world.
Those who think the world is a Very Serious Place, and they are Very Important People.
And then there are Buddhists, who believe in Emptiness 🙂
These two tribes do not get along.
Cheers. Enjoy your day.
The philosophy of the doormat beneath Maslow’s Ladder 🙂
According to the orthodox Jewish rules, Jesus was a Jew (he had a Jewish mother).
I’ve read the text you linked. To say that I am disappointed would be an understatement. Most of the text is demagoguery, as it clashes with elementary logic. Some of the text also clashes with generally accepted Christian doctrine. For example:
This and several other statements flatly contradict the assumption that Christian God is all-powerful.
I would also like to point out several things.
First, agnosticism (or atheism, if you prefer that term) predates not only the Soviet Union, but even Marxism. Laplace’s “I did not need that hypothesis” (in answer to a question where is God in his model of the Solar system), or Omar Khayyam’s line “there is no Creator in the Creation” predated both by centuries.
Second, as opposed to Marxism, what was promoted in the USSR as “Marxism” was a religion. It was 100% faith-based, and it subscribed to the key rule of all religions: if the facts contradict the theory, chuck the facts (which is directly opposite of scientific method).
The last but not least. Open mind is what all religions I am familiar with abhor. Accepting anything on faith requires closed mind.
The stories regarding apostles in the New Testament contradict your statement. The collective (apostles) was described as good (although pretty cowardly and not very strong in their faith), whereas one individual, Judas, was evil.
In Orthodox Christian theology God is omnipotent but he cant be against his nature, for he is by nature perfectly good and loving, therefore his nature limits the ways tfor him to act or behave. I dont see how this lessens his omnipotency, after all omnipotent being has a power to limit his omnipotency. But once again I am not expert on these things, just my two bits.
Yes all is just one big cosmic joke! Say that to the children who are dying from cancer. You are just a horrible nihilist, for whom reason is just means to rationalize ones own impulses and quirks. And no I am not serious, its just your afflicted perception messing with you dude!
.
I don’t know any. But that would definitely be the best message to give them. You are not who you think you are – a separate entity that can die. There is nothing to fear, and nothing truly bad can happen. The world is not serious, but a game.
I may start a foundation that teaches this to children dying of cancer.
That is definitely what I want to hear on my deathbed. I have some family members who while well meaning, are extremely anxious, over serious types. I will make sure they do not visit me on my deathbed and spoil what I hope will be a beautiful moment.
Far from nihilism, mine is the most joy promoting, happy message there is.
Cheers.
A scary thing to discover is, I know more about Jesus and New Testament, than the great majority of religious people – even though I am myself am not very religious and only have a minor, hobbyist amount of interest.
This is because I have re-read the whole New Testament a few times, in different languages – while nothing seems more alien to most religious people, than a coherent, and holistic reading of New Testament (or even to read commentaries on the text by Church fathers).
Part of the reason is that they don’t read the New Testament as a whole – and this is itself partly because of the formatting of the text into numbered paragraphs.
If religious people know how to reformat the text into normal paragraphs, and to then read it as a whole – they might understand a little more about the New Testament than their current very low knowledge level.
–
Another reason can be that in any historical epoch, the Church commonly needs to flatter current views of the parishioners and the authorities; and texts can be cut up into little pieces, and moderated with Old Testament views – so that they don’t need to say anything that can create inconvenient rebellion against the parishioners and authorities.
Parishioners and authorities can then be asked to focus on a few little ideas, based on narrow interpretations of a small paragraph in the bible, that support their pre-existing views, and overall believe something very different from what New Testament has implied, as a whole. Therefore, the Church itself will almost never be in a position of confrontation or rebellion (which is ironic, considering how Jesus himself has related to the authorities of his time).
He wrote that the important thing is the Church interpretation of the New Testament, not your own one. But I read the commentaries of the New Testament by Church fathers, and they were not different to my interpretation on all those points.
There are not so many different ways to read the New Testament – if you read the whole test. It’s not a subtle work of literature either. Of course, it is helpful to know the historical context, to know the cities and sites (now archaeological) that it writes about, and some of the religious context. But it not a work of hermeticism.
There’s not “many ways” to interpret the text, and reported teaching of Jesus were mostly very simple and clear messages. Gospels were written up to 70 years after his death and by people who it is now believed perhaps none of them ever have met Jesus personally, so it is sure that we lost a lot of subtleties of his message in the intervening decades, and received his more simple teachings. (Unlike with Socrates, where there is far more direct written contact, and a class of people who do not need to add as many fantasy elements to the text).
Oh thanks for the reply – sorry I didn’t see your message. We need to move to the new open thread I guess, as the old threads are always dropped to the bottom of the page – and it’s slow to scroll to them on my phone.
No I’m a bit busy to watch films this week.
Well, I have endless hours this week to procrastinate with things which I can do at the same time as sitting before the computer screen. But with films, I like to watch on an large television, or cinema, and with undistracted attention.
Again you show your psychopathic tendencies and how incapable you are of genuine empathy, have you considered what kind of pain small child who suffers from leukemia, is feeling? Not only mental but horrible physical pain too(Normal people would understand right away, but for special people like AaronB I need to explain very carefully). How the hell your cosmic (SICK) joke stuff is helping him? In what reality do you live? And your family is a bunch of neurotic people who have problems with empathizing? Who would have thought! Please dont spread antisemitic stereotypes!
(Last one was cheap behaviour from me, but I couldnt resist the temptation, call it payback from using Buddhist stereotypes in your writing)
Well, I think teaching a suffering individual to “take himself lightly” – to take life lightly – is the best way to ease his pain. To teach him to laugh at himself and at life.
The Buddha taught that suffering is caused by the belief that we are separate selves, and that the world is composed of separate objects – all of which have concrete essences that can be destroyed forever. That view causes fear and pain.
Was the Buddha a psycopath, or a great healer?
So, how do you interpret these words of the Buddha about how life should be regarded?
“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream”
These words are the basis of my remarks above who you object to so much. And these words scare many people. In the Prajnaparamita Sutras, it is said that when Buddha first introduced the doctrine of Emptiness, many of the old Buddhist type of saint – the Arhat – fell dead out of pure fright.
It is also said that when Buddha first achieved his “enlightenment”, he didn’t want to teach it to people, because he thought no one would really understand.
When I read these words, I feel a great sense of liberation. A great burden is lifted. A smile begins to play about the edges of my mouth. I feel like I’m floating, and a light hearted feeling of joy fills me. Life’s crushing burdens vanish. Nothing can touch me or harm me. Nothing is serious.
Why is it that you respond so differently to this philosophy of life? Why you do respond with fear? Why is it that you think this philosophy will actually increase your suffering rather than reduce it? And why do so many people respond like you – like Daniel Chieh – and why do people who respond like you seem so unhappy and with little joie de vivre?
I do not know. For me, this philosophy reduces my suffering – for you, you believe it will increase it.
It goes back to the Buddhist idea of enlightenment – how deeply one sees.
So there is no bridging this gap. We both “see” the world, and our position in it, differently – so a philosophy that will make me lighthearted and reduce my suffering will increase your suffering and fear. A philosophy that will reduce my stress will.increase your stress – because of deep structural differences in our innate cognition.
Not every philosophy is for everyone. We are all limited in the happiness and freedom we can safely experience.
So what do the two of us? I think we can only respect each others position and learn to live side by side in this world. We are different types, and we both have a right to exist.
It is a fact that Buddhist teachings like Dzogchen and Mahamudra, and in fact mainstream Mahayana texts like the Diamond Sutra or Heart Sutra, will increase the stress and anxiety of certain people, even though they are intended to eradicate fear and liberate.
These are explosive teachings. There is a nice book on the Diamond Sutra called something like “this book will blow your mind” or something like that.
And that’s more honest than “taming” these books for general consumption is. These teachings are radical from the conventional pov – just like Jesus’s was. And both got tamed and institutionalized to the point where their original message of freedom was lost.
The world is waiting for this same message of not taking itself seriously to come again, in a new way, because the old ways have been tamed.
Don’t worry, I’ve read much worse here 🙂
And it is only on fringe sites like these that Jews are stereotyped as psychopathic. In the normal world Jews are recognized as warm, empathic, and kind 🙂
I am not stereotyping Jews as psychopaths, ITS ONLY YOU! Dont try to escape from your personal shortcomings by purposefully misunderstanding me.
I think that reading the Gospel of Thomas and perhaps also the Gospel of Philip might also be quite valuable.
I have read the NT and the Gnostic Gospel Apocrypha and I find it furthered my understanding of the early Christianity.
This recent article is also of interest.
Соловьёвские исследования. Выпуск 1(53) 2017
МОНОГРАФИЯ В ЖУРНАЛЕ
И.И. Евлампиев
НЕИСКАЖЕННОЕ ХРИСТИАНСТВО И ЕГО ИСТОЧНИКИ
And I am not discussing Dharma with you anymore, remember? You dont know jackshit about it and you have even more nihilistic view of it than ano4. Root of suffering is three poisons you charlatan, all schools agree on it, although some have additional poisons, but three great poisons, all Dzogchenpas and practitioners of Mahamudra believe in them. How the hell you can be so smugly explaining Dharma when you even dont know the basics? Your are fake and fraud.
No worries. We each need to do what works for us.
Not taking life seriously reduces my suffering and my burden. It increases your stress and anxiety.
The world is big – I seek to impose my philosophy on no one. I only offer it to those who have not heard it before and who are not satisfied with the mainstream philosophy of taking life seriously and striving.
To anyone who responds with fear and stress to what I say – it isn’t for you, and no harm done.
Cheers, and enjoy the rest of your day.
