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| LOVE means a revolution and it means spiritual evolution because HATE is a mistake. |
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| The Buddha's twin message is simple - wisdom and compassion, one always with the other. |
(VQP) 500% more Muslims live in the USA than Jews, even when counting dual-nationals who really live in Israel and come to gather money to send back home to fund endless war and conflict (in the name of peace)? There have never been that many Jews, as over exposed as they are in all fields, compared to the total US population of ~310,000.
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| I love you, Buddha! (Moondoxy) |
Love your family, humankind. Not that tiny group you belong to, whom you may be at loggerheads with, those irritating beings following you along this course of samsara, the "continued wandering on," appearing now as this then as that, trading positions, irritating and spurring growth and, when mishandled, regression. We mean other humans in general. Who is "human"? All humanoids are human, even if not humane. It is not limited to earthlings. Even if one were an enemy, that human could only be an enemy if you were an enemy back. For if you are not, then that human alone is fighting, at odds, caught up in his or her own war, his or her own worst enemy.
(TYT) What did Ben Affleck say on intolerant Bill Maher's "comedy" show, the voice of a privileged atheist Jewish liberal white male who never questions $tructural injustices?
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| Love with your whole body instead. |
For these reasons, and because the Buddha taught us, we love everyone, we extend loving-kindness in all 10,000 directions, we exclude no one. And this leads us to the point, Islamophobia.
It may rightly be said that Islam and Muslims did Buddhism a grievous injury in northern India and Central Asia (Indo-Scythia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the Stans, of which there are many (Sakastan, Kazakhstan, Waziristan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Seistan, Baluchistan, and one might even include Kalmykia, in Buddhist Europe), sweeping in from the west and completing what Brahmanism and Hinduism had already done much to undermine and obliterate as a "foreign influence" from neighboring Central Asia.
But for that reason and on account of that, we do not bear a grudge or live in fear. The Dharma born in India and Central Asia was not destroyed but scattered by the invasions and displacement. It went everywhere else in Asia and from Asia to the world (nor is it limited to this planet).
LETTER TO WQ: Hey, you stupid liberals, you yourselves are liberal! So why are you giving B. Maher and B.S. Obama a hard time?
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| Hate if you want to hate (TMA). |
WQ REPLY: Oh yeah, but we're radical liberals! Anyone can see there's nothing actually liberal or liberating about these two mouthpieces. One of the core principles of being openminded, of being "liberal" (in the U.S. sense of the word, not the European) is to be progressive enough to hear everybody and respect them, and not only "tolerate" but invite them to speak and join in. Welcome, friends, welcome! And we're not limiting it to "human" persons. We feel a oneness, a commonality, and a concern for ALL sentient beings, so our behavior may reveal that. If that means chimps are our cousins, we already love all hominins. If that means admitting dolphins are smarter than us, then we admit it. We love persons. They, the spokespersons for the military-industrial complex, particularly those in the mainstream media, want you to FEAR/HATE, that's why they show you decapitation videos and replay twin tower beheadings (but keep warden-supported rapes, death sentence poisonings, and lethal electrocutions hidden behind screens in maximum "security" torture facilities called U.S. prisons).
(TIN) Thank you, Ben Affleck. You did a terrible disservice with "Argo" (which you could have called "Fargo II," another Hollywood farce) and got made fun of by Family Guy, but we agree with you and are proud you spoke up for love calling out fake "left"-leaning Islamophobes.
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And in that part of America called the USA, a fraction of the American continent with a fraction of its population, we are taught to fear, hate, and reject everything Muslim, Islamic, Middle Eastern, oh but not the math, algebra, astronomy, and other great contributions (see
The House of Wisdom), but all the things we do not like in ourselves, in our heritage, in our unofficial state religions (Christianity and Judaism). As any objective viewer sees it, the three traditions which includes Islam, called the Abrahamic Faiths, are nearly identical -- their extremes, their savagery, their sexism, their fanaticism, and love of war even while proclaiming the grandeur and divinity of peace. People can hardly distinguish the Dharmic Faiths (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism
, Sikhism) from one another.
We expect it from the Right, this rabid hatred, not from the nominal Left. But there is no Left to be found in the mainstream media, perhaps with the exception of Dennis Kucinich on FOX News, maybe Ralph Nader or Amy Goodman, both on Pacifica, which is definitely not the mainstream. All of those other ridiculous voices, which may on occasion take a sensible position but are always actually supporting the system that hires them as they never question things on a structural level, just offering adversarial polemics and false dichotomies. Republicanism is racist, even if all Republicans are not. Now why would one back such a party? Lesser of two evils in their mind? Most people on the Right are ashamed of the Right and not really represented by their voices. But we get the parties we settle for. Wisdom Quarterly is not pro-Democrats; it's just the party we're stuck with because one is only allowed to choose between the two.
(Jimmy Fallon with superstar will.i.am do "Ew!") Lighten up, hate is not helping, but wise attention would help.
Who in the world is more pro-military industrial complex, more pro-police state, more pro-NSA spying, more eager to deprive average citizens of their civil liberties than the Muslim-born president of the corporation, B.S. Obama? We don't think he's a
practicing Muslim anymore than G.W. Bush was a practicing Christian, but that's what they were born into. The retired Catholic pope was a member of the Hitler Youth,
by his own written admission (read his book), so doesn't that make him a better voice for the Church of the Holy Roman Empire? Rabid Germans could be proud of their native son. Love the good, love the bad (humans), love them all because it's to the advantage of the lover even more than the loved. One loses nothing and gains a great deal. Love Mohammed, love Jesus, love the warlord Moses, and good Mahavira, the nationalist Shankara, and even the "popes" (patriarchs), such as the ones in
Armenia and the
Eastern Orthodox Church's
popes, love even the
evil Canadians, that tiny population of good neighbors to the north, and the warmhearted Mexicans to the south.
(RL) We agree with the wonderful Cobalt poet Rick Lupert, the next David Sedaris, who is almost as funny as his sister, Amy, a.k.a. our superheroine Jerry Blank.
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| Love head, heart, spirit |
And if you just
can't love Muslims, we understand. Propaganda and FEAR (a form of hatred,
dosa, aversion) are very strong. Let us. We can. We do. Muslims are not Islam, the repository of all your fears, victims of US PsyOps and military-industrial complex propaganda campaigns. There was a time when Islam was a religion of peace that helped women, and many Muslims (1.5 billion and growing) still see it that way. Can the same be said of intolerant Christian-Catholicism or rabid pro-nationalist Israeli Zionism? Everybody is good, and bad too, so love them.
As 2014's Nobel Laureates are named, The Telegraph investigates the history of the awards' gender and geographical bias 
