Had he not shifted his head just a few inches to the right, former Pres. Trump likely would not have survived the [attempt to blow his head off as an] attempt on his life on Saturday [as missing his head may not have killed him like that headless chicken that survived until dying of an unfortunate food accident much later or it might have killed him JFK style for everyone in the country to see on live TV].
In his own words, Trump shouldn’t be here.
How such an event might change the former president remains to be seen, but the [mentally declining] 78-year-old has already pivoted his messaging ahead of the Republican National Convention this week, toning down his typical lambasts of the Democrats and highlighting calls for unity and civility [like his classy wife seems to have done].
Reverend Catherine Duncan is an ordained minister in Minnesota and chaplain at hospice [near death care] and trauma centers. She has helped hundreds of patients pass to the other side [in the afterlife and the lives to come when they are sure to be reborn many times over].
Based on her vast experience, Rev. Duncan predicts a spiritual awakening [possibly on the scale of the reformed tyrant Gilgamesh in ancient Sumerian cylindrical texts] in Trump that leads him to become more centrist in his political views.
Trump was rushed by Secret Service [after being allowed to stand up and become a clear and obvious target able to receive the "kill shot" if the shooters were still taking aim] in the seconds after [the first] shots were fired at his Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, with one bullet grazing his right ear.
Scared, confused, Trump left his body on the floor of the stage for a moment
.
NDEs (Ginette Biro)
American Rev. Duncan told DailyMail.com: "There's a lot of chaos in the United States with the election.
Donald Trump picked Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his running mate on Monday afternoon, choosing a grassroots favorite ahead of more seasoned political operators. The former president left it until the last possible moment, using all his showman skills to leave the world guessing, before opting for 39-year-old Vance after the Republican National Convention had already begun in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
"And I think that experience, I would sense, with Trump, it opens up your sense of being alive, your sense of feeling, your sense of experience, and how do you want to move forward?
Trump on Middle Way, Love, Kindness
Will D.J. Trump become a Budai-loving Buddhist, preaching the Middle Way and metta?
.
"And there's already been some rumblings politically about unity. Can there be unity? And I could see Trump leaning towards a more middle way and unity among everyone."
Hospice chaplain added: "This could be a significant turning point for Trump for embracing the good, embracing how we can treat each other with love and kindness and how can we find a middle way in all the chaos right now.
'I think it's a very strong message. And I think it can definitely touch people's hearts."
Many have accused Trump of leaning into religion to gain favor with Republican voters during his first presidential run, and they questioned the sincerity of his faith.
But Rev. Duncan said that close brushes with death can completely alter a person’s worldview regardless of how devout they were, "and every one of us can change and open and choose how we live our life."
Mr. Trump’s Senior Campaign Advisor Jason Miller told NBC the former president "feels very fortunate’ to be alive.
And Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social media site on Sunday that, "it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening." More
Are Sydney Sweeney andWisdom Quarterly's numbers too big? Every time WQ reaches another million views, boobs. It's good for men's hearts, says science, but what about our lizard brains?
Her Instagram post comes after critics called her “not pretty.” [Do they say the same of Tate McRae, who is essentially her less well-endowed twin?]
Sydney Sweeney isn’t letting a little bit of controversy get her down. After headlines about her being “not pretty” and a bad actress made the rounds last week, she shrugged everything off and did what anyone would:
Cover up your man-boobs, Boobs!
She wore a slogan T-shirt that showed everyone that she’s staying above the fray.
Deep in a carousel of images shared over the weekend, Sweeney showed a snapshot of herself in an oversized gray sweatshirt that reads, “Sorry for having great t*ts.”
.
“Good times and tan lines,” she captioned the post.
Last week, producer Carol Baum, who worked on Father of the Bride and its sequel, said at an event that Sweeney is “not pretty” and “can’t act” — and that her hit rom-com Anyone But You was “unwatchable.”
Even with those comments, the film has earned $219 million at the box office worldwide.
According to the Daily Mail, Baum made her comments during a panel in Pleasantville, New York.
