God wants us to kill. He commands it. You get no choice. Read the Book of Judges. He likes genocide. He demands children be stoned to death for disobedience. Who in the h*ll do you think you are to resist His will, His written word? Kill, kill, kill. The Bible also promotes rape and slavery, whew. Does that sound like what Jesus taught? We knew the religion we were born into was rotten, a deception. Gnostic.org has a far better exposition of Christian truth long hidden by the institution of the church. But Christians are too scared to hear it. Here a non-Gnostic explores how the real teachings of Jesus Christ (possibly Bodhisattva Saint Issa) are hidden by church officials to keep us from the truth. We could all get along in the world, but the powers that be will not stand for that. There's too much to be made to keep us the way we are, with apologists galore trying to make excuses of unimaginable proportions.
The true teachings of Jesus WIPED OUT by Christianity!
It’s sometimes claimed that, measuring by orders of magnitude, humans are midway in scale between subatomic particles and the observable universe.
(Or, to put it another way, we fall halfway between nothing and everything.) [Or, to put it yet another way, this is a middle world between heaven and heck, between glory and oblivion, light and shadow, the deva worlds and hellish narakas.]
Whether or not this claim is strictly true, it’s arresting and resonant in all sorts of ways. [To think that the only difference between the two destinations is karma is hard to accept, but the Buddha was a Karmavadin, a "Teacher of Karma," for just that reason; it's not obvious, and it needs to be known.]
Each of our lives might feel like a whole universe – surpassingly important and infinite in scope – and yet from another perspective, each is utterly trivial and ephemeral.
It's almost as if Douglas Adams, writer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series), was exactly right in suggesting that the worst thing that could possibly happen to someone is being put in the TOTAL PERSPECTIVE VORTEX:
It’s an impossible paradox, this state of having both a surplus and redundancy of value, and it brings with it certain creative and moral opportunities.
I’m interested in how these opportunities might be explored in fiction, how scale can defamiliarize human life, and indeed all life, reminding us of the infinitesimal nature of its expanse and the improbability and wonder of its existence.
In each of my novels, and especially In Ascension, I have placed non-intuitive spatial and temporal perspectives next to the more mundane concerns of my characters.
Telescopes and microscopes recur, as do deep time, evolution, and the life cycles of parasites and viruses.
Alongside this, characters are eating, walking between rooms, anxiously going over circular thoughts, worried about their families, or bored.
The lens zooms in and out from “domestic” to “alien” scenes. I’m not doing this to mock or belittle my characters, but rather to try to evoke something of that paradoxical quality in which we are both infinite and infinitesimal, equally close to something very large and very small.
I’ve always been drawn to fiction that attempts this. When scenes with very different perspectives collide, the effect can be startling, exhilarating, unforgettable.
Who's afraid of V. Woolf?
My favorite example is in Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, which I first read as a teenager. In the 134 pages of its opening part, “The Window,” Woolf gives us, through the character Mrs. Ramsay, a consciousness so luminous it seems impossible to define or limit.
In the following part, “Time Passes,” the perspective undergoes a radical shift. The house is empty, the people long gone; Mrs. Ramsay, we are informed in two short lines enclosed between brackets, like an afterthought, is dead.
I will never forget the shock and thrill of first reading this. I didn't realize fiction could do this; Woolf’s audacity and ambition took my breath away.
She had shown, tragically, the power and precarity of every consciousness. It’s a truism that cannot be repeated enough: Life feels infinite, and it’s gone in a second.
Much of Woolf’s fiction is interested in this dissonance, and it is not coincidental that, as well as experiencing both world wars, she lived through radical advances in telescopic power that changed all understanding of the size of the universe.
And it should be no surprise – though it apparently still is to many people – that Woolf was not just an avid reader of astronomy books and science fiction, but saw herself engaged in a lifelong project of writing that bore comparison to the most ambitious works of sci-fi.
From a new Jasper Fforde to post-apocalyptic hellscapes aplenty, February’s science fiction offers something for everyone.
The protagonist of In Ascension, Leigh Hasenbosch, is a microbiologist who travels into deep space. She experiences not only astonishment at seeing the whole Earth, but dejection at seeing the planet disappear.
Anthropocentrism -- unarguably the default perspective in English language fiction -- has never looked so absurd. [That is the idea that Earthling humans are the center or some significant part of the universe.]
Approaching the Oort cloud, she is aware of the other orders of life around her, from algal food stocks to the colonies of bacteria travelling between her and the other crew.
Beyond the composite walls of the ship, there is nothing. Since childhood, after an epiphany while almost drowning, Leigh has pursued the origins of life, absorbed by the theory of symbiogenesisand struck by its improbability.
