Are you a woman? USA: 'So not our problem'

(The Babylon Bee) Satire, sexism, or sex role stereotyping? Signs you might be a woman

(The Daily Show) "So Not Our Problem" segment

Explaining Buddhism through Einstein

The Triple Gem and Einstein

Oh, Buddha and wife Mileva, what is the A?

What if I, Ven. Subhuti (americanmonk.org), were to explain the Three Jewels (Triple Gem) to Westerners who know very little about Buddhism but do it in an unconventional way?

What if I were to use an analogy to understand what the Buddha (Teacher), the Dhamma (Teaching), and the Sangha (Taught) really mean?

• That might work, Bhante ("venerable sir"). Let's give it a try.

Westerners respect Real Fly Science Guy Alby Einstein and the laws of physics. The Buddha — The Awakened One — discovered the Path to Awakening. If I were to talk about the Buddha, I would say he’s a great scientist, but not just any great scientist. He’s the Alby Einstein of scientists.

Einstein has a physicist wife who gets no credit

The Buddha discovered (rediscovered because others in ancient times also awakened and taught the liberating truth) the laws of the spiritual (metaphysical) universe, the Dhamma, just as Einstein discovered (rediscovered) some laws of physics. All of these laws existed before, during, and after these discoveries. Neither the Buddha nor Einstein created them, of course. They are always there to be found.

Of course, the comparison is imperfect. Einstein is talking about the world we see and touch, whereas the Buddha goes far beyond to the unseen and hard to grasp. If one is worldly, the other seeks to go beyond. Beyond? Beyond the beyond, as the Heart Sutra claims. What is the use of worldly science to get beyond the world?

Do people understand that the Buddha’s realization was about ultimate truth? It’s not just counterintuitive, it’s timeless, beyond time, reaching universal laws of nature.

The Dhamma — The Liberating Truth

Dependent Origination (Brahm)

The Dhamma is the Truth, the Law, the Norm, the Regularity of thing, like E = mc² — a universal truth that does not depend on faith, belief, or even understanding. If no one understood, it would be no less true. (If no one entered nirvana, nirvana would remain just the same; like the ocean, it is neither increased nor decreased as rivers pour into it).

The Dhamma exists. It precedes things, succeeds them. It was existing before the Buddha realized it and continued just the same after him. But what truth could be true, unchanged, before and after?

For one thing, there’s the truth of suffering. Disappointment exists. It arises dependent on conditions. Three other more hopeful things are also true. Suffering has a cause. It has an end. And there is a path leading to the end of all suffering. This overview is known as the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.

India gave us great math.

These are not ideas, not mere hypotheses, but truths to be tested, each person for oneself. There is no need of acceptance or faith -- except the faith (saddha, confidence) to come and see, to investigate, to test the path for oneself.

Natural laws govern the mind, body, and life itself. When one understands these deeply, so deeply that they have been penetrated, one awakens. The Truth is that close. How to approach it for optimal results, that only a supremely awakened teacher can point out.

The Saṅgha — Those Who Understand

Who hears the Buddha? The Sangha.

How to explain the spiritual community of practitioners, the Saṅgha, whether taken as the entire community of practitioners of Buddhism, the accomplished Noble (Aryan) Community, or the elite researchers, the Monastic Community?

Anyone can study physics, but only a few reach the research level, where they truly see the laws at work. Likewise, anyone can hear the Buddha's Teaching, the Dhamma, and attempt to practice it.

However, only the Noble Community (Ariya Saṅgha) — those who have already directly realized it, penetrated it, and therefore entered the four stages of enlightenment — truly know-and-see it. Between the average practitioner and the accomplished practitioner, there are the avid practitioners, the monastics.

That’s why it is said that "going for guidance" (sarana) to the Triple Gem or Three Jewels is not just going to any community. It is approaching the Noble Saṅgha — the four pairs and eight individuals who have attained realization (bodhi) and directly glimpsed nirvana (nibbāna).

