It's been a fun Christian Lent as 2.5 of us undertook to stay "holy" (kusala, wholesome, sinning only in thought and thoughtlessness, i.e., by mind and unmindfulness, which is to say, mental karma and negligence but not willful intent), Sandoval, Seven, and Pat.
- ThePowerPath.com) Articles by Jose Stevens: Understanding the Buddha and Christ's real message
- Jesus was a vegetarian who threw out the moneychangers who were buying and selling sacrificial animals at the temple, which got him killed: Christspiracy
- What Christians get wrong about their own faith
- Unknown years of Jesus when he was in India studying Buddhism at Hemis Gompa, Ladakh (then Tibet)
What happened? Pat dipped out and came back (so gets half credit). Seven held firm by practicing contentment rather than forcefulness, and Sandoval struggled by trying to muscle it. Recovering from the influence of American, Irish, and Mexican Catholicism can be enlightening! With little to no regard for the Vatican Corporation, its current CEO, and the flagrant secularism of most of the Catholic world.
We're Mexican Buddhists, and even Pat is a Patricio for the cause. Buddhism explains things much better, gives more sensible answers to life, the universe, and everything, but Shannon Farren stayed on our backs to stay on the straight and narrow. And my friend Slim Fitzgerald is participating in mass services, so it's the least we can do to emulate her good example.
Holy Thursday
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| Roots of the Easter story: Where did Christian beliefs about Jesus’ resurrection come from? |
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| Pope Francis washes feet in photo op. No chance of arousal because they're females (MN). |
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(WQ Wiki edit) Maundy Thursday or "Holy Thursday," among other names, is the day during Holy Week that commemorates the Washing of the Feet (Maundy) and Last Brunch of Jesus Christ with the Apostles, as described in the canonical gospels [1].It is the fifth day of "Holy Week," preceded by Spy Wednesday [when you fink on your siblings for breaking Lent rules?] and followed by Good Friday [2].
"Maundy" comes from the Latin word mandatum, or commandment (mandate), reflecting Saint Issa or Jesus' words "I give you a new commandment" [3].
- [Did the Good Lord also say: "Thou shalt bow to your knees and obey me, for I speaketh in the name of my Father in the Sky, and He is wanteth to smite thee, so watch it!"?]
The date of the day will vary according to whether the Gregorian calendar or the Julian calendar is used.
Eastern [Orthodox] churches generally use the Julian system.
(JCS) Judas tries to warn Jesus to stop making it all about Himself
Names
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| Medicine has no easy cure for toenail fungus. |
Therefore, although in England "Maundy Thursday" is the normal term, the term "Holy Thursday" is more commonly used in [more Catholic] Ireland, the United States, Scotland, and Canada [4] and is the official name used by the Catholic Church in English [5]. More
- It's a good time for clean feet. As wise Mary Magdalene knew, this oil clears toenail fungus: "nard" (essential oil of spikenard) as found in the Gospel of John
- Infomercial: Top NASA alumni and Christian doctor finds Biblical solution to eliminate nail fungus (erasefungus.com)
- Hey, guys, let me do for you what Mary did for me (foot washing)
A Catholic Lent for Buddhists
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| Punxsutawney Issa emerges. |
QUESTION: "All y'all are Buddhists. How 'Catholic' are you?"
