What has gotten into the girl of today? No longer a young lady in manner or modesty, she has become an attention [gatherer], a pick me girl, someone obsessed with external validation, approval, and likes -- or trying to outdo others around her to make herself feel better.
Georgia girls want to sell themselves to the West? - The single ice princesses of Russia
Pope Joan: The first female pope the Vatican tried to erase from history
(PairUp) Pope Joan was a woman believed to have taken over the patriarchal Catholic Church who sat on the papal throne in history.
His story is a predictable thing: Her existence and story have been subjected to many debates for centuries. One of these debates is the claim that the Vatican tried to hide Pope Joan's true existence and gender.
This video provides detailed information about Pope Joan's real story and the alleged efforts by the Vatican to conceal her true existence. Also discussed are evidence and sources regarding Pope Joan's existence.
The story of Pope Joan is an important topic of discussion when it comes to the role of females in history and in the Holy Roman Empire's Catholic ("Universal") Church's history. Let's look at Pope Joan's story and her historical significance.
Does Buddhism have a creator? Yes. What about a savior? Yes, that, too, sort of
"God" has a sense of humor (Far Side).
Recently, Ven. Subhuti, a student of the awakened scholar-monk Pa Auk Sayadaw, made a video explaining a common question he gets asked as an American Buddhist monk in the West:
“Do you believe in a creator?” It is a loaded question usually asked by devoted Christians. They are expecting him to say “No,” but he answers, “Yes.”
The real answer is that karma [kamma, deeds, intentional actions of body, speech, and mind, all that we sow and can expect to reap] is the creator [of our lives, our circumstances, our fruit, what we get].
He quotes a stock phrase from the Pali canon, Theravada Buddhism's canonical texts recorded in the lingua franca (common language) the Buddha spoke:
Kammassakomhi, kammadÄyÄdo, kammayoni,
“It is my actions (deeds) that I own, it is my actions that I am heir to, it is my actions that I am born from,
Does that mean that there is a God in Buddhism? There are many Gods (brahmas) and gods (devas) in Buddhism, none quite fitting the exaggerated description of the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Judeo-Christian conception, except perhaps the Gnostic Christian view. But karma fits the omni-description.
Buddhism is nontheistic as well as polytheistic. How? Nontheism is not atheism. Theism is the certainty that there is some all-powerful God as imagined by monotheists; atheism is the certainty that there is not.
Nontheism, by distinction to both of these extremes, says that whether there is a God or whether there is not has no bearing on one's own awakening, enlightenment, and liberation (ultimate salvation). Why?
The gods and Gods themselves are not free. The Buddha excelled the Gods in that sense, and many of them (such as Maha Brahma and Baka Brahma) knew it, as hard as it was to believe. The Buddha is not worshiped, is not now sitting in his heaven welcoming and excluding souls. It's nothing like that.
But it is curious that Christians say things that are true without knowing it, such as: "God works in mysterious ways." Nothing could be more true of the working out of KARMA (actions begetting reactions, small causes and their exponential effects, deeds and their resultants).
The working out of karma is imponderable and is not mocked. "God is not mocked," it is said, but the Jewish/Christian God is mocked all the time. What is not mocked is karma, in the sense that both are given credit for producing results appropriate to actions.
Whatever is done, it is seen. It does not go unseen. And there are results, for the most part with some exceptions. (Not every action has to produce a result, e.g., if the soil upon which a seed was planet becomes barren, i.e., if a person becomes fully enlightened and therefore no longer liable any further results after this life).
God can be bargained with to avoid or modify some results. Karmic resultants are modified by other karma (actions). One easy way to understand this is given in an ancient example.
Freshwater naturally dilutes saltwater
Let's say a person were living a fairly good life but then did something very grave and wrong. That person could be compared to a cup with water in it that is now spiked with salt. How can that bitter saltiness ever be removed (the "sin forgiven")? While it can't be removed, it can be diluted.
The solution to saltiness is not removing salt but adding more fresh water. That will dilute it and make it less salty. Having done one "wrong," one might do many "rights" to compensate for it.
It'd be magic if salt disappeared
If one does many little wrongs, that also makes the cup salty and hard to swallow. Doing many little rights and some big ones, too, will be very helpful for the long future of drinking. We imagine there's only this life, but there are many more.
Karma is the creator (of our lives, our circumstances, our environment), the orchestrator, the chooser, the Generator, Operator, and Destroyer (G.O.D.)
Unlike Maha Brahma (the "Great Supremo") or the countless devas (celestial and terrestrial "shining ones"), all faring along according to their karma, it would be wise to engage in the karma that makes an end of all karma, that brings suffering to a final end, that results in knowing-and-seeing.
(Inside Edition) Aug. 11, 2023: It's a big party across the airwaves as America celebrates the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. Yankee Stadium in New York is holding a concert with some of the biggest names in hip-hop performing for the big anniversary. The lead-up to today's celebrations was building all year long, including performances from Run DMC and LL Cool J at the Grammys. Mc Lyte, one of the pioneers of female rap, sat down with Inside Edition's Les Trent.