The Poster on the Wall

Oh, Alby, what is the right equation?

I once met a physicist who said he didn’t "believe" in religion. He said that many elite physicists do not believe either. Instead, they follow another religion of faith ("Scientism" or "White Labcoatism"). They think that when we die, that’s it, we’re dead and nothing happens.

• This is the materialist, annihilationist wrong view the Buddha warned about, which is as much in error as the spiritualist, eternalist wrong view. He cautioned to avoid both extremes, following the Middle Way that explains all phenomena in terms of Dependent Origination, so that what does not make sense and seems to be a binary, a dichotomy, resolves into a very rational and impersonal explanation of things in line with ultimate truth.

Orthodox Theravādins might think of the Buddha in similar terms. While an average person is subject to old age, sickness, death, and [incessant] rebirth, a fully enlightened person (arahant) and a supremely enlightened Buddha has gone beyond all suffering and is no longer subject to this painful cycle known as samsara (the Wheel of Life and Death).

When one passes away, there is no more the arising of the rebirth-linking-consciousness in the very next mind-moment as there is with everyone else.

A physicist who is an atheist might have a large poster of Einstein on the wall. When stuck on a problem, that research physicist might look at it and may at times say, “Help me, Einstein!”

One doesn’t believe Einstein is listening — yet feels inspired by approaching, bring to mind Einstein, and directing attention towards him to renew confidence and inspiration. "Einstein" lives on through the laws he discovered and made known and through those who continue to explore and realize the truth of those laws of physics.

The Buddha's life as allegory: the heroic journey

That’s exactly how the Buddha “lives” on through the Dhamma, the Teaching, the things made known through his great awakening.

The Buddha himself said, “Whoever sees the dhamma [the truth of phenomena] sees the Buddha.” So when someone knows and practices the Teachings, the Dhamma, that Dhamma is alive in that person, and that person knows the Buddha in that way and to that extent — not as a being abiding somewhere else but as that wisdom itself.

As long as Einstein’s physics are made known and kept alive, we may also say that Einstein also lives on.

Going Beyond Mind and Matter

In the end, all that arises — the Five Aggregates clung to as self, the mind and body — pass away.

When one truly knows Dhamma, that knowing leads beyond mind and matter. That’s nirvana: the complete cessation of ignorance and suffering with no more new arising of mind and matter.

So may this reflection help those on the path to develop right view so as to see clearly into the true nature of reality and reach the peace of nirvana safely and quickly.

Summary poem

The Buddha saw the timeless law

Pure, unwritten, free of flaw

Like Einstein beholding light of form

Knowing the effects of atom torn

The Dhamma lives when Truth is known

The Saṅgha walks a path of wisdom grown

Not in realms unseen at which angels gnaw

The Buddha lives by Dhamma's awe

• Bhante, Ven. Subhuti (americanmonk.org), Oct. 8, 2025; edited by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

Kamala's ALREADY been first female prez

Don't call me "Veep" no more, Julia. Now I'm "Madame President." How? I don't know. LOL!

Why are the leftists bashing Jewish Dana Bash? It must be antisemitism. What else could it be?

Biden briefly transfers powers of the presidency to Harris as colonoscopy during physical involved anesthesia

Whatcha doin' there, Kam? Let me sniff you.

(MSNBC) Nov. 19, 2021: VP Kamala D. Harris has been made president, temporarily, under the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, because sickly Pres. Joe was, as expected, put under anesthesia, and the power of the White House was transferred to her.

So technically at that moment of transfer, she became the first known FEMALE POTUS, president of the United States. But to spare embarrassment to Biden, his colon and host of illnesses and necessary procedures, little to no attention was brought to this momentous moment [which has been repeated various times since for every secretive procedure and mysterious absence].