ANSWERS: "Catholic? Not at all, or just recovering from the residue of it. I'm only Catholic on my mother's side. My dad was Catholic, too, but he didn't care. I'm so Catholic I remembered an Irish joke. When you're Catholic, they send you to Indoctrination Camp (Catechism) as a child, where nuns berate and beat you, so once you've gone through that, you're "Catholic" because it's branded on your psyche. If you're lucky, you get molested, which I think qualifies you to teach. If you're unlucky, you just settle for the beatings. Even if you try to tell, what's anyone going to do? Oh, if only a young nun could've shepherded us into manhood as a holy rite of passage like in the olden days of Temple Prostitution, started with the ancient Sumerians and Greeks and others. It's got to be a better way than the present system that teaches you to lie, be a hypocrite, keep your head down, fear but never respect authority, and sin [miss the mark] every chance you get. Of course, Roman Catholicism is meant to do this. It's a trick and a trap, how covering up incites lust, whereas free nudity dispels it, but we're taught the exact opposite. Harsh imposition of rules leads to rebelliousness, guilt, confusion, and resentment, but free presentation of orderliness and guidelines leads to willful compliance, acceptance, and a desire to behave well even when no one is looking. It's internal versus external locus of control, pure Psych 101. I'm so Catholic I like to tell Irish jokes: A priest in Dublin tears out of the parking lot and starts swerving down the road. An officer pulls him over, and as he approaches, he can already smell alcohol. As he greets the driver, he looks in the vehicle and sees a bottle of wine at his feet. "Been drinking this morning, Father?" "Oh, no, no, no. That's just water, my Son." "Really, Father? I can smell it." The priest looks up into the heavens and exclaims, "Praise the Lord, another miracle!" (Turning water into wine.) The copper, being a right honorable Catholic, does the sign of the cross and lets him go. See there? That "joke" promotes stereotypes. It's jokes like that put us where we are nowadays, where 99 percent of the police make the other 1 percent look bad. *Rimshot* We're just doing this for Easter, which is when they kill Jesus or Saint Issa, right, on that Imperial Roman torture device? I think it's when he is reborn. Well, death-rebirth, it's the same thing, really. That's samsara for you. There isn't one without the other.
QUESTION: "Well, are Buddhists any better?"
"Once Upon the Cross"
(Deicide) "Once Upon the Cross"
ANSWERS: "Yes, we don't have a cruci-fixation. We don't strive for a rebirth in any of the heavens. We strive for the end-of-rebirth and the end of all suffering, which is brought about -- not by rebirth -- but by awakening. Enlightenment is our goal."
QUESTION: "Nirvana, you mean?"
ANSWERS: "Yes. Yes. Yeah."
QUESTION: "But 'Nirvana is Samsara,' I've heard say."
ANSWERS: "No, that's Mahayana nonsense, a slogan, which can be true in one sense but is completely abused, misunderstood by nearly everyone who says it, and misleading. It's treated like a snappy koan to not overexert in meditation or set up a goal and craving for 'something to happen' that stifles the attainment of that goal. But it's really misleading because, if we're all already enlightened, then there's nothing to do really, right? Why am I going to go be quiet and meditate in solitude if all the work is done? I'd rather celebrate, party, amuse myself, engage in sleep and endless distractions/amusements, like the world does, more obsessively every year that passes."
QUESTION: "You said, 'it can be true.' In what sense is the 'Nirvana is Samsara' slogan true?"
ANSWERS: "Well, it's true that if one awakens, that is, attains enlightenment, one will still be in samsara for the time being. They are not mutually exclusive. Nirvana dawns within samsara. They will for that person who knows-and-sees be the same thing. That person can see the distinction, like being in prison and holding your release papers: you're in but you're out, you're free but you're in prison, you're destiny is fixed but you're not there yet. So to equate them, to make people think there's no difference when they could hardly be more different, that's like blasphemous. We don't have blasphemy in Buddhism as such. It's wrong speech. If one thinks and believes like a Hindu that we're all already GOD (Brahman), just playing (lila) in an illusion (maya), all already saved (liberated), all already destined for the end of rebirth (nirvana), then what is it we aim for, what is it we make a determination for, what is we practice to realize? That's it's already as true for me as it is for a drunk on the floor his face stuck to the rug by dried vomit?"
(Mr. Show with Bob and David) "Jeepers Creepers" (Parts 1 and 2)
QUESTION: "But you're God's children, don't you know that?"
ANSWERS: "Potentially. Anyone can become a devaputta (literally, a "son of god"), but here 'the gods' are not 'God,' just the devas, the 'shining ones.' Anyone with the appropriate karma can be reborn among them. Saint Issa/Jesus Christ could be reborn among them, and the God there could say, 'He's my only begotten son on [or sent to] Earth.' What is this 'begotten' business? Everyone reborn in the deva worlds is someone's son/daughter, offspring. Beings are spontaneously [without intermediary of parents but just by their own karmic deeds] reborn there. We have that potential. We also have the potential to squander it all and be reborn in subhuman worlds (animal, ghost, titan/demon, hellion). We have to take care, we have to practice, we have to keep precepts (virtue, morality), we have to be mindful, we have to cleanse our hearts/minds.