It is all but impossible life exists, and yet it is here. At the same time, she interrogates her own childhood and the formative influences on the person she has become.
Her life and work gather around this ambiguous pursuit of origins. Which scale, then, is “correct”? Which story is she really invested in -- the universal or the personal?
The answer, of course, is both. For neither answer alone can be sufficient.
Martin MacInnes’s In Ascension, published by Atlantic Books, is the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up and read along HERE.
Because you're a nut, that's why. I mean, because you are different and like Bowie, Starseed
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[Don't like nerds who take their sci-fi seriously? Read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyinstead. It's perhaps the greatest comedy ever written -- relevant, important, brilliant, genius, tackling the big questions in life. It's a Wisdom Quarterly top pick.]
According to the Buddha, in the beginning of life on Earth, there was a kind of mushroom. It served as delicious nutriment. That was a very long time ago, when earthlings were in a kind of Golden Age, having descended from the stars and having begun to devolve. It was on account of karma (deeds), which itself was due to latent tendencies, that the environment and their bodies became coarser, shorter lived, and less radiant. We were devas in the beginning, enjoying sensuality so much that our bodies began to reflect that decline. History, mythology, metaphor? The long story of things on the human plane are contained in the Agganna Sutra. The millions or billions of years, the epochs and eons, this story goes back is astonishing because a mushroom was there, just as Paul Stamets (Fungi Perfecti) reveals in his talks.
Dr. David Bermudes, Ph.D. (CSUN)
REVIEW: Last night CSUN Prof. Dr. David Bermudes, Ph.D. (Boston U) talked about his doctoral research with Boston U Prof. Lynn Margulis, giving a college lecture with so much technical biology jargon and classifications that one could get lost in the mounds of data. But colorful overhead images made one thing clear: There's a fungal "tree of life," and we humans are on it. We have a common ancestor with Opisthokonts. Mycology, "the study of mushrooms," is a deep field that DNA sequencing has opened up for studies of the origins of life on earth.
The Los Angeles Mycological Society (LAMS,lamushrooms.org) studies all things fungal, from mycelia (roots) to fruiting bodies (mushrooms) to bioremediation. Mushrooms will save the world.
LAMS is a non-profit group. Its purpose is to foster and expand understanding and appreciation of mycology ("the study of mushrooms and fungi"). LAMS creates and sponsors fun mushroom-related events and helps people learn about and identify mushrooms they find in the greater Los Angeles area. More information about LAMS events is available on the Calendar page.
LAMS hosts an annual Wild Mushroom Fair (at the Los Angeles Arboretum) and monthly meetings with speakers. This month:
Speaker: Dr. David Bermudes
Program: "What is a fungus? The Opisthokonta lineage and the last common ancestor of animals and fungi"
This question arises from discussions with other scientists, at different times and places, each taking a different view. The general question posed was, "Are chytrids true fungi?"
To explore this question, we look back at the lineage to which the fungi belong, which is the same as our human lineage.
There are old mushroom hunters, bold mushroom hunters, but no "old-bold mushroom hunters."
The Opisthokonts ("hind poles") refers to our flagella. Since this means we as animals share a common ancestor with fungi, we will assemble a mosaic image of what that common ancestor might have been like.
We will start by tracing the symbiotic origin of the eukaryotic organelles, mitochondria, and plastids as part of our discussion on the eukaryotes that includes protists, fungi, and all animals.
In the funny cult classic, Shaun of the Dead, zombies take over, but Shaun hardly notices. We are Shaun. Look around. Something's wrong. As liberals, are we doing anything to stop it? No, we're just harm reducers, letting the capitalists and bankers who fund them rule the day. A lot of people are making a lot of money. And suffering is rampant. Dr. Gabor Mate explains the roots of the problem, but who offers an immediate solution? In the long, long term, let's fix the whole world. Until then, let's think of something compassionate and effective right now. Let's stop going to extremes.
Zombie drug: Police warn horrific new fentanyl mix "tranq" has arrived in Seattle area [from NYC]
(FOX 13 Seattle) Feb. 13, 2023. TRANQ (Xylazine spiked with addictive fentanyl) users get turned into real-life zombies, right down to rotten flesh and loss of basic mental function. Watch FOX 13 Seattle live. FOX 13 Seattle is Western Washington's source for breaking news, weather, traffic, politics, and sports.
The Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF)
is a great source for accurate information on nutrition and health.
WAPF is always
aiming to provide the scientific validation of traditional foodways.
People seeking health today often condemn certain food groups -- such as
grains, dairy foods, meat, salt, fat, sauces, sweets, and nightshade
vegetables -- but the Wise Traditions Diet is inclusive, not exclusive.