Erdogan just gave Israel the justification to knock down the Al Aqsa mosque. I bet he didn’t think of that. Might makes right.
Also, I’m surprised the EU doesn’t use this to interfere in Turkey’s sovereignty. No EU membership until the Haiga Sophia is converted back o a museum. They do this to countries who have less of a snowflake’s chance in Hell of getting in. The Ukraine finally gave up on protecting its agricultural land from foreigners.
Are you telling me that a Deity, which is
would condemn his own son (or anybody else, for that matter) to a tortuous death by crucifixion for sins that he did not even commit? In that case we have very different ideas of what perfectly good and loving means.
I know that you are not a Christian (neither am I), but this explanation defies logic in any system of thought.
I can say the same thing. I’ve read the whole Bible more than once in Church Slavonic in the USSR and in English (King James version) in the US. I have King James Bible at home. I found that I know biblical contents a lot better than Americans who consider themselves Christians. I can quote stories and verses from both Old and New Testament they’ve never heard of and are often embarrassed to hear. This is likely explained by the fact that Americans don’t read, period. Not even the only book they have at home. Yet in the US the Bible can be found in every room of every hotel or motel. In Utah you also find the Book of Mormon in every room, in addition to the Bible. I started reading it out of curiosity and stopped: it reads like an angry parody of the Bible. If I were a Christian, I’d find it sacrilegious.
The funniest thing is, that if you take the words of Jesus literally, he was the first communist. Hence his words “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24), or the story of his reaction to money changers in the Temple: “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves” (John 2:13-16) .
This is as anti-American as it gets.
Jesus was more than a social reformer. He was an ethical reformer. A spiritual trailblazer.
The Bible is a highly sanitized construct, the result of much censorship. The majority of the so-called religious types are much more concerned with their comfort and very little interested in some absolute Truth.
This is also true of the Atheistic people, the idea of the absence of a higher meaning to Reality feels comfortable to them. Atheism is in fact a religion of sorts, for it has as basis the belief in the absence of a higher Principle.
The conventional truth is always limited and circumstantial, therefore it is false. God can only be aproximated through the via negativa of the apophatic theology. Of course this knowledge is absolutely useless and therefore of little interest to the multitudes. It is only precious for those who value understanding more than anything else in this imperfect and impermanent world of ours.
The via negativa doesn’t provide research grants, doesn’t pay the credit card bills and does not ensure the payment of the mortgage. But we shall all one day die here and when the agony is finished we will enter a Realm unknown…
You are right that atheism is a religion, like any other. It’s a totally groundless belief in the absence of any gods. The only way atheists can justify their religion is Occam’s razor, but that’s a weak justification. Logically and scientifically sound position is agnosticism.
Despite your argument, I don’t see the point in theorizing and/or speculating about the existence or the nature of Deity (or Deities). If there are immortal gods (or just one immortal god, does not matter), we mortals cannot be sure that they (s/he/it) exist and cannot fathom what they are. So, no matter what church(es) we go to and how much we ponder the questions related to Deities, after death “we will enter a Realm unknown…”, as you aptly put it.
The only real thing is ethics, moral scruples. That does not depend on any god or even on his/her/their existence.
By dying on cross God showed genuine empathy towards humanity by sharing their suffering and fate? I have always understood it in more psychological sense, if that would make sense. For Christ became a man so that he could show humanity way to salvation. After all imitatio Christi and Theosis were and are important in authentic Christianity. God showed that compassion and sharing the suffering of others is way to free oneself from ones limited and broken human nature. Therefore Christs dying on a cross makes sense in a therapeutic sense, for me at least. Think about it? Through centuries when people have suffered under famines, wars, under cruel behaviour of their rulers or enemies, they always could think how their lord God is with them, sharing their suffering and saying that if they empathize with their enemies they could overcome their nature and gain everlasting peace. No wonder that people were religious during those hard times and no wonder Christ spoke about “lukewarm” people who he would spit out of his mouth, I think its indication that those who dont have strong emotions or strong feelings could never understand the truths of Christ.
But again I am not Christian, I have never believed in absolute creator deity, from Buddhist point of view it does not make sense, but Buddha advised supporting all philosophical systems that encourage morality, that they are the very basis of human civilization and happy life.
I agree that Agnosticism is the most reasonable and balanced attitude. OTOH people tend to become agnostic not only about theological beliefs, but ethical concepts and perception of Reality in general.
There is an Overtone Window of sorts: from suspended judgement about higher and supernatural Principle(s) one moves to suspended judgment about ethical Principle(s) and finally to a suspended judgement on the nature of Reality itself and the human role in this Reality. As Dostoevsky had it: “if there is no God then everything is possible “.
Our subjective approach towards Reality needs to be grounded into something firmer than just our subjective opinions about it. Otherwise we become dysfunctional as beings and as a species.
Are you retarded? “Jews” are people who reject Christ and follow the Talmud.
Christ can’t possibly reject his own self, and the Talmud didn’t even exist in the first century.
Use your God-given logic capabilities a little bit, okay?
Way to miss the point. The whole reason the Church is called ‘the body of Christ’ is because it isn’t a collective; or, rather, not just a collective.
As to why the Church must not have been a collective – see above, I’ve already replied.
Did you really expect an ‘unsanitized’ Bible where they let any random weirdo insert his bullshit heresies and outrageous perversities?
Really?
We don’t even let scientific journals run wild and publish “unsanitized” and “uncensored” research, and the stakes and risks for a scientific journal compared to a Bible are, like, a million times lower.
No.
This was not the primary reason for Bible being sanitized. It was simply to present a non-dissenting and harmonious narrative. BTW that was also the primary accusation by the Sanhedrin against Jesus.
Any organized religion will evolve towards a standardization of its narrative usually leading to a simplification of the belief system.
Funny that Nagarjuna wrote, “For whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible.”
Perhaps, Madhyamaka is the ultimate apophatic theology (I am using oversimplification on purpose here). Once you deny all possible subjective takes on Reality, what is left is the most adequate description of the Absolute Truth. Draining the swamp of human understanding is possibly the only way to unclog the flow of the Mind. In Zen we say that one has to become “stupid according to the Norm”, Orthodox Christian tradition has its блаженные “fools in God”. And there is of course the “crazy wisdom ” aspect. Quite often, intuition is the only way to move forward.
How silly you are once again, reality is purely subjective in Madhyamaka philosophy, they even say that subjective existence is the objective nature of things, or was it subjective nature is the objective existence of things? I give you an example of Sunyata, that maybe helps you. Think about dictionary and all the words in there, when you look a particular word and what it means, there are other words that explain its meaning, when you look those other words they too are explained by other words? Does that mean that individual words do not exist? Of course they exist, but not independently. They are dependent on other words and their meaning arises from their relationship to other words. My analogy is somewhat lacking, but I hope it helps and if I would really understand completely Sunyata I would be already a fully enlightened Buddha, Samyaksambuddha.
But its impossible to understand Sunyata without good understanding of Pratityasamutpada, the dependent arising/co-dependent co-origination. And apophatic is absurd word in this context so too would be an absolute word(truth) that would explain all other words.
“Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.”
― Arya Nagarjuna
Also I think that Nagarjuna meant that empty nature of things makes everything possible, lack of independent and self-existent nature or identity in our reality allows/permits infinite possibilities with realities, worlds, beings and so on.
This is quite plausible.
No, I am not aware. There is no sect in Buddhism called Shunyatavada, never has been. Maybe you mean that what he said about sitting on a branch and cutting it? Buddhists deny no-self too, you really are thick, arent you? Conventional self that is dependent on others exists, but no ultimate or inherent self or essence of self or soul. Thats why Christianity would be a hundred times better religion for you. There is too much grasping of existent and non-existent in your thinking. But good that we are writing now about critical differences between Vedanta and Mahayana. For them there is an absolute truth and everything else has only meaning by its relation to the absolute truth, Brahman. If there is a lie, then there must be a truth, was their logic. Or maybe you meant their comment on observer? If I observe, I must exist. Then if I observe, but my observation is limited and prone to errors, then there must be something that has pure observation or perception without any fault. In my view this is subtle nihilism, our reality and experiences are just falsehoods which will disappear once we we realize the ultimate truth, reality is just non real reference of substantially real Brahman. Hard to explain this, but lets try again. For if Brahman is truth and truly existent, then there must be a non truth, which exists only in dependence on truth, but truth can exist itself and once we understand the truth, the lie will disappear and only the ultimately real will be left. For us Buddhists most important thing are sentient beings and saving them from suffering, not imagined idealized concepts of human mind.
And I am not criticizing the good religion Hindudharma, only Adi Shankara, who himself attacked our religion, therefore this is self-defence, but thank gods that Hindudharma is not dependent on Shankara and few Hindus are adherents of Smarta or Advaita. Most follow Shaivite, Vaishnavite or Shakti traditions, which are worthy of praise.
Of course we exist co-dependently, we just deny that we have some kind of inherently existing me, or some essence that makes us be us.
Once again some wisdom from the teacher of gods and men, the kinsman of the sun:
“If we can see the truth
of the causes of worldly sufferings,
we will not be attached to the view of nothingness.
If we can see the truth of cessation in the world,
we will not be attached to worldly existence.
By avoiding the two extremes,
the Tathagatha teaches us
the Middle Path, which is,
what this is, that is; this arising, that arises…”
Tripitaka(Mahayana), Samyuktagama 12. chapter
“The Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma by the middle without veering to either of these extremes – eternalism or annihilationism – having abandoned them without reservation. He teaches while being established in the middle way. What is that Dhamma? By the formula of dependent origination, the effect is shown to occur through the cause and to cease with the cessation of the cause”
Tipitaka (Theravada) Samyutta Nikaya 12.17
Cultures like American politics, also can say Jesus should support things like “family values”, but in New Testament one of the most emphasized and repeated things in text is – Jesus saying to abandon family. Although at the same time, you can only divorce your wife – for those who are already married -, if she is adulterous .