(Amy Sussman/GA/The Holly-
wood Reporter/Getty/InStyle)
“There’s an actress who everybody loves now: Sydney Sweeney. I don’t get Sydney Sweeney.
“I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie [Anyone But You] because I wanted to watch it,” she said.
“I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her. I watched this unwatchable movie — sorry to people who love this…romantic comedy where they hate each other.”
It's a "man's world," right? I'm just making the most of it. "Sex sells," but who's buying?
Cover your beauty, Syd! It's distracting our eyes!
“I said to my class, ‘Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty. She can’t act. Why is she so hot?’ Nobody had an answer. But then the question was asked, ‘Well if you could get your movie made because she was in it, would you do it?’” Baum continued.
“That’s a very hard question to answer because we all want to get the movie made and who walks away from a green light? Nobody I know. Your job is to get the movie made.”
Sweeney clapped back, saying in a statement shared by Variety: “How sad that a woman in the position to share her expertise and experience chooses instead to attack another woman.
If that’s what she’s learned in her decades in the industry and feels is appropriate to teach to her students, that’s shameful. To unjustly disparage a fellow female producer speaks volumes about Ms. Baum’s character.”
After Baum’s statement was shared, TMZ reported that she is “already expressing regret over the whole thing” and “wishes she never would’ve made her original comments.”
For more InStyle news, make sure to sign up for newsletter. Read the original article on InStyle.
COMMENTARY
It's very interesting. Fran and I were on retreat with an enlightened Buddhist nun.
(Yes, such people exist even if no one realizes it or can bring themselves to accept that such a thing could be possible in this decadent age, the Kali Yuga. But it was decadent and overcome with lust when the Buddha awakened and attempted to teach humans and devas the way to the end of all suffering. He assumed it would be hopeless because living beings in those days were so obsessed with sex and sensuality. This is, after all, the Sensual Sphere or Kama Loka we're living in).
There was calm and bliss (piti).
She asked a very straightforward question during a Dharma talk after a long day of meditating: "Where does clinging [lust] come from, outside or inside?"
"Like rain, does it (lusting for or clinging to the delights of the senses)," I asked myself, "creep in the poorly thatched roof of the physical senses and mind (the sixth sense)? Or does it arise from within (from some innate badness) like bubbling, oozing, staining crude oil?"
We were all stumped. We had all seen beautiful things. We had all, for having seen them, experienced lust, distraction, craving, preoccupation, obsession, thirst (tanha), desire, yearning, pining, and languishing, sick when we didn't get what we wanted, thrilled-then-disappointed when we did get it.
We were all hesitant. We all wanted to be good students, wanted to be right. We did not want to disappoint her as Americans. So we were waiting for her to drop a hint. Finally, someone dared to say that clinging (like lust) had to be coming from the outside.
Why? We were all peaceful and fine until someone dared to walk around provocatively dressed, thereby ruining our calm (samatha), stillness (samadhi), onepointedness (ekagatta), mindfulness (sati), and renunciation (nekkhamma).
Is this explained anywhere? (Abhidhamma)
Just as we were starting to let go and be free of the outside world's pull on us, some clinging or lust (for food, sex, a massage, a blissful experience) got the better of us and ruined the meditation. Clinging held us like six bondage straps, making us involuntary servants to this coarse, crass, and crappy body.
We were here for the bliss and rapture of meditative absorption, the calm and cool of mindful awareness, the insight and liberating-wisdom of spiritual knowing-and-seeing. The body and all its wants stood in our way, we thought.
Seeing a lovely, hot, shiny body, a little too much skin, one button too many undone, whew, it could be days before the mind simmered down again.
Clinging (repeated craving and grasping) had to be coming from the outside! We were fine until the outside world -- the boobs of a beauty or glistening muscles of a rugged and handsome person -- ruined us. It wasn't our fault! We were mere babes in Toyland!
The skull is like a thatched roof. And we are safe inside our guarded skull, until that darn rain seeps in from the evil (lusty, sexy, and provocative) world outside.
I can't help it if people stare at me.
"Is a fully enlightened person still overcome by lust [greed, craving, grasping], aversion [anger, fear, hate], and delusion [wrong views, distortions, ignorance about ultimate matters]?" she asked in answer to our suggestion that clinging had to originate outside ourselves.
