religious avalanche?
religious avalanche?
With hard times gaining a foothold around the world, do you think we are in for an eruption of religious and quasi-religious activity? I sort of think so: As Mark Twain observed, "Religion is the best business in the world."
- Prasadachitta
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Re: religious avalanche?
Maybe it wont be all bad.
"Beautifully taught is the Lord's Dhamma, immediately apparent, timeless, of the nature of a personal invitation, progressive, to be attained by the wise, each for himself." Anguttara Nikaya V.332
Re: religious avalanche?
Well, people have to do something with their time and their anxiety, I guess.
Rain soddens what is kept wrapped up,
But never soddens what is open;
Uncover, then, what is concealed,
Lest it be soddened by the rain.
But never soddens what is open;
Uncover, then, what is concealed,
Lest it be soddened by the rain.
Re: religious avalanche?
Are you suggesting that the masses need opiates right now? You may just be right. At least some of it will be good medicine... I hope!genkaku wrote:With hard times gaining a foothold around the world, do you think we are in for an eruption of religious and quasi-religious activity? I sort of think so: As Mark Twain observed, "Religion is the best business in the world."
- Ngawang Drolma.
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Re: religious avalanche?
I read something somewhere that religion has really been on the rise in the US in recent years.
Sorry to be so vague with this comment
Sorry to be so vague with this comment
Re: religious avalanche?
I agree with you Drolma ... for equally vague reasons.Drolma wrote:I read something somewhere that religion has really been on the rise in the US in recent years.
Sorry to be so vague with this comment
But I wonder to what extent that rise -- in the recent years of great affluence -- is based on having too MUCH stuff, rather than too little ... and then realizing that stuff doesn't really make you all that happy. I believe I have read studies that after the basic needs were attained, the rest simply did not increase the happiness level.
Re: religious avalanche?
Most of the time, once basic needs are covered, the rest probably are the cause for stress!genkaku wrote: But I wonder to what extent that rise -- in the recent years of great affluence -- is based on having too MUCH stuff, rather than too little ... and then realizing that stuff doesn't really make you all that happy. I believe I have read studies that after the basic needs were attained, the rest simply did not increase the happiness level.
Like when you park your porsche outside a cafe and someone walks by and keys the paint job (fortunately this has never happened to me because, um.... I don't frequent cafes?).
- Cittasanto
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Re: religious avalanche?
genkaku wrote:With hard times gaining a foothold around the world, do you think we are in for an eruption of religious and quasi-religious activity? I sort of think so: As Mark Twain observed, "Religion is the best business in the world."
off topic to a degree but remembered this video on youtube I posted on my blog yesterday, which has some relevance to the OP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybAUM7Ko ... annel_page" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Blog, Suttas, Aj Chah, Facebook.
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
Re: religious avalanche?
As a former Porsche practitioner my observation is that the Porsche community is adequately equipped to meet any such challenges to it's sacraments and relics. I only widely noted even my comparatively hinayana porsche vehicles being taken up ignorantly as objects of worship by both Porsche and non-Porsche disciples as opposed to serving as a cause for generating ill will.mudra wrote:Most of the time, once basic needs are covered, the rest probably are the cause for stress!genkaku wrote: But I wonder to what extent that rise -- in the recent years of great affluence -- is based on having too MUCH stuff, rather than too little ... and then realizing that stuff doesn't really make you all that happy. I believe I have read studies that after the basic needs were attained, the rest simply did not increase the happiness level.
Like when you park your porsche outside a cafe and someone walks by and keys the paint job (fortunately this has never happened to me because, um.... I don't frequent cafes?).
But whoever walking, standing, sitting, or lying down overcomes thought, delighting in the stilling of thought: he's capable, a monk like this, of touching superlative self-awakening. § 110. {Iti 4.11; Iti 115}
Re: religious avalanche?
A very good friend and co-meditator, sent me this poem yesterday.
(from Hafiz: 'Cast All Your Votes for Dancing")
'Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.'
(from Hafiz: 'Cast All Your Votes for Dancing")
'Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.'
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725
Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global Relief • UNHCR
e: [email protected]..
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725
Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global Relief • UNHCR
e: [email protected]..