In similar way abandoning of traditional family duties: e.g. (Matthew 8:21-22) which is more strongly emphasized in (Luke 9:59-62)
Another irony is that being hired for marriage and funeral ceremonies, is one of the main businesses of the priests today.
But in even in the most moderate and conciliatory text on this topic in New Testament (e.g. Corithians 7) New Testament says the first choice, is that men does not have sex with any woman. But only if he cannot control sexual immorality, then he can marry one woman as least bad option.
Position of Paul in Epistles also matches to Jesus in Matthew 19:1-12 Jesus accepts that people are already married (before hearing his teachings), are involuntarily so.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+19:10-12
According to, Luke 20:35-36:, in Age to Come, there should not be such as marriage:
( https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+20%3A35&version=NIV ). This idealized dream, is repeated attitude in New Testament on family: marriage is an unpleasant, but often unfortunately necessarily compromise for worldly people who cannot control sexual desire.
Jesus was indeed saying many times that you should give property to the poor people, and that money corrupts.
In the area of desire to share things among followers, Jesus was matching to fashionable ideas of the time, and is proposing something similar to what had emerged from the cult of Epicurus. Greek ideas was the prestige culture* among Jews in this time.
Among the stoic philosophers, were emerging many proposals for such communal (or communist) communities, and in fact they have succeeded in creating many communes, where friends can share everything together and not have property.
–
*If you visit archaeological sites in Israel, that were built in the time of Jesus, you can see wealthy Jews of the time added Greek writing (not Latin or Hebrew) to decorate their buildings. Greek culture (including philosophy) was very fashionable among the Jews in the time of Jesus.
This is an example of kind of texts I saw on 1st century archaeological ruins in Israel.
https://i.imgur.com/mVE44oP.jpg
Our dealings with reality are not strictly subjective. When we do something inadequate, the reality does not hesitate to punch us in the face.
You can say that gravity is a subjective part of a subjective reality, but jump off a high-rise and your reality will end pretty quickly. Next someone else’s reality will include scrubbing you off the pavement.
You are mixing ethnic meaning of the term Jew (Jesus was ethnically a Jew, if you take New Testament literally) with religious meaning of that term. BTW, Jesus and his family observed Jewish law and he advised his disciples to observe it. His breakthrough was that he elevated narrow tribal religion (that we now call Judaism) to a universal one (that we now call Christianity).
The evolution of what is considered to be Jesus’ teachings matches the evolution of what was “approved Marxism” in the USSR. Marx’ theory considered marriage a “bourgeois institution” regularizing the inheritance of property and predicted that it will disappear with the disappearance of bourgeois society and private property. Marx’ theory called for raising the children by the society (expected emergence of children, though, implied that there will be sex).
In Stalin’s period and later Soviet “Marxists” defended and protected family values at least as vehemently as Catholic Church.
Both examples show that when the theory meets the reality, the reality wins.
We have difference in understanding of subjectivity. For us Buddhists subjectivity means that sensing or feeling things is the basis of reality for sentient beings, and one cant say that any sensory data has objective value. Of course beings objectively die, but their lived lives are strictly subjective. When you touch silk you feel something right? When someone says something to you, you feel something. How you interprete sensory data is also subjective, but there are limits for it set by your karma by your past actions and experiences. Things are qualitative for a human mind. If someone lights you or me in fire, we would panic and be under huge suffering and shock, but some Buddhist monks can just sit down and be in state of calm. Total subjectivity of human existence is quite dangerous idea for many beings for they misunderstood it as lack of need for moral values and that there is no need to better oneself. Thats why idea of benevolent God is good for many beings, it creates a sense of objectivity and morality in ones mindstream/subjective reality. But of course it is possible that I am wrong. Most important is how strong one is in alleviating and eliminating the suffering of beings. Good Christian is better than lazy Buddhist and vice versa, so too with Muslims, Hindus and so on.
The meaning of Jew was different before the destruction of the temple. Like the meaning of Roman was different in the time of the Republic and in the time of Byzantine emperors, both are in my opinion Romans, but the standards and historical self understanding of Romans had changed, so too is with the Jews. During the time of the Christ Jews had multiple different sects and only one of them is the ancestor of the Rabbinical Judaism and many Jews thought themselves in the early centuries as both Jew and Christian. Its just that in those power politics old sects like Sadducees, Esseneans and Zealots were defeated by Romans or by Pharisees and Christians were pushed away. But its probable that most Jews became Christian, especially their huge diaspora communities in Asia Minor and Syria. Those who call themselves Jews nowadays are just one splinter of ancient Jews, who base their identity historically on explicit opposition to Christ and attachment on their ethnic identity. There are many differences between ancient Jews and Talmudic ones, ancient ones did not follow oral Torah, the so called Talmud and traced their Jewishness through father, not matrilineally. Even the name of Israel is appropriated from ancient kingdom of Israel that was composed by the ten tribes of Israel, which was different from the kingdom of Judah, but thats a different topic for a different time. But modern Jews have as good claim for the name of Israel as the Orthodox church, although I have my own more emotional opinion on that.
Yes, communist ideas in various forms are as old as human society with material inequality. They keep coming back, just like the idea of god (or gods) you can push your responsibility to.
In this Buddhism (excluding militant Tibetan varieties) has an advantage: it is inclusive, so it is the only major religion that is not guilty of massive crimes against humanity, including genocide.
I might be wrong, though – I am not a Buddhist. My personal encounters with Buddhism are very limited: I had a Chinese post-doc once whose husband was a Buddhist, and she made fun of him because of that.
Oh I forgot to add relativity. Always when we think our mind starts to discriminate and discern objects internally or externally, that discernment is based on how things or phenomena relate on each other, all concepts are build like this, consciously or subconsciously. But thia discrimination if phenoma is strongly subjective process and proof of the subjectivity of the mind.
Oh dont you start too! Militant Tibetan varities? In long Tibetan history there was once strife between Karma Kagyupas, Gelukpas and Jonangpas, in the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, once! How does that make Tibetan Buddhism militant? Former opponents have even asked forgiveness from each other multiple times after those times. They even have very good relations nowadays. Only place that has really had Buddhist religiously inspired violence for centuries is Japan and I made quite clear what I think of their “Dharma.” By rules laid by the Buddha, they are not Buddhists and have not been a while.
By the way you did not answer my take on Christs death?
Oh you said that you are maybe wrong, my stupid hot temper. Sorry.
I expect you are right. Aramaic that Jesus spoke survived as Syriac, which is spoken by a group of people in Syria who consider themselves Christians. From my perspective, they are no less Christian than Catholics, Orthodox, Orthodox Old Believers, all sorts of Baptists, various other Protestants, and a whole slew of other sects. Even Mormons consider themselves Christians, although if I were a Christian, I wouldn’t count them as co-religionists.
The Buddhist cases of violence are extremely rare outside Japan, and mass violence is almost non existent, although there is few cases.
When the Third Dalai Lama converted Mongolia finally to Buddhism in 16th century, with the help of the great Altan Khan, he persuaded Altan khan to make human sacrifices illegal and killing of slaves and concubines during the funerals of noyons(mongol aristocracy). Because of that thousands of opposing shamans were killed. Mongolian shamanism split into two, into a Buddhism inspired yellow shamanism and black shamanism. He also tried to outlaw animal sacrifices, but that was not so strictly enforced and didnt succeed in many areas.
He was the first Dalai Lama that carried the title of Dalai Lama, given him by the last great khan of united(Khamag) Mongols Altan. In 1578 all Mongolic peoples, all the tribes made a promise to his holiness, that he is the root guru of whole/Khamag Mongol nation, Khalkhas, Zungars Chakhars, Tsongols, Bargas, Ur-mongols etc etc. There were two times before in history that Mongols converted in Buddhism, but it was always mostly the aristocracy, of course Shamanism changed each time to be more inspired by Buddhism. But the third one made Mongols as a whole Buddhist people and nation. Thats why Mongols mostly follow Gelug school of His Holiness and not all those different schools like Tibetans. Although some people in Gobi desert follow Nyingma, they are only exception and they are very few. Counted in thousands.
What else, in Japan there has been multiple times like I mentioned, but oh well heretics gonna practice heresy.
Now I remember! During the invasion of Korea by Japan, many Korean monks took arms to defend their fatherland, also Shaolin monks have practiced violence based on self defence against bandits. Then there was the suppression and elimination of Jonang school in the 17th Century in Tibet by the Geluk, but it was mostly non violent, disrobing monks, shurting down monasteries. There was very good reason though, their philosophy started to resemble Advainta somewhat. And without stopping them Buddhism would had degenerated to a school of Hinduism.
I am genuinely confident that these are all the cases of major Mahayana Buddhist violence outside Japan in known and recorded history. Who knows what happened during those chaotic times in India when Huns or some Central Asian invaders attacked in Ancient times.
With Theravadas there are some cases of violence, but they are clearly based on demographic and cultural reasons. So you cant say that Rohingya stuff is fault of Buddhism, especially when military junta often persecutes monks. But with Sri Lanka the case is possibly different if Sinhala people would be Hindus, there probably would not have been problems with Tamils and vice versa. But then Sinhalas have over one thousand years history of invasions by Tamils, many other people get angry already because of couple hundred years of bad blood, so in my opinion there is nothing strange in that situation. If Russians would have invaded Poland multiple times for over one thousand years, yeah I cant even imagine the level of hatred there would be.