QUESTION: "So then why practice Lent, Buddhist or Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christian, just to mock it, just for old time's sake?"
ANSWERS: No, it's a very good practice. To give up things, eat only vegetarian/vegan food like Catholics used to do and Eastern Orthodox Ethiopians still do, renounce, let go, sacrifice, do good for others, recollect how others sacrificed for us, contemplate our short lives in the human state as educated persons who can question and read and learn from other, storing up good karma... How can that be bad?
QUESTION: But you joke and you don't bow to God?
ANSWERS: "Yes, that's right. We joke. We listen to death metal and anything else we want to listen to. We do not bow to God or worship a Jewish Old Testament figure who promotes genocide, or grovel or beg his son [Issa, Jesus, or any Abrahamic holyman] or mom [Mother Mary] or wife [Asherah], or have any beef with that Cat [Douglas Adams' cat 'The Lord']. We're nontheists.
QUESTION: "Oh, atheists?"
ANSWERS: "No, non-theists. Whether there is a God or not, what difference does that make to our effort, our walk through life, our awakening or ignorance. That God is not awakened. That God cannot awaken us. We have no beef, just as the Buddha didn't. ...Let's not get off track. Question our motives if you must, but ask us what we did for Lent."
QUESTION: "What did all y'all practice and give up for Lent or sacrifice or recall?"
ANSWERS: "No sex of any kind, of any kind (not even naughty pictures). A strict vegan diet. For 40 days. We went to church on Sundays..."
QUESTION: "Aha! Church. So you called on God?
ANSWERS: "No, not really. We went to a Quaker church. Now, God may be there. The Spirit may be any- or everywhere. But there were no priests, no programmers, no thing we had to do, other than be respectful of others as one would anyway anywhere else one might be. The Quakers might be more tolerant than any others even if we had wanted to act out. They were nice."
QUESTION: "You should have told them you were Buddhists. Do you think they would have been so nice if they knew?"
ANSWERS: "We did, and they were and, yes, we think they would have been even if we said nothing but just came in there wearing Zen robes, a kung fu outfit, or a big tee-shirt that read, 'I'M A MEXICAN BUDDHIST AND IRISH.' I think they would have laughed with glee. They laughed about other things and were very friendly and inviting. The place was packed, and the Friends Meeting were Spirit-led. Did we 'waste' our time?"
QUESTION: "You know, why don't you guys go to hell and get your own Lent?"
ANSWERS: "We might. Hell is that way. Who can avoid it. At least it's not eternal, but it is very, very bad and one should avoid it at all costs. There's no telling when one will get out again, the same being true of rebirth as an animal, ghost, or titan. And we've already got one: 'Buddhist Lent' is called the Rains Retreat (Vassa), and it lasts 90 days. It corresponds with the monastic period of intensive practice indoors. Every Buddhist Sabbath (Fasting Day), which is once a week and called the Uposatha, one observes Eight Precepts instead of the regular five, and one does not eat after 12:00 pm. That leaves the day for intensive practice on the new moon, quarter moon, full moon, and three-quarters moon days. It's an ancient pre-Buddhist practice the Buddha praised and encouraged everyone to observe. One doesn't have to be a Buddhist. Anyway, according to legend and the BBC, Jesus Christ was a Buddhist monk before he was Christian...."
Jesus was a Buddhist monk (BBC)
*Jesus was a Buddhist monk | BBC documentary
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| Jesus wore this Buddhist-saffron-colored seamless robe like a sadhu (Christian Faith Guide) |
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- Andrew Lloyd Weber, Jesus Christ Superstar, "This Jesus Must Die"; Deicide, "Once Upon the Cross"; Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly
Tibetan Buddhist monk, 130-years-old?
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