"Well, no," we answered. If such liberated folks were still obsessed with greed, hatred, or confusion just because they saw sights, heard sounds, smelled scents, tasted savors, and felt sensations (to say nothing of mental past memories and future projections of these), what hope would there be for any of us in our practice?
Turning away, averting one's gaze, restraining the senses is just the first step. It might be difficult, but that's not all there is. Buddhism is NOT about severe austerities, penance, pious acts of self-mortification. It is about withdrawing into mental seclusion, calming the mind, exercising mindfulness, then cultivating insight that breaks through the illusion.
One develops the ability to see through the unreal, the superficial, the misleading. If this body were beautiful, why then we should celebrate it. If this body were the way to happiness, why then we should all become hedonists and have at it. If licentiousness and easy virtue were the way to liberation, why then we should condemn anyone who stood in our way and was being a stick in the mud at the party!
It is exactly because beautiful things in the world are constituent in nature not compact, ephemeral not permanent, disappointing not satisfying that they are not at all what they seem.
They are superficial illusions, they are disappointing, they are painful and struggling to get them is painful, and not getting them when one craves them is painful, and finally getting them is ultimately disappointing and not fulfilling. And we have been treading this hamster wheel for aeons beyond measures, past lives beyond comprehension, and most of us can see no end in sight.
So if there were a way to see things as they truly are, what would happen? We would become dispassionate, disillusioned, and detached. The mind that clings would let go.
Clinging and reacting to things in the world with lust, annoyance, or confusion comes not from them but from us. And when a person becomes enlightened, one has seen through the charade. One has seen things as they really are. For example, let's get gross.
I thought you liked my poop. You bag it.
Let's say we had a naked inflatable doll, beautiful, exquisite, the perfection of proportion, complexion, and symmetry, comely, alluring, and more real than real. But inside it was full of poop and worms and a stench so foul as to make us heave involuntarily. If a little leaked, or we opened its mouth or other openings and experienced the ugly inside behind the beautiful superficial outside, how might we feel?
We might feel tricked, deceived, upset to have been taken in by a shiny exterior. Or imagine a pretty pink bag, smooth and reflective, potentially useful to carry things like our lunch or precious possessions, only to find out that bag contained dog feces. Yikes! Suddenly we turn away, clutch our stomachs, berate ourselves for almost touching it.
What's inside this body? Or that pretty body covering Sydney Sweeney? (Well, I'd rather not think about that! Of course not. That would ruin all the fun of the illusion. Flowers are pretty and alluring, but they're steeped in fertilizer, worms, fungus, dead bodies, microbes, pathogens, pale threads taking in nutrients. Most of us instinctively avoid the muck or are stained, tainted, and stink.
Conclusion
People can be free. Practice.
If beautiful objects had the intrinsic ability to grab, take hold of us, make us obsessed, we would have little to no hope of escape.
But because lust (craving) and clinging arise not due to beauty, but due to the interaction of beautiful stimuli impinging on the senses (contacting consciousness) and our response to it, which is rooted in delusion, we can escape.
That delusion, very broadly stated, is a failure to see pretty phenomena as transient (radically impermanent), incapable of satisfying or fulfilling us, and it not being real (not a self, not what it seems.
When we see things, even the most beautiful things, as they really are (impermanent, disappointing, and impersonal), then the heart/mind lets go. There is no effort to reject beautiful things, only to see them as they really are. The effort is to see clearly (vipassana).
Whether things are ugly or dull, the same is true of stimuli that provoke aversion (fear or anger) or delusion (wrong view or ignorance). "Boring" things (that provoke inattention because they neither give rise to lust or anger) are neutral and peaceful, but craving makes them dull and something to get away from as we go in search of delight.
So by calm-and-insight we can be free here and now, even if beautiful creatures parade in front of us with next to nothing on and even if Hollywood feeds us airbrushed images and AI beauty pageant winners.