They are Oriental Orthodox or part of the so called Church of the East(Nestorians). And they are genuine Christians unlike Nordic Lutherans etc and Christians almost never think Mormons as Christians.
Our grasp on reality is entirely dependent on receiving sensory data inputs through sensors. These data are integrated into a conscious experience of ourselves and our surroundings.
My conscious experience is mine only. If I was stupid enough to jump from a high bridge, my falling, crashing and dying would be my own subjective experience.
There are no circumstances whatsoever under which we are allowed to experience reality without the medium of consciousness doing the experience. Both ourselves and our surroundings can be thought as an image our consciousness projects on itself.
When we communicate, we use symbols that we agreed on to inform each other about the characteristics of our own specific experiences. For example we have agreed upon that the grass is green, sky is blue, sun is a burning golden yellow and clouds either white or gray or somewhat in between. So we can understand each other because we use common symbolic representations to describe what we experience.
But I frankly have no idea if what we both call “green ” would have been directly experienced by you in exactly the same manner as it would have been by me. Maybe inside your mindscape the “green ” is something completely different than in my mindscape. The problem of qualia is impossible to avoid.
Our reality is consensual. There of course would be no qualia problem if we indeed experienced an objective Reality.
I am not well versed in Buddhist history, so I have to defer to you. As to Japan, the polls suggest that if you add the numbers of people self-identifying as Shinto and Buddhists, the total is much greater than Japanese population, suggesting that both religions currently feel inclusive and therefore non-militant.
I was in Japan only once, for less than three weeks. Japanese struck me as polite, ridiculously law-abiding, and peaceful people. Appearances might be deceptive, though: in WWII Japanese Empire was not only aggressive, but prone to atrocities against others. Chinese, Koreans, Malays, Indonesians, and Filipinos still remember. In the end, though, they suffered heinous atrocities committed by the US against them: two cities were nuked and many more firebombed, which resulted in murder of countless civilians.
As to Christ’s death, I think your psychotherapy idea makes a lot more sense than the narrative of sacrifice.
About the agreed symbols Tibetan monks use quite often the concept of commonly agreed convention.
Hmm it feels like there is a hint of solipsism in your thinking, our mind also has a mirror like element, it reflects somewhat the nature of our surroundings. Therefore there is at least connection or continuum in what beings experience. I hope that you study five wisdoms, if you have not before.
Okay I take my words back, for your mindstream Christianity would not be suitable. I am sorry for my harsh words. But I must say I had my reasons. And as a Buddhist its proper to remind fellow Buddhist of proper behaviour. Also you have sense of humility that is always sign of spiritual potential. Have you taken the refuge in the Triple gem already?
-Your brother in Dharma
Solipsism, but not quite.
As to “green” and many other things, if you show anyone light of a particular range of wavelengths, the person would call it green (or an equivalent in whatever language that person speaks).
Interesting you mentioned Rohingya. That’s a 100% Western narrative and name. They are Muslim Bengalis, relatively recent immigrants to Burma, and the strife there is more ethnic than religious. The Empire and its vassals maintain the religious narrative, not because they are sympathetic to Muslims (the US and its sidekicks murder hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Muslims all over the ME), but because they want to keep blackmail material against anyone who does not toe the line or might refuse to toe the line in the future.
BTW, military junta is no longer in power in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi is the nominal head of state, but the situation with Bengalis did not change simply because it has nothing to do with the power structure in Burma (if they want to call themselves Myanmar, who cares) or religion.
Shintoism is quite new religion, before the Meiji restauration all of the Japan was Buddhist. Buddhist by its nature is syncretic religion that integrates local gods, spirits etc, etc…. During the Meiji restauration native syncretic Japanese kamis were artificially separated from Buddhism. During the Shogunate it was law that every Japanese was a member of some Buddhist temple. Under threat of death sentence. So local priests or monks could give or withold documents that proved ones adherence to Buddhism and could even extort poor villagers in some cases. Priests and monks were practically part of the civil administration of the Shogunate and were huge economic burden to the common people. I wrote monks or priests, because some more elite and orthodox Buddhist sects had still real celibate monks before the Meiji restauration, although they were somewhat rare. The state of Buddhism in Japan has gone downhill from the 13th or 14th century. But during the Meiji restauration and destruction of Shogunate tens of thousands of Buddhist temples and shrines were destroyed by angry peasants and Shinto religion was artificially created by Japanese nationalists and reformers, although those reformers had historical but failed predecessors in the Japanese history. Japanese culture was much more Buddhist in Medieval times, hell they were even completely pescetarianists, vegetarians who eat seafood, by law, before the Meiji restauration.
I don’t deny the possible (probable) existence of an objective Reality reflected in our perception. Therefore what I described is far from being solipsistic. What I wrote about is the undeniable fact that the inputs to our sensory receptors are the medium on top of which the conscious experience is constructed.
If someone would have been placed in a sensory deprivation for long enough, his consciousness would have undergone massive changes leading to hallucinations, derealisation and depersonalization. The consciousness is actually experiencing that on a lesser level when we dream.
What about color-blind people, what about daltonism?
I agree with you, but I tried to be nonpartial and then there are Malays in Thailand, but that too is not religious, but more of cultural or ethnic conflict. But If i rethink then the conflict is possibly religious on Rohingya/Chittagonian side, but not on Burmese side, there would not be possibly such problems if they would be Hindus.
I have only done this verbally and alone.
I have not found yet a suitable Ch’an monastic order nearby to formally join as a lay follower.
Where I live we only have typically Western Zen Buddhist centers that have been started by the Japanese Roshis or they followers after the war.
I have attended their zazen sessions on multiple occasions, but I did not have the impression that it was the place that I should attach myself to.
I have a strong admiration towards the lineage of Xu Yun. I wish that I one day will have the possibility to formally take refuge in the presence of the Sangha members from his lineage.
Meanwhile, I consider the lineage from Bodhidhama to Xu Yun as my lineage, just because I feel a strong personal inclination to do so.
I have also since being very young (around 9 to 10 years old) had the very strong desire to travel along the ancient Silk Road one day. Perhaps one day when my children are grown ups I might do that and also visit China to go to Xu Yun monastery and Bodhidhama’s tomb.
That is if my karmic circumstances allow me doing this.
You seem very well versed in this, so perhaps you can enlighten me.
My understanding of Japanese religion is that Shintoism was neither developed nor (re-)popularized during the Meiji restoration. Rather, it was dwindling for an extended period of time under the Ashikaga Shogunate before experience a massive revitalization during the Sengoku Jidai. Prior to this (~16th-17th centuries), Shintoism was on the verge of being completely subsumed within Buddhism, but it was restored to independent status and popularized to the point that it almost was a state religion, except that the state was too decentralized to properly institute it. Either way, this series of events was much earlier than the Meiji Restoration.
What have I misunderstood?
You are Russian right? Normally Russians have a karmic connection to the Tibetan schools, through Buryats and Kalmyks. But no matter, Dharma is Dharma and always benevolent.
Very good discernment from you to not attach yourself karmically with those kind of groups. Taking refugee is so basic that it would be good for you to do it with any proper Vinaya following monks, later when you will have Dharma transmission and empowerments, then it would be better for you to do it with your preferred lineage. For life is short and anything can happen, by taking the refugee your mindstream will be more strongly connected to Buddha.
For me it has been easy, for I was born to a Buddhist mother, and I saw monks from my childhood. Although Buddhism truly started to interest me when I was teenager, still there is nowadays so much different kind of media, movies, news, politics, gossip, drama, music, information etc etc, that one who becomes Buddhist by his own reason, truly has personal integrity and discriminating awareness. Without Buddhist family members I probably would had been lost in Samsara, how much one needs strength for that kind conviction, to see by ones own power that there is something beyond our mundane and desire filled reality.
Mr Hack has asked me why I was interested in Buddhism even though I was Baptized into Orthodox Faith. I have already answered about it. Buddhadharma just makes sense somehow and the older I get the more it makes sense and the more I get attached to it.
But for me as long as you avoid committing evil and causing suffering to others it is okay if you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Atheist. The fact that I am inclined towards Ch’an doesn’t mean that it should be interesting for other people too. Maybe something else entirely would be more conducive to their happiness. We are all unique even though deep down we are probably all the same.
I appreciate the time you have spent on our discussions.
Thanks for your kind advices.
I will see what I can do about it.
I am not very well versed on this topic, my knowledge of history of Japan and especially Shinto is severely lacking, but by my understanding is that there was three or four different types of Shinto, one original that there was before coming of Buddhism, that fought more or less against Buddhism, I dont know much about it, there was lots lf taboos and purification rituals and death was horrible or even more horrible thing that it is normally in religion. It lost against Buddhism, or at least organized form of it, probably some Kami cults did incorporate easily and some resisted. I dont know why and how, I would imagine that in some cases some village priest of local Kami has a dream or omen that local Kami is friendly to Buddhism or even Boddhisattva himself. So time goes on and Kami gods are incorporated to Japanese Buddhism, after all Buddhism believes in Gods, spirits and ghosts, has hundreds of classes of them. That is the second form of Shinto, then there is the third form of Shinto that did arise during the 18th and 19th centuries, that was Kami worship purged from foreign or Buddhist influences, or at least they tried, the Japanese culture was not only under strong Buddhist influence, but there was also influence from Confucianism and Daoism. Then I would say that there was also folk Shinto that never died, had influences from Buddhism but was preoccupied with mundane things, like fertility, health, crops, longevity, luck etc etc. Like with Mongolian Yellow shamanism, the Buddha is the highest force, but almost no shamans ask help from him, he is too much for them, or beyond their power. But its been long time when I read about the history Japan, although my knowledge of the history of Japanese Buddhism stands on more solid ground and, but I have never been as interested eith Japan as as I am with the history of Mongolia, China, Tibet or India.