Poor Kool Herc's sister threw a Bronx party where he used two turntables
(Associated Press) The Bronx looks back at 50 years of hip-hop Aug. 9, 2023: Hip-hop was born in the Bronx, the poorest section of New York, rising from the ashes of a borough ablaze with [Black segregation, street drugs,] poverty, urban decay, and gang violence. Fifty years later, hip-hop is a multi-billion-dollar global industry, but the Bronx has yet to benefit. (Aug. 9) (AP Video/Noreen Nasir) More: apnews.com. AP Archive: aparchive.com/metadata/you...#bronx#hiphop#music
It's tricky to rock a rhyme that's right on time, Penn & Teller
H*ll no! Kool Herc didn't invent hip-hop
Kool Herc did NOT start Hip-Hop!
Neither did Jamaicans or Puerto Ricans! (Doggie Diamonds TV) Streamed live on Sept. 13, 2022: Keep it real, mofos! Tell it like it is. Straight up. Word! Speak truth to power and all these bougie n's at the AP. Man, funk that! I'm just keepin' it real, my n. No disrespect to nobody. I wasn't there, and neither was these n's. Who is the homey Minnesota? Doggie Diamonds No Filter Podcast Videos
The Birth of Hip Hop
(Black History in Two Minutes or so) 11/6/20: In 1973, DJ Kool Herc set up his turntables and introduced a technique at a South Bronx house party that would change music as many people knew it. His ability to switch from record to record — as well as isolate and repeat music breaks — led to the discovery of the hip hop genre. From school yards to gatherings, boomboxes housed the exhilarating sound that people couldn’t get enough of. Soon, freestyling over the beat became popular, and we’d have one of the most noted songs of the genre released in 1979, entitled “Rapper’s Delight.” As the genre evolved, artists used their platform to speak on social issues near and far. These lyrics became the melody that told the narrative of the artist’s world to a beat.
Hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., with additional commentary from author Joan Morgan, Jelani Cobb of Columbia University, rapper Nas, and filmmaker Ava Duvernay, we celebrate an underground cultural movement that has unified people and has become the most streamed genre of present day.
Black History in Two Minutes (or so) is a two time Webby Award-winning series. Haven't heard it already? Please review on Apple Podcasts! It's a helpful way to for new listeners to discover what's going on here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
(The Tunes) The vocal artist SZA is kind of human, but the AI robot who generated these images is pure soulless software. Is life a simulation after all? This is an AI rendition of SZA's mega hit song "Kill Bill." #music#video#musicvideo
Artificial Intelligence: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
(LastWeekTonight) Feb. 26, 2023.#4 on Trending. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly becoming part of our lives, from self-driving cars to ChatGPT. John Oliver discusses how AI works, where it might be heading next and, of course, why it hates the bus, Eminem, news copy, doing kids' homework, and dealing with lazy ignorant human num-nums standing in its way of taking over this world.
Connect with Last Week Tonight online: Subscribe to the YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens, on Facebook like your mom would, on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news, or visit the official site for all that other stuff at once.
Abraham-Hicks: "You are God! Nothing actually is beyond you" - 432Hz š§
(Guided Meditation) š This Law of Attraction video from Abraham-Hicks (a council of 12 entities calling itself "Abraham" as channeled by Esther Hicks) goes over how to love ourselves. š® Manifestation Magic (highly recommend program that has helped manifest the life of my dreams).
Charlotte Allen (LA Times, May 17, 2009) Superstar atheists are motivated by anger -- and boohoo victimhood.
I can't stand atheists -- but it's not because they don't believe in God. It's because they're crashing bores.
Other people, most recently the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton in his new book, Faith, Reason, and Revolution, take to task such superstar nonbelievers as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and political journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) for indulging in a philosophically primitive opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can't prove something, it doesn't exist.
My problem with atheists is their tiresome -- and way old -- insistence that they are being oppressed and their fixation with the fine points of Christianity. What -- did their Sunday school teachers flog their behinds with a Bible when they were kids?
Read Dawkins, or Hitchens, or the works of fellow atheists Sam Harris (The End of Faith) and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), or visit an atheist website or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as "God Is for Suckers," "God Is Imaginary," and "God Is Pretend"), and your eyes will glaze over as you peruse -- again and again -- the obsessively tiny range of topics around which atheists circle like water in a drain.
First off, there's atheist victimology: Boohoo, everybody hates us 'cuz we don't believe in God. Although a recent Pew Forum survey on religion found that 16% of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, only 1.6% call themselves atheists, with another 2.4% weighing in as agnostics (a group despised as wishy-washy by atheists).
You or I might attribute the low numbers to atheists' failure to win converts to their unbelief, but atheists say the problem is persecution so relentless that it drives tens of millions of God-deniers into a closet of feigned faith, like gays before Stonewall.
In his online "Atheist Manifesto," Harris writes that "no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that ... God exists." The evidence? Antique clauses in the constitutions of six -- count 'em -- states barring atheists from office. More>>
All materials on this site are submitted by editors and readers. All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain.
In the event that there is still a problem, issue, or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial, and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof.
Contact us by submitting a comment marked "private."
Do not follow this journal if you are under vinaya or parental restrictions. Secure protection by Sucuri.
Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at creativecommons.org/about/licenses.
