The Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Our Jewish Passover in Buddhist Nepal
Ah, the hippies and free love movement were renewed on Freak Street in old Kathmandu
Passover Seder in Kathmandu, Nepal, incorporated Buddhist and Jewish traditions
American JewBu (E. Sigalow)
(Forward) Buddhists are Jews? Wait a minute, Jews are Buddhists and they play bluegrass music? There is an old phenomenon from at least the 1960s in the U.S. (see The Jew in the Lotus) and the 1st century B.C.E. in Palestine (see Jesus Lived in India), when Jews born into Judaism (raised in a very secular way, often with a phobia about too orthodox and strict an interpretation of this Semitic school, given that many Middle Eastern and North African peoples are Semites, not just German Ashkenazi Jews and other Palestinians in the geopolitical but otherwise nonexistent "Middle" East) sought spirituality and like the Buddha and Jesus sought it in the mystic East.
Many Jews former beat poets love Zen Buddhism
The lure of India for young people on a spiritual quest is hard to underestimate. It is very old. Sure, Judaism has its own form of mysticism (just the same way regular Islam has mystical Sufism), but Kabbalah is creepy and more European-occultism than the magic and mystery of ancient India and its neighbor Esoteric Buddhist Tibet.
Jewish? Do I look Jewish? I'm All Religions
Ram Dass (formerly Harvard's Dr. Richard Alpert, Ph.D., who almost singlehandedly started the Sixties along with Howard Bloom, who claims he did singlehandedly start them), famously said, when asked if he was Jewish (because he dressed and wore his hair like his groovy Hindu "love guru" Neem Karoli Baba), "I'm only Jewish on my parents' side."
Prince Siddhartha (Gandhara)
Prince Siddhartha was born in Scythia (Saka) in ancient Gandhara, in the northwest frontier of proto-India; he traveled east on a quest for spiritual enlightenment.
King Jesus (humble Yeshua the Nazarene) was born either in pharaoh's Egypt or a small Podunk town known as Nazareth in Palestine (popularly sold to us as "Israel," which is located in North Africa, although this is obscured by ages of propaganda that forces the imagination to ignore that what is called "Israel" today is all on the African continent and in ancient times may have extended throughout Kush and Ethiopia, which at that time included Eritrea, in Kemet).
Foreskin's Lament (Shalom Auslander)
The Man will lie to us and separate us, pit Jew (Chosen) against Christian (Gentile) and play the ultimate victim with everyone against the self-isolating, exclusionary Jews. The work of Shalom Auslander is eye-opening in this regard. Eric Dubay (ericdubay.com and at bitchute.com) says the world has historically hated "the Jews" and not for nothing. They have been thrown out of country after country, leading to the saying "wandering Jew." This is blamed on the God of the Jews, who is punishing them for their sinfulness (lit. "missing the mark") and wickedness (evil) and most of all their kvetching (murmuring which really means bellyaching and endless complaining). The God just won't stand for it.
Our troubles did not begin in...
But will Buddhists be pitted against the Jews? If Jews behave the same way they have in other countries, sure. But just look at Thailand and other places with secret Jewish enclaves as they set up businesses, network, try to form monopolies that would be illegal elsewhere, keep others out of certain industries, and clean up all with government help and protection.
Every country wants a piece of the financial pie. And Jews, particularly the secular ones, are like the Jains in India, a tiny fraction of the population with disproportionate wealth and influence for their numbers.
Why? The religious rules they do not personally practice, but the very rules that made their community prosper, is the answer. Moses had a DMT vision (using Syrian Rue and seeing the burning bush) and said behave this way. Mahavira had a vision and said practice ahimsa, that is, abstain from doing any kind of harm (such as farming, soldiering, ranching, butchering, etc.), leaving only a few businesses to undertake, namely, banking and jewelry dealing. Remind you of any other small religious group?
(FOX 2 St. Louis) Passover Seder (a kind of Last Supper) is observed by Jews on the 15th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. A local family invited FOX 2's crew into their home to show their [largely German Ashkenazi Jewish] beliefs and traditions.
ABOUT: St. Louis News channel FOX 2 covers news, weather, and sports in Missouri and Illinois. Read more about this story or see the latest update: FOX2Now.com. Social media: YouTube: fox2now
The Jew in the Lotus: What does Judaism have to do with Buddhism?
The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Re-Discovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India is a famous book by Rodger Kamenetz published in 1995. It has a 4.5 out of 5 stars after 247 ratings.
While accompanying eight high-spirited Jewish delegates to Dharamsala, India, for a historic Buddhist–Jewish dialogue with the 14th Dalai Lama, poet Rodger Kamenetz comes to understand the convergence of Buddhist and Jewish thought.
Along the way he encounters Ram Dass (former Jewish Harvard professor Dr. Richard Alpert, who got fired because of LSD then went tripping around India as a hippie and became a cultural icon after he met and became devoted to Hindu love guru Neem Karoli Baba in India) and Hollywood actor Richard Gere, and dialogues with leading rabbis and Jewish thinkers, including Zalman Schacter, Yitz and Blue Greenberg, and a host of religious and disaffected Jews and JuBus (Jewish-Buddhists).
This amazing journey through Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism and Judaism leads Kamenetz to a renewed appreciation of his living Jewish roots. The Jew in the Lotus
Text by Sheldon S., Shauna Schwartz, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly 2024; video by FOX 2 St. Louis; April 5, 2023; main video by Forward, April 10, 2023; author Rodger Kamenetz (amazon.com)
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