This is the narrative that I have built in my head through the years concerning Shinto. In my understanding popularization of Shinto as an independent religion started in the late 18th century and really succeeded in 19th.
The Taj Mahal is not actually a mosque although there is a mosque on the grounds.
As a Russian who spent ~30 years in the US speaking English to everybody and writing papers and grants in English, let me give you a linguistic advice. The noun “advice” has no plural in English (in contrast to most languages).
Oh I forgot to add that Samurais were very strongly Buddhist. In my knowledge local Kamis were not much of interest to them, although some high class samurais practiced Neo-confucianism. After all you dont end in hell realms if you keep your head cold and dont feel any hatred or desire of destruction of opponent during the fight or during your death in a battle. Although Buddhism is peaceful religion it respects soldiers and warriors and many good Buddhists have served in that noble profession. After all lord Buddha was warrior by birth, and during his youth he was educated in the ways of war and he was master in swordsmanship and archery. In their youth his later rival Devadatta had always lost fights with Siddhartha. If you discuss this topic its very easy to spot western new age fake Buddhists by their anti-authoritarian attitude. Of course in utopia we would not need army or soldiers, but this world is no utopia, so only solution is to choose people with strong sense of duty and self-discipline.
His holiness writes beautifully about it
“I have always admired those who are prepared to act in the defense of others for their courage and determination. In fact, it may surprise you to know that I think that monks and soldiers, sailors and airmen have more in common than at first meets the eye. Strict discipline is important to us all, we all wear a uniform and we rely on the companionship and support of our comrades.
Although the public may think that physical strength is what is most important, I believe that what makes a good soldier, sailor or airman, just as what makes a good monk, is inner strength. And inner strength depends on having a firm positive motivation. The difference lies in whether ultimately you want to ensure others’ well being or whether you want only wish to do them harm.
Naturally, there are some times when we need to take what on the surface appears to be harsh or tough action, but if our motivation is good our action is actually non-violent in nature. On the other hand if we use sweet words and gestures to deceive, exploit and take advantage of others, our conduct may appear agreeable, while we are actually engaged in quite unacceptable violence.
The ultimate purpose of Buddhism is to serve and benefit humanity, therefore I believe that what is important for Buddhists is the contribution we can make to human society according to our own ideas and values. The key to overcoming suffering and ensuring happiness is inner peace. If we have that we can face difficulties with calmness and reason, while our inner happiness remains undisturbed. The teachings of love, kindness and tolerance, the conduct of non-violence as I have explained above, and especially the Buddhist theory that all things are relative are a source of that inner peace.
It is my prayer that all of you may be able to do your duty and fulfill your mission and in due course when that is done to return to your homes and families.”
~ Dalai Lama
Hey I probably make ten times more grammatical errors than ano4!
Not really. Both of you make very few. I had a grad student who came straight from Big China (somewhere near Shanghai) and spoke pretty decent English. I had a post-doc also from somewhere near Shanghai who was in grad school in the US before that, who spoke heavily accented ungrammatical English. After I interviewed him I told another Chinese post-doc I had at the time that he appears to be a good smart guy, but his accent is awful. She told me “don’t worry, his accent in Mandarin is just as awful”. I hired him, and good thing, too: he turned out to be smart and hard-working guy, published many high quality papers. His English improved a lot (I make sure the only common language people in the lab have is English, this forces them to practice), now he is an Assistant Professor in another US university.
Yet I know Chinese and French who spent 20 years in the US and still don’t speak decent English. In that sense the US is much more tolerant than Europe: if you behave like a normal person, understand people, and they understand you, nobody minds.
Unfortunately my English is far from being perfect. To my defense, I’ve learned it on my own, without proper schooling and do not use it on a daily basis.
Most of modern Judaism matches what would be an inference from moral message of stories in the Old Testament.
A large part of the opposition of Christianity and Judaism, is from the content of New Testament directly, which sometimes contradicts – and sometimes has a very controversial interpretation – of the Old Testament.
Opposition between Christianity and Judaism, is to a significant extent, from inherent contradiction and opposition between Old Testament and New Testament
Jesus often contradicts the mainstream reading of the Old Testament, sometimes directly and sometimes in terms of spirit of his message. This is not so different to Socrates in relation to traditional Athenian culture.
For example, Old Testament says (non-adulterous) sex, marriage and children, as a central purpose of existence (“Be fruitful and multiply”), and constantly writes about the importance of having children, lineage, family, ancestors, romance, etc.
While in New Testament, says it is better not to have sex (unless you cannot control yourself), and you should abandon superficial concerns like family duties, for the world to come.
Jesus tells followers to ignore to family duties e.g. (Matthew 8:21-22) which is more strongly emphasized in (Luke 9:59-62).
He thinks “your neighbour”, extends across tribes (e.g. Luke 10:25-37), and that true neighbour is not someone from your tribe, but someone who helps you (e.g. even if they are Samaritan).
Jesus directly contradicts concept of Old Testament’s retributive justice (“eye for an eye”) (Matthew :5:38-42).
There are also areas where Jesus has a more radical view of the Old Testament ideas. So in commandment, you are not supposed to desire your neighbour’s wife, house, etc.
Jesus follows a radical interpretation of this commandment, saying:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A27-30&version=ESV
In this example, is ultra strict interpretation of the commandment.
Socrates has a similar relation to Athens. He often claims he is proposing a stricter interpretation of Athenian law, or is the most pious Athenian, – but there is quite a lot of direct opposing to Athenian traditional views in his teaching.
I haven’t been following these things that closely and could be wrong, but were there not anti-Muslim riots by Buddhists in Burma? Were Buddhist Kalmyks not fierce Muslim-killers, which is why they were allowed to settle in their homeland near the Caucuses?
Engels, and especially Marx, do support monogamy in their writing, although they believe the present basis of marriage arrangement of bourgeois people, is dependent on property relations.
Marx was particularly against the “free love” ideology, which was fashionable in 1840s Paris, and he writes from his honeymoon in Paris against this.
So the continuation of normal monogamy that happens in the Soviet Union, can be quite predicted from the texts of Marx, and to lesser extent Engels too.
An amusing thing, retrospectively, is that Engels believes that prostitution would be eliminated by communism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/origin_family.pdf
So Engels’ writing of 1884 seems like unrealistic utopian, about life in communism, in retrospect. Monogamy was not “realized completely” and neither was prostitution disappearing.
It would be better to quote to such utopian views of Engels, the famous cynical phrase of Kant: “From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.”
“Opposition between Christianity and Judaism, is to a significant extent, from inherent contradiction and opposition between Old Testament and New Testament”
And your main argument for that is the differing sexual morality of the New Testament? But what about the real life? Has there ever been in history a time when majority of Christians had anti-natalist or anti-family attitudes? Clearly abstinence and celibacy was reserved from the very beginning to a small spiritual elite. Its true that Old Testament has differing emphasis on this topic, but what about people like prophet Elijah, who in my knowledge had no marital relations? Or prophet Jeremiah or Elisha, although I am not as sure with them about celibacy, but its quite clear that their lives resembled more of a Christian priest than Jewish and if they were married they probably practiced abstinence. Still Orthodox Church has married clergy and celibate monks are small minority compared to them. Once again this is clear by the tradition of the true church that this practice is reserved for a small minority that truly tried to achieve the state of Theosis in this life.
Then the secont point, the strong xenophobia in Old Testament and only helping your kin yes there are quite many passages that side with your point of view, but then it depends on a very selective reading of Bible.
“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
https://biblehub.com/exodus/22-21.htm
“When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. You must treat the foreigner living among you as native-born and love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”
https://biblehub.com/leviticus/19-34.htm
“Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother: thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land.”
https://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/23-7.htm
“Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen.” Okay Kings James version is little bit archaic, lets cite Berean Study bible,
“‘Cursed is he who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen”
https://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/27-19.htm
For if you really change your ways and deeds, if you act justly toward one another, if you no longer oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, and no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.… (REMEMBER THAT ISRAELIS! Actually ancient prophets of Israel would probably have thought that American style capitalism/worldview is a false god or a demon.)
https://biblehub.com/jeremiah/7-6.htm
“This is what the LORD says: Administer justice and righteousness. Rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Do not shed innocent blood in this place”
https://biblehub.com/jeremiah/22-3.htm
“See how every prince of Israel within you has used his power to shed blood. Father and mother are treated with contempt. Within your walls the foreign resident is exploited, the fatherless and the widow are oppressed.”
https://biblehub.com/ezekiel/22-7.htm
“This is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Administer true justice. Show loving devotion and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. And do not plot evil in your hearts against one another.’ But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder; they stopped up their ears from hearing.…”
https://biblehub.com/zechariah/7-10.htm
“He executes justice for the fatherless and widow, and He loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. So you also must love the foreigner, since you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt. ”
https://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/10-19.htm
As you see sometimes Old Testament uses very Christian like morals and sometimes retributive justice. Both viewpoints can be defended based on the scripture, but these passages that I cited do not resemble the teachings of Rabbinic Judaism, although they believe in Torah, they say that you dont need respect Torah’s advice on foreigners when dealing with idolaters, and for most religious Jews Christians have been idolaters through ages. Which is very strange, for Edomites and Egyptians were real polytheists, but then after all we are speaking about religion that chooses its adherents by their blood, hello Nazi par…. In Talmud the wicked ones are not allowed to testify in the court, and those who dont know Misnah are wicked, therefore all the non-Jews are wicked. In my opinion this is far away from the better parts of the Old Testament.