Jessica Burbank, Rising, The Hill, 12/2/23; Ashley Wells, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
TikTok trend? US progressive women CONVERTING to Islam as DEFIANCE against Israel and the West, report claims
(The Hill) Premiered Nov. 27, 2023: WASHINGTON, DC Jessica Burbank and Robby Soave discuss the recent conversions of some millennial women to Islam, amidst Israel's conflict with Palestinians using the pretext of trying to exterminate the Netanyahu-sponsored Palestinian political party Hamas. #Gaza #WestBank
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Living Ironically..., 4/22/23; Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
The worst type of tourists
(Living Ironically in Europe) Oh, You Men! That is, Oh We Men, be better. It's not all about shagging. There are cultural events, self-improvement, reading, the whole spiritual dimension. If we must be on the hunt, harm none. We should all have a good time, and that means all.
I like visiting Asian countries. - You feel guilty?
When it comes to tourism, a nasty trend has developed where many older guys with money go to impoverished countries in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, such as Thailand, Vietnam, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Belarus, Russia, Romania, Kazakhstan, and so on, where they exchange some of that money for companionship and intimacy. This is taking advantage of the locals due to the size of their wallets and the need/greed of females willing to exchange their company or intimacy for that paper cabbage. This is a look at the antics and the immorality of such predatory tourists. They don't even have the decency to keep it on the downlow or improve their physical appearance. They should stay home and date [ugly] women.
Thanks to @Gattsu for helping LIiE in making this video. Check him out. LIiE's merch is at ➡️https://theironicshop.com/
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The peculiar origins of the first "brides" in Colonial America
Ukrainian gals on sale: Pay us to marry you!
Most have probably heard of "mail-order brides." But that kind of thing has been happening in the USA since before mail, mail order, the dawn of the internet — even before there was a US Postal Service. No one tell Kevin Costner.
What if people knew this bizarre industry dates back hundreds of years? Yes, really, centuries. Mail-order brides were essential to the foundation of the United States of America.
Sale on white Slavic brides from the Baltics
It was all to do with who moved to North America in the first place. After an expedition spearheaded by the Virginia Company of London, English settlers founded "James Fort" — later known as Jamestown.
While it eventually became famous as the first permanent English settlement in the USA, Jamestown was originally renowned for another curious reason.
Finding their feet
I'm ready to do it for the family, Mom.
Life wasn't easy there. Starvation and disease wracked the population of Jamestown and left the settlers having to adapt by expanding their agricultural activities:
They diversified into tobacco crops, for instance, which made some folks wealthy. Despite this, not everyone was happy. Although there was the case of successful tobacco pioneer John Rolfe marrying the famed and beautiful Native American PrincessPocahontas, most white men were single.
Pocahontas' induction into white culture, conversion to Christianity, marriage to European
.
The grave male-female imbalance
By 1619, almost all of the inhabitants of Jamestown were male and alone. Most settlers were unable to find wives.
Yet, while this inability to find love, companionship, and marriage was indeed a legitimate concern, there was an even larger issue at play:
Without females who could conceive children, Jamestown would not last beyond a single generation.
An unattractive pitch
Why was the gender imbalance in Jamestown so enormous? Many females were reluctant to leave behind their comfortable lives in Europe for a future of uncertainty in North America.
And when reports of famine, starvation, and disease reached England, any open-mindedness girls and women may have had was likely quashed. From then on, Jamestown continued to deteriorate. More
It started with a ridiculous YouTube ad, but the models used made it seem like every Slav (the origin of our word "slave") is a model and a willing love-slave to any American with a visa in her future, mother-in-law included. It's a scam. Sure, it could happen. Anything can happen. Monkey might fly out of my...mouth. That would be more entertaining. Pay all that money and get what for it? Nothing. No love, no McLovin, nada. Divorced the same day they arrive on my dime. "Thems is the breaks"? Nope. It's in the plan. Young Ukrainians, Russians, Slavic brides are looking for a meal ticket, a sucker, not a lover or domineering husband. And Americans have a target on their head. Are American women laughing? Anyone would be better shopping for a bride here or perhaps in Canada/Mexico, somewhere close by, where it's easy to meet and not as expensive as moving in new citizens.
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