• The COMPLETE LIST of past GOP presidential ticket members who say they're voting for Trump: It just has ONE name on it (Sarah Palin), everyone else defecting for Queen Kamala
• Trump skewers his own legal team as they stand awkwardly behind him
• Jewish lawyer and frequent Epstein Island visitor Alan Dershowitz leaves Democratic Party, cites DNC: 'I was disgusted [with those antisemites]' [I prefer my own kind like Epstein, RIP]

I'm too good for this. I've tasted power and like it

So, officially speaking and by proclamation of the ruler, announced by NBC News on Nov. 19, 2021, President Harris was empowered by Joe Biden, who was briefly transferring his powers to Vice President Kamala as he underwent a "routine" physical at Walter Reed [that involves anesthesia, like all "routine" physicals do, right? This one may have involved a deep colonoscopy into Brown Nosers' Central]. NBC's Shannon Pettypiece reports from the White House.

[Did she go into the Oval Office, take the seat of power, the American throne, make calls, make executive decisions, and sign them in a legally binding way with her newfound powers? Almost certainly yes. What else did she have to do lo these three years of nominal power as VP?]

Kamala is ALREADY president [alongside enfeebled shell of a man, a wax figure, a demented old fool]

He was all like, "You're president." And I was all like, "They're going to stick what up your...?"

(TwinsPod) Sept. 6, 2024: What will change? Kamala Harris is saying she is going to change things. But she has been in office for four years helping Biden and otherwise doing nothing.

Pres. Joe Biden: For sale (car not included)

(WQ) The fix is in: The Republican Bushes (Bush Klan) support her, the Cheneys (Dick and Liz) support her, the McCains support her, Pres. Putin supports her, many conservatives support her, the Obamas back her, the Clintons dub her the next woman to lose to Trump, Nancy Pelosi coronated her to be the face of the party's leadership [neither actual leader nor commander-in-chief, as that does not reside in the office but is in name only].

 

Illuminati seal: Now pass this on to Kami, Joe.

What will happen? We were sure she would blow her big speech at the DNC because expectations were running to high. We were wrong. She did a great job reading the prepared speech from memory and the teleprompters.

Tricky Q: Camela, do you support guns now?

Now we're sure she will be destroyed during the debate because if bully Trump can do nothing else, he can certainly throw a gal off her game. Look what he did to experienced lawyer, law partner, snake, politician, Secretary of War State Hillary Clinton. One sneak up from the back like a shark and weak Kamala H is doomed. She already can't speak off the cuff, can't answer unprepared questions, can't think on her feet. That's all Trump does since he can't think sitting down, reading, paying attention, or being coached. Trump has tricks up his sleeve and very little down his trou...; in other words, he's got nothing to lose. He might as well throw a wrench in the opposition's Party Machine.

But she did prove that much of the hoopla was being generated by a high-priced public relations agency bought by the party.

Kamala, you are the most deserving woman ever.

The fact is, she cannot speak extemporaneously and does not have a grasp of adlibbing. She's terrible. She gets the deer in the headlights look, starts smiling and nodding, begging for agreement and support, then says the stupidest word-saladiest idiocies imaginable, apparently lifted from her scholar-socialist absent-father's favorite reading material.

Let me axe all y'all a qweshton, Ya woke?

Hey, Baby. *Wink*

 Has she really collected $681 million in campaign donations? Probably. Much more is coming with the Party machine is behind her and all those Hollywood and corporate donors wanting access to her and influence in the oozing Swamp.

She is the mainstream's dream come true to continue the status quo: more war, more illegal funding for Israel's genocide, endless war against Russia by proxy in sending Ukraine as much firepower and technology as it can receive, and being all Genocide Joe has pledged others he would be [when he was still alive and functioning].

"I so afraid [Dad would rape me in the shower]"

• Genocide Joe Biden is a shell of a man, a walk-in corpse for many entities, as many powerful figures become, a lifelong politician, a toucher of children, inappropriate with his fondling and sniffing even in front of the cameras (not to mention what his own biological daughter, Ashley Biden, said about his child molester ambitions in her leaked diary.

What has Kamala done, what has changed under her own administration, what has she ever accomplished?

Here, sniff this, Joe. I didn't say suck it, eww.