Witnesses Disqualified Due to Sin. 35 Seifim:
Paragraph 1- A wicked person is disqualified from testifying. Even a valid witnesses that knows his colleague is wicked, but the judges are unaware, is prohibited from testifying with him, even though the testimony is accurate. All the more so in a case where a valid witness has testimony for a party and he knows that his co-witness is a false witness, is he prohibited from testifying with him.
https://www.sefaria.org/Shulchan_Arukh%2C_Choshen_Mishpat.34?lang=bi
MISHNA: On the three days before the festivals of gentiles the following actions are prohibited, as they would bring joy to the gentile, who would subsequently give thanks to his object of idol worship on his festival: It is prohibited to engage in business with them; to lend items to them or to borrow items from them; to lend money to them or to borrow money from them; and to repay debts owed to them or to collect repayment of debts from them. Rabbi Yehuda says: One may collect repayment of debts from them because this causes the gentile distress. The Rabbis said to Rabbi Yehuda: Even though he is distressed now, when he repays the money, he is happy afterward that he is relieved of the debt, and therefore there is concern that he will give thanks to his object of idol worship on his festival.
https://www.sefaria.org/Avodah_Zarah.2a?lang=bi
On the three days preceding the festivals of idolaters, it is forbidden to conduct business with them, to lend articles to them or borrow from them, to lend or borrow any money from them, to repay a debt, or receive repayment from them. Rabbi Judah says: we should receive repayment from them, as this can only depress them; But they [the Rabbis] said to him: even though it is depressing at the time, they are glad of it subsequently.
https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Avodah_Zarah.1.1?lang=bi
These are just some excerpts, I believe that in Hebrew they use stronger language, but I dont know, its just my intuition.
And then there are stuff from old Hebrew religioin that Rabbinic Jews have totally forgotten, but are still living mainstream practices in the Eastern churches. They have priestly class like in ancient times, they have The holy of holies in their churches, an altar, 7 branched candlestick, burning of incence and Orthodox church services are modelled on the way of the services in the temple in the Jerusalem. The very core of the religioin of ancient Israelites is still living and flourishing tradition in the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodoc churches. Even the sacrifice of lamb, although it has gone through strong reinterpretation, but has it? For the sins of the men, lamb was offered to a God, Orthodox church believes that in those times men tried to approach divinity in simple ways, for they were simple and world was brutal before the grace of the Christ. Also revisionists like you always forget historical context, in hindsight its easy to make radical conclusions and forget how the history reveals itself organically to those who are living or experiencing it. Think about how Jesus prophesied that soon there will be no Temple and only after his death in couple decades the Temple was destroyed, many Christians saw that as proof of support for Eucharist. For the blood sacrifices undertaken by the Levitic priesthood was replaced by the bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ.
Then there is the case of the sripture, there is a scholarly consensus that Orthodox Old Testament, Septuagint was composed 3rd century BC, when the Masoretic text was probably composed in the end of the first Millenium or at least millenia later than the Septuagint. Once again a strong proof that the Christians and especially the Orthodox Church are the true Israel of the Lord!
By the way are you a Jew? Dont worry I am not a anti-semite, although I am not friend of the Rabbinic Judaism. But I dont like Protestantism or Wahhabism too. I hope that this was enough for you, for Old Testament is so vast that people, depending on biases, can argue about it forever, especially on this kind of highly subjective matter of who is true descendant of Israel. Especially when its my belief that Jews from the age of the Solomon or Moses would go into a state of shock after visiting both Synagogue or Church, if we would have a time machine, not maybe every ancient Israelite, but probably most.
Kalmyks were Buddhists, but the violence in the steppes between Turkic and Mongolic tribes was never based on religious reasons, likewise there were Cossacks who were Buddhist or Muslim, yes they mostly fought against Muslims, but it was not religiously motivated. Why would it been? Tatars and and Bashkirs were for centuries loyal subjects of Christian Czar. Before you mention the invasion of the Kazan Khanate by Ivan IV, yes it was violent, but so wars tend to be and after things got peaceful Tatarstan and Bashkortostan were as peaceful as almost any Russian region in their southern border. Yup there were some times revolts, but so too there were revolts of Cossacks and stuff like that, so nothing unusual.
Kalmyks migrated to the lower regions of Volga river during the early 17th Century, they drove Nogai Turks away and took their lands, but historically there isnt anything more natural than one nomadic tribe taking another ones lands, there was no religious motivation it, just tribe who is weaker than other tribes, same with wolves when they are hunting, they try to pick young, old or weak, it got nothing to do with Islam or Buddhadharma.
In Burma there are native Muslims and I have not heard about any riots against them, if you are talking about the problem in Arakan , then thats quite normative behaviour for people in Asia, like it was hundred years ago in Europe. Group of foreigners come with different culture and tongue and locals feel threatened, that story is as old as humanity.
Was almost never based on religious reasons I should had written. One conflict was partially linked to Islam. but it was in the end of the 13th Century and more about the power politics in the Mongol empire.
Psychotherapy for my ears is too modern, too Freudian? I meant therapeutic in a healing sense. Christ is something that makes our nature whole, perfects it, I think ancients thought so, no matter of their theological differences.
Well then it isn’t worth a lot
I2 Subclades arrived from Eastern Germany and Western Czechia, not Russia, the same is likely true for the minor R1a subclades
Ethnogenesis of the Slavs is most often placed in Belarus and Ukraine, not modern Russia
There is not a single notable medieval Albanian monument in Kosovo, Albanians in the Balkans are not mentioned until the 10th Century, while Serbs and other Slavs start appearing in the 6th Century, Kosovo itself is dotted with old 600+ yearold forts and monasteries which are undeniably Serbian (and Albanians support this by periodically ransacking and defacing them)
Given difference between the Gheg and Tosk dialect, the complete absence of Albanian toponyms in the lands they supposedly lived in for millenia what is far more likely that they are not autochthonous (in Kosovo at least)
There is also the factor of Caucasian Albania, whose relation to modern Albania is still debated
There are not many Illyrian, Celtic or Thracian toponyms because they are extinct/completely assimilated, which would suggest that Albanians are either newer arrivals or assimilated into the Albanian ethnicity
Maybe the term I used is too modernist. I never implied anything Freudian, though: Freud was a fraud, and he knew it himself. Maybe that explains his popularity: simple lies are usually more popular than complex truths.
I am actually completely sinicized; my family was given land in Shanghai after being recognized for our participation in the Ming invasion of Vietnam. At this point, we are 80-90 percent Han and I have been reading about more the more muscular forms of Buddhism.
But I deeply empathize with the feel of “the blood” or “the fury” which can easily rise up, which I think is very much a Mongolian genetic relic. I’ve always been noted for being too fond of conflict by other Han Chinese, but frankly I think they’re just wusses.
Actually I am only half Mongolian, thats why I wrote about having Mongolian heritage. But there is somekind of fury in Mongolian blood, its very different from reserved and simmering anger of Japanese or Koreans. Its very bursting and swift, but disappears as quickly as it came, totally different from the bitter and long felt hidden hatred that many other Asian people feel when they are angry, or so it seems to me. It is probably very taxing to be angry for long times, I dont understand it. Many Chinese are just sinicized Mongolians or Manchus in Northern China, although I think that Beifangren are much closer geneticslly to Mongolians and Manchus than they are to Cantonese or Hakkas. Ancient Mongols thought that Northern and Southern Chinese are separate races and did not give much value to Southerners. Although Khalkhas of Mongolia would beat me if I would say that they have something common with Chinese.
So your ancestors were probably from the Banners of Inner Mongolia, maybe Dörbeds, Chakhars or Ur-Mongols . I have never been in Shanghai or coastal or Southern regions of China except Beijing. They do not interest me. But yes Chinese are more reserved and peaceful, those too are good qualities. I very much hope that CCP finds confidence and becomes more culturally Chinese, but they are more or less on good path. Although many of my Tibetan friends criticize CCP, when I visited Tibetan regions in Qinghai and Gannan prefecture of Gansu I did not perceive any kind of totalitarian control or opression, yes they had surveillance cameras in many places, but its pretty normal nowadays everywhere. Most people there on countryside were Tibetans, I did not see anything resembling colonization or destruction of culture. But CCP’s messing with Tibetan tulku system is not nice, but its a medieval relic from Tibetan culture and in most situations has no place in Buddhism , and its better that it disappears. Of course the situation is not ideal but then where in our Earth things are? Although I am very fond of Qing till the Opium wars. Then there was harmony and we had real Buddhist emperors in Central Kingdom, and Tibetans, Chinese, Manchus and Mongols lived in harmony under the rule of benevolent emperors. I would move to China in blink of an eye if Xi Jinping or someone from CCP would restore the empire, and convert to Buddhism and Confucianism. One can always dream, but we have been born during Kali Yuga 末法, when the very basis of wisdom and civilization will crumble, for If things are conditional and composite, then they are transient by nature, but nothing truly disappears just changes form, so you need be even more attentive to perceive the truth than in the olden days and one day the long winter shall be over. Therefore Sage’s last words were good advice suitable for all ages, “all compounded things are subject to decay, strive with vigilance!”