WAPF includes nourishing traditional foods in our diet through wise choices and proper preparation techniques. The
result is vibrant health in every age of life, including the next
generation. More
WISE TRADITIONS: 18th Annual Conference of The Weston A. Price Foundation (November 10-13, Minneapolis, MN (order conference recordings)
This weekend is the third annual SoCal VegFest! SoCal VegFest is a vegan food festival designed to engage curiosity and raise consciousness in people of all ages.
There will be plant-based food sampling, live music, guest speakers and celebrities, cooking contest and demos, raffles and prizes, yoga and meditation workshops, apparel booths and a cruelty-free marketplace, animal welfare, environmental, and humane organizations, activities for kids, a Halloween costume contest...and, of course, lots of yummy food trucks and vegan vendors!
Ven. Piyadassi Thera (translator), Ahi Sutra, "A Snake" (AN 4.67) edited by Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; ABC News, Los Angeles
The Buddha took metta, or "loving kindness," to wondrous heights and encouraged others.
Black bears attack Los Angeles hiker above the small foothill town of Sierra Madre; authorities to track and execute bears in retaliation.
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Draconians, yes.
Thus have I heard: On one occasion the Blessed One was living near Savatthi at Jetavana at [the Buddhist billionaire] Anathapindika's [donated] monastery. At that time in Savatthi a certain monk had died after being bitten by a snake.
Thereupon many monastics approached the Buddha, saluted him, and sat respectfully beside him. So seated they spoke thus to the Blessed One:
"Venerable sir (Bhante), a certain monk in Savatthi has died after being bitten by a snake."
Many beings also shape-shift.
"Assuredly, meditators," the Buddha said, "that monk has not suffused with thoughts of loving-kindness (metta) the four royal tribes of snakes. Had he done so, that monk would not have died of snakebite.
"What are the 'four royal tribes of snakes'? The royal tribe of snakes called:
"Meditators, that monk did not suffuse with thoughts of loving-kindness these four royal tribes of snakes.
"Had he done so, he would not have died of snakebite. Meditators, I enjoin all of you to suffuse with loving-kindness these four royal tribes of snakes for your safety, for your preservation, and for your protection."
So said the Blessed One. Having spoken, the "Enlightened One" (the Buddha), the "Welcome One" (Sugata), further said the following [suggesting how this might be expressed]:
Verses
Reptilian stone monuments on Earth: Maya/Aztec Mesoamerica (utaot.com)
"But darling, he doesn't kill the cows. We do by buying them."
A woman pays a man to kill another man. He does. She pays him. Who killed? The hitman would not have except that he expected to be paid. The woman, by offering to pay him, induced him. We have the same relationship with our butchers.
Should Slaughterhouse Animals Be Stunned? Raffi Berg, BBC News Amsterdam The slaughter of conscious animals was widely abandoned in the 20th Century and is now practiced mainly in the Jewish and Muslim communities.
Consumers increasingly expect animals to be stunned before death -- but would banning other slaughter methods be an unacceptable violation of religious rights?
The sound of pistons and mechanics fills the air as the last calf of the day steps into a holding box.
A device the size of a hand-held drill is brought to the animal's head, a trigger pulled and a four-inch bolt shot into its brain, causing it instantly to collapse. The unconscious calf is hoisted upside down and slaughtered seconds later with a massive cut to its throat, showering the floor with a torrent of crimson blood.
"Killing animals is never friendly," says Paul Meeuwissen, director of the Vitelco abattoir in the central town of s'-Hertogenbosch, "but what we do is done in the most animal-friendly way possible." More
Should Animals Be Slaughtered? Amber Dorrian, Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS) That, of course, is not the question. And it does not address this serious issue. The rate of killing, on behalf of salivating meat purchasers and consumers, is going on at more than 1 million animals per day in the US alone.
Killing one animal on our behalf should not be acceptable or tolerated. Yet we tolerate wholesale slaughter. We turn our eyes and will not see just how cruel the living conditions and murder are.
Eating the toxic (germ ridden, poorly fed, hormone injected) byproducts is worse for the body. But when the mind looks and sees what is happening because we want to eat meat, the mind flags at the killing.
Who then would argue to murder domesticated livestock more cruelly rather than less?
Nonviolence (ahimsa), one of our national ideals, goes out the barn door with the animals led onto trucks or cattle cars on a fearful march to the abattoir. Are the butchers and handlers asking, "Should we put them out of their misery?" or is it the corporate factory farmers asking because it would cost a few cents more?
So the answer is easy! A) Allow animals to live. B) Raise them in light, air, on soil rather than in dark, foul smelling, closed off pens and cages. C) When you can no longer do A and B, be kind in every way possible, choosing stunning over the excruciating live torture of conscious slaughter.
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