When in Congress, she worked on 180 pieces of legislation. What percentage of them did she get passed and enact into law?

Zero percent. That's right. Nothing, none, zilch. According to candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, as a district attorney, it seems she committed more crimes and illegal maneuverings than honest prosecutions. Electing her means nothing will fundamentally change, just as G-Joe promised if he were elected.

Who really sleeps with Dr. Jill and enjoys pizza?

Get Twins merch and have a chance to win the iconic General Lee (https://officialhodgetwins.com/). Get Optimal Human, an all-in-one daily nutritional supplement (https://optimalhuman.com/). Secure financial future today (https://prepperbar.com/sp/landing-pag...) American-made, top of the line knives (https://dmoknives.com/). Want to be a guest on the Twins Pod? Contact: bookings@twinspod.com.  Download Free Twins pod content - https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...

• MSNBC, NBC News, 11/19/21; TwinsPod, 9/6/24; Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Cosmic time: How long is an aeon (kalpa)?

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Finally, to suggest that the Buddha may have known what he was talking about, thousands of years ago he was asked to define an "aeon," a kalpa.

His practical answer suggests he was defining a great aeon, an unimaginable length of time, the duration of a universe or longer. We cannot imagine such timespans, except that now science throws around the idea of our universe being 13 billion years or more (given that older light is sometimes spotted by new space telescopes like Hubble and that newest one). How does a teacher of Truth begin to define a thing that cannot be imagined? He uses his imagination to stagger his audience with the otherwise inconceivable. The Buddha answered by saying:

• Imagine a piece of flawless marble or granite one yojana (seven miles) long, one yojana tall, and one yojana wide. Now further imagine a person coming by every hundred years and wiping this great mass of flawless stone without crack or crevice with a piece of soft Kasi cloth (the finest muslin). That entire mass of rock would be worn down to nothing, and yet a single kalpa would still not have elapsed ("The Mountain," Pabbata Sutta, SN 15:5, Dhr. Seven translation).

The strange thing about Sanskrit and Pali terms is that, while kalpa means "aeon," it can also mean "lifespan" and so be as short as one human lifespan, which is variable duration between 80,000 years and less than 120. At that time, females reach puberty after 500 years. (But here "500" does not really mean a literal half of a millennium. It means "many," like when we in modern American English hyperbolically say, "There was a million of them" and there was nowhere near an actual million (as in acne pustules on a teenager's face) or there were many more than a million, but we stopped counting (as with the number of stars visible in the night sky not beset by light pollution).

That is not all the Buddha said because he was making a point about the insidious nature of rebirth. We all want to live, to pursue new stimuli and indulge in sensual pleasures, so much so that we cling to life, but we eventually die. This unsatisfied craving -- which can never be satisfied except that we think, "Oh, sure it can, with the next thing," because each thing obtained ultimately disappoints -- engenders another rebirth. How many rebirths? Countless, too many to count, because it's been going on for unimaginable kalpas. So the Buddha made his point: 

"And we have all wandered on through many such aeons -- many hundreds, many thousands, many hundreds of thousands of them. Why? Birth has no known beginning.

"Long enough has one experienced disappointment, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling up the cemeteries, long enough to become disenchanted with all things, long enough to become dispassionate, long enough to be free [of clinging to] all things." Let go and be free.

• See SN 15:5  Pabbata Sutta | "A Mountain" (dhammatalks.org)
  

The End of TV

Analog television ends today in the U.S. In its place, the government has mandated a conversion to digital. This may mean expanded bandwidth and more channels, tighter control, or both. Required immediately is a digital conversion box, or this can be the best time to "kill your TV." The popular slogan refers to leaving TV behind. In the Orwellian scenario depicted in Nineteen Eighty Four, telescreens were interactive and invasive. They combined spying and propaganda-news. Orwell may never have imagined how it would actually play out in terms of "infotainment," ubiquitous ads, and mind numbing 24 hour programming.

• dtv.gov
• turnoffyourtv.com