But I must add that for as traditional and religious people as Tibetans, something like the Communist party will forever be foreign not accepted my majority. Its quite interesting when you read Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchis travels in Tibet more than hundred years ago, he tells how respected and well liked Chinese were in Tibet during the late Qing. Even now you can see small blue thread on the borders of robes of Tibetan monks, that was added as a sign of gratitude towards the Chinese, for after the mad emperor Langdarma there were not enough monks left to ordain monks, you need five monks at least by Vinaya, and there was only two or three Tibetan monks left, so there was couple wandering Chinese monks who helped them to ordain new monks. In those times blue was the color of China and blue thread was added to traditional monastic robes of Tibetans. I very much pray that Chinese will return to their roots once again, for they are intelligent people and will one day understand that materialism will not make them happy, but then they should enjoy for some time, for too long they endured starving and humiliation, but one day its time to move on. Also the Buddhist scene is suprisingly stron in China, its much stronger than Daoist or Confucian revival, that are quite marginal, especially the latter. In my gross estimation I would estimate that at least 25% of Chinese are Buddhist, or feel affinity to Buddhism. Although many western researchers would say that my estimate is two times too high. Still it was surprising to me that many of them in northern China knew Mantras and Dharanis. Although most of them were old people.
You are probably right, it doesn’t seem to have been motivated by any religious dogmas or calls, but religion served as an important identifier for the tribes. Would Kalmyks have fought the Nogai Turks and driven them from their lands, if the Nogais had also been Buddhists?
There were, apparently, Kalmyk-Dagestani riots, but these have the character of the disturbances in Burma:
https://jamestown.org/program/kalmyk-authorities-react-harshly-to-desecration-of-buddhist-sacred-temple-2/
I will remind my wife of this, as she is 1/8 Kalmyk 🙂
Using this quote “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” to lay a claim that Jesus preached “the abandonment of the family” is not simply preposterous – it is a sign of great ignorance. Such embarrassing claims are, of course, quite common with people who tend to think of themselves as “rational” and “logical” (reason and logic are not “things” in themselves). In the end, all that comes with such delusions is arrogance – a great sin in itself.
You see, simply “reading the Bible” a million times over, cannot help you one bit without you having a proper foundation that would enable you to, even, attempt to interpret what is written in the Holy Books. This foundation or guidance could come from, either, one’s family or from a teacher. In your particular case, it is quite evident that you have not had the opportunity or the desire to attain such guidance. The only attitude that stems from your comments is that of a self-ascribed intellectual superiority which is nothing more than arrogance. You believe yourself more versed in questions of spirituality than whole armies of theologians, priests, Holy men, and Great Teachers? You believe that you’ve discovered that “the problem is that people do not read the New Testament as a whole text”? Do you think the Bible is some sort of a novel? Please, for your own sake, check your arrogance.
I’ve always thought that most adults would know that the Bible, or any other spiritual text for that matter, is not to be read/taken literally. Is knowing the Greek alphabet and the numbers sufficient for comprehending physics formulas? Not really. The Bible is intentionally constructed of parables that one needs to interpret in order to derive their message. It is not the words that convey a value – it is the thought process of interpreting the message that is the main reward to a man who seeks attainment of higher spirituality.
Finally and, in your case, least importantly (as you have much greater problems than that), the above mentioned quote means the following: Jesus is telling you that, until you break the chains of dependencies that bind your being to questions of matter over spirit (familial obligations have that tendency), you will not be equipped with the necessary prerequisite for higher spiritual attainments. If you seek higher knowledge, you have to make sacrifices – nothing outrageous – just common sense. “Hate” is a metaphor of liberation of the mind – not of family abandonment. Moreover, we have this: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you” This is all common sense but, unfortunately, common sense is not something one’s being born with – it, too, has to be attained.
For the record: I am not a religious man and I haven’t read the Bible more than twice.
Nomadic Buddhist tribes warred constantly between each other, mostly Mongolic but many tend to forget that after the disintegration of the Mongol empire, even the western khanates were Buddhist for some time, before population dynamics forced them to convert to Islam. Warring between Buddhist Western Mongols, Dzungars and the Eastern Mongols was endemic for many centuries, only in the 18th century were Dzungars almost completely genocided by Eastern Mongols and Manchus, primary reason of joining to Qing empire was for most Outer Mongolian tribes the promises of military help for crushing of the Dzungars. Northenr half of Xinjiang and adjacent areas from Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan was colled those times by the name of Dzungaria, and it was mostly populated by Mongols, after the genocide it was settled by Kazakhs, Uigurs and Hands, easternmost parts by Khalkha Eastern Mongols. Nowadays in Norhen Xinjiang there is only a small minority of Mongols descending from the Dzungars, most were widep away by genocidal warfare and diseases. But in the longer run Buddhism did somewhat pacify Mongols, but it was process that took centuries.
It really would make little difference, I think. Issues relate to better-educated (and, this is Asia, ethnically networking to some extent) Tamils succeeding out of proportion to their numbers in professional life and in government positions in the British period and after independence.
Lee Kuan Yew said:
which is a simplistic summary but not too far off the mark.
In India there are many small ethnic groups that are better educated or have better networking than larger groups. From Kashmiri Panditas to Punjabis. The difference is that they have smaller cultural and religious differences between larger and smaller groups than Tamils and and Sinhala. Actually I think that the comparison between Malays and Chinese is more apt. In other words: if ethnic groups have more shared culture then there is smaller risk that they start to hate each other, no matter of unequal division of wealth or education.
Also Tamil Tigers of Eelam are only non Muslim community that has such culture of mass terrorism in near history, actually very few radical Muslim groups can claim to have made so many assasinations, bombings etc. IRA or ETA are small flies compared to them.
I have never heard of such problems between Hindus as with Tamils and Sinhala. At least in last couple hundred years. Even though there are large disivisions in wealth and power between them, also its quite probable that Sri Lanka woule have been a state of India if people would have been majority Hindus there.
No, it’s not. Ceylonese colonial history has nothing whatsoever to do with the religion of the native people (the folk religion in the villages of the interior is not that different from some South Indian hill tribes anyway) and a lot to do with European colonial politics. Ceylon was never a part of the Raj, it was a separate colony.
I’m not sure what you mean here. India is obviously a vastly larger country but Sri Lanka has almost twice the per capita income.
Count the number of dead Tamils and the number of dead Sinhalese and you may form a different impression of who has the “culture of mass terrorism”.
Look, you are in the habit of reprimanding commenters above who don’t know too much about things regarding other cultures– how much do you really know about SL politics and communal life?
This is because it is what is known in English as an “uncountable noun” or a “mass noun”.
For this reason it also does not take the singular article “a”; therefore one should say not let me give you a linguistic advice but either let me give you some linguistic advice or let me give you a piece of linguistic advice.
Hope this helps.
There are huge differences in wealth and power in India between different Hindu ethnic groups, some are very small and powerful, some huge and lacking of power in federal level, like Biharis still among the billion Hindus composed of different peoples, languages and sects there has not been such strife as they have had in Sri Lanka. Or has not been for centuries.
I must say that it was wrong to me to start to speculate about Hindu Ceylon, for it would have been a product of very different dynamics, therefore its too hypothetical to make arguments based on it.
My only real life knowledge about the Sri Lanka has been talks with monks from there. I dont have any experience about the common people.
I know that it was separate colony, but it would been an unique case if it would have gained independence as a separate Hindu country, you are possibly right, possibly wrong.
I have mainly reprimanded comments concerning Buddhism, which is religion and not a culture, although these things often overlap. As you have probably noticed, matters concerning ones religion tend to be highly emotionally charged or is emotionally loaded a better term?
What I have read about the terrorism committed by the Tigers, has made me believe that only policy with such organizations is violence. The glorifying of suicide attacks and strikes against holy Buddhist places are not acceptable, and Tigers are only group in recent history that has committed terrorism on the level of the radical Salafis. If you are Tamil or have some kind of connection to them I understand that you view things differently. Sinhalese have also committed great deeds of violence that are shameful, but in my opinion Tigers represent barbarism. What it tells when they even have made terrorist attacks against Indians and even assasinated the prime minister of India or have slaughtered non-Hindu Tamils among them? But I admit I have my bias, I love Hindus and see them as my brothers and it hurts me to see that kind of strife lile in Sri Lanka. But Sinhalas share my religion, simple as that, from western universalistic point of view you should be non partial. There is wisdom in thay and I try to be, but there are limits. I hope that I have not offended you, for Tamils in Sri Lanka have suffered greatly, but Tigers were completely just mad. You cant negotiate with mad men.
The LTTE was only the most successful one of the Tamil groups. They emerged because the less ruthless Tamil groups could not stand in the face of the completely ruthless Sri Lankan policy which involved, among other things, torching libraries and murdering political prisoners in the jails and innocent civilians in their homes. I don’t support the LTTE, and you are right that they were ruthless and committed many evil acts, but they were not more ruthless than their opponents.
Also some of the specific acts which are attributed to the LTTE by the official government account were almost certainly not committed by them– the Premadasa assassination for instance.
Culture, I feel, is even more so. Religion is at least partly a product of logical analysis, but culture can only be felt and acted. One can’t really relate to culture on an intellectual level, except indirectly.
India has been pretty successful for the most part at avoiding internal civil war and keeping the allegiance of many distinct groups; while there are also things Indians can stand to learn from other peoples this is something Sri Lankans of all ethnicities can stand to learn from India. This is of course only my opinion.
You probably know more about this than me, thank you for your enlightening comments. Originally I just tried to make a coarse or rough list of all recorded violence that was possibly connected to Buddhism.
By the way I believe that it is pointless to argue which is more emotional, religion or culture, it varies so much depending on context. Both have their emotional baggage, although I believe that religion has stronger emotional imprint on people, at least religions or continuum inside the religion tends to last longer than nations or peoples.
Thanks for the kind words.
I agree with this.
I think what I was trying to say was that culture has less of a rational dimension than religion does, so it’s harder to explore in the context of discussion. But I don’t think I’ve fully thought this through.
Thanks! You are right.
Truth be told, articles never were my strong suit. I am sure I make many errors in article usage in my papers and grants. Thing is, the other two languages I speak, Russian and Ukrainian, do not have any articles. Although intellectually I appreciate the usefulness of articles in languages where nouns do not change according to case, I still feel that articles are an unnatural and unnecessary thing.
You can have”spiritual interpretation”, if you would like for your own life. But we are talking about what Jesus says and here the text is not especially esoteric.
As is typical with most new religions and cults, Jesus multiple times commands his followers to abandon their family, and also says these kinds of speeches that the follower has to be willing to abandon family.
There is a difference between 1 and 2, as 1 only implies “has to be willing”. But the fact is he also made his followers abandon their family.
So we have a combination of both his own actions in his life (commanding followers to abandon family), as well as his own words that followers have to be willing to.
Something like Matthew 10:35 is more esoteric and unclearly written – but this is because Jesus is interpreting Old Testament.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+10%3A35-39&version=NIV
He is using the Old Testament prophecies, to support the idea above that followers have to be willing to give up their earthly life for his cause.
It’s not a question of spirituality. We are talking about what is in the texts, and they are not “difficult to interpret” hermetic writings, and not designed to be.
Are you talking about Old Testament or New Testament? Most of the New Testament was intentionally written in a clear way, with multiple references, to be accessible to non-Jews and spread its message as far and widely.
For this reason, it is written and composed in Greek, rather than the language Jesus actually spoke in (Aramaic) or the texts he cites (Hebrew).
This is a “spiritualized” interpretation which might be helpful for your own life. But Jesus has followed a literal interpretation with his followers. (As does many new religions and cults)
You can interpret a text in a spiritualized, symbolic way, if that is helpful for your “spiritual journey”. But I am talking just about what Jesus said and how he followed his own words.
I’m sure it is good idea to have “spiritual guidance” in your life, but that is a separate topic.
I’m talking about what is in the New Testament.
There are many things which are written plainly and clearly in the New Testament. There’s no advantage to add modern peoples’ mystical interpretations to try to avoid what it says – many of them disagree with the text, and are reconciling that by giving the text such a symbolic, hermetic interpretation, where “left” means right, and “down” means up.
Its clear that the Bible was intended for large audiences, but Greek already had a long history among diaspora Jews, the oldest extant Old Testament Septuagint was written in Greek during 3rd Century BC, and many Egyptian Jews used Greek as their primary language, like Jewish Alexandrian philosopher Philo, who probably knew Greek better than Aramaic or Hebrew. So there was a Greek speaking community of Jews living in Levant and Egypt, who consumed religious and philosophical literature in Greek and not in Hebrew. Although many of them were very religious in Jewish faith they had a better knowledge of Greek than Hebrew.
In my understanding Christ had different kind of followers, those who were very close to him and lived in somekind commune together and shared their property, and then normal people who would come and ask his blessing or guidance from him, but didnt give up their private property or marital relations. But still apostle Peter was a married man, I think he had a better understanding of Christs teaching than either your or me, strange that he didnt kick his wife out then? Your logic depends too much on literal understanding of scripture and lacks faith on Christian tradition, like you would understand these things better than patristic writers, who lived during a time that was much less separated culturally from the period of the Christ, or someone like apostle Peter. There is same kind of logic with Wahhabis, like they could understand Quran better than those who lived near the time of Muhammad.
Articles are crazy. I’m a native English speaker, so I don’t have this problem with English, but I took an introductory German class a long time ago and the articles practically drove me mad.
Correct. Weird Protestant cults also play with game, with direct Biblical quotes. Moreover, such an approach implicitly ignores the fact that the Church whose fathers (guided by the Holy Spirit) chose the appropriate gospels Epistles etc. that would comprise the New Testament. So he is arguing about what the New Testament means against those who in essence created it.
The Orthodox Church’s view of marital relations:
https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/sexuality-marriage-and-family/marriage1
God created male and female so that man and woman would live their lives together in marriage as one flesh. This union should be broken for no earthly reason.
What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
They said to Jesus, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?”
He said to them, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife except for sexual impurity and marries another, commits adultery.”
The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.”
But he said to them, “Not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it” (Mt 19.6–12).
Human marriage exists by the will of God on the earth as the created expression of God’s love for man and as man’s participation in the creative love of God. The union of man and woman in the community of marriage is used in the Bible as the image of God’s faithful love for Israel, and Christ’s sacrificial love for the Church (cf. Is 54, Jer 3, Ezek 16, Hos).
Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present the church to Himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband (Eph 5.22–33).
. . . each man should have his own wife, and each wife her own husband. The husband should give the wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does. Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through each of self-control (1 Cor 7.2–5).
…………..
These words of Saint Paul, read at the sacramental celebration of marriage in the Church, contain the whole program for spiritual life in the community of marriage. The husband must love his wife to the point of death, as Christ loves the Church. And the wife must be totally given to her husband in everything as the Church is given to Christ. The union in love must be perfect, total, complete, enduring and lasting forever. Within this union, the sexual act of love is the mystical seal of the total union in love; the act whereby the two are united in mind, heart, soul and body in the Lord.
According to the spiritual teaching of the Orthodox Church, marriage, and so the sexual act of love, is made perfect only in Christ and the Church. This does not mean that all those who are “married in church” have an ideal marriage. The sacrament is not mechanical or magical. Its reality and gifts may be rejected and defiled, received unto condemnation and judgment, like Holy Communion and all of the sacramental mysteries of the faith. It does mean, however, that when a couple is married in the Church of Christ, the possibility for the perfection of their marriage is most fully given by God.
See my response to Altanbakshi:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/hagia-sophia-becomes-mosque/#comment-4049984
Thanks AP! But I think that Dmitry has somekind of agenda. Clearly he tries to prove that Christianity is utopian and impossible for most people, and that it was watered down soon after the resurrection of Christ. It could also be said that he tries to prove discontinuity in Christian tradition.
Christianity was the very foundation of the morals and success of the west, it made human life dignified no matter the circumstances. It created a healthy sense of community and social cohesion. Therefore for those who abhor confident and life affirming Western civilization its imperative to extinguish authentic Christianity. To demoralize people. To make them lose hope, so that only atomized egoistic individuals would be left, men who would believe that there is nothing else to follow than ones desires, without roots, without community, in other words ideal slavemen.
I don’t know about Dmitry’s personal motivation; I suspect it is not malevolent but instead a sort of pushy curious contentiousness. He is usually a very well-informed and intelligent person to “spar” with.
But I agree with the rest that you have written.
I do not mean to insult AaronB, who hasn’t said an unkind word to me, but I (personally) find his lengthy posts about “spiritual” matters and culture uninteresting and just skip them. OTOH, yours and Anon4’s posts and arguments on Buddhism have been very informative and worth reading.
There’s only maximum 3 people reading our posts, and none of us are religious Christians (in any real sense), so it’s strange to claim that everyone who disagrees with you has some “agenda”.
Yes, agenda of enjoying to write down facts.
I would not say anything rude to a religious Christian person- but there is nothing like that among us 2-3 people reading here.
Although it’s important that people can answer to their own texts.
This is a very simplistic and you are stating stuff rather than presenting any arguments.
Obviously, Christianity is an important ingredient in the modern European civilization, until around the late 19th century. From the late 19th century, it’s rapidly becoming just a minority interest, which – again – I am far more reading and knowing about than most people of today, which is surprising for me.
The language of Jesus and his followers is Aramaic, and all texts he quotes in his teaching were Hebrew (Jesus quotes only texts from Hebrew, nothing from Greek).
The use of Greek for the New Testament authors, was to develop a wider audience – this is consensus of all scholars, so why are you arguing against it?
The fact Greek was popular with Jews of the time, is not a counter to that, but part of the explanation. And again, this is not my view, but what is known from any mainstream historians.
New Testament clearly writes that it is acceptable to get married if you cannot control your sexual impulses. It’s written and repeated many times. If you don’t know this, you have not read it. Again, it is written that it is acceptable, although not ideal.
In addition, clearly, it is said by Jesus, that it is acceptable to remain married, if you were married before you received his teaching.
The latter is clearly applied to Peter. So nothing you are writing is relevant.
No, but I can see you have not read the New Testament, if you think that. Jesus clearly says you should not kick out your wife.
Your “logic” depends on not reading the posts which you reply to, and the texts being discussed.
If you use the blockquote, to copy-paste the part of the text where you disagree it would be more clear to see what you disagree with, and you can also see whether you claim is actually contradicting what was written or not.
The parts which you disagree with in this post are just basic introductory facts
Why?
Of course, Jesus spoke in Aramaic and only quotes Hebrew texts in the Gospels.
Of course, New Testament view on marriage is simple and well known.
Ideal is to not have any sexual relationship to a woman. However, marriage is acceptable for people who cannot control impulses, or are married before they received teachings of Jesus (Jesus talks about this in several times and says it quote directly).
AP have you read the New Testament, all the way through, as a normal text?
This teaching is not something you need to find special quotes from. It’s written in long and clear essays, which less ambiguous and poetic than my own post to you now. You don’t need to search for interpretative blog posts on Google.
There are of course, less clear parts and teaching of the New Testament. But on topics like marriage, it’s very clear and unambiguous.
–
I think a lot of people confuse the idea of “spiritual teaching”, with what is said in the text. Obviously, if you want spiritual help, then you can benefit from all kinds of qualified people, whether a priest or a psychologist.
But to understand the intention of a text – the first step is to know the text itself.
Moreover, if you want to argue about the “Church interpretation” – I can find their commentaries on many of texts.
These blog posts you quote, can be much better advice for someone who needs spiritual help. But if we are talking about what the view of the New Testament is – well, it says it in the New Testament, not a 21st person writing a blog post.