SirPalomides

But the Pure Land is full of godlike pleasures and infinitely more comfortable than life on earth. Beautiful sights, sounds, and scents, food that magically materializes, etc. Far from a spartan retreat it's a psychedelic wonderland of bright colors, jewels, flowers. The absence of mountains, animals, etc. isn't because these things would be too pleasurable but because they are considered unpleasant, as either symptoms or causes of suffering.

Man, you snowflakes can't tell the difference between someone disagreeing with you on an internet forum and someone repressing your free speech. Sad!

From what I read the Nichiren gohonzon is a mandala depicting "the ceremony in the air" of the Lotus Sutra, so by chanting daimoku you are entering this mandala. I guess that could be seen as equivalent to a Pure Land, with the Buddha Shakyamuni at the center.

"I can't get a date, it's a communist plot!"

More wisdom from Falun Gong: Another important goal of communism is the destruction of the family through ideas like gender equality and “sharing wealth and wife.” The twentieth century, in particular, was host to modern feminist movements that promoted sexual liberation, the blurring of gender differences, attacks against “patriarchy,” and weakening the role of the father in the family. These movements changed the definition of marriage, promoted the legalization and legitimization of homosexuality, promoted the “rights” to divorce and abortion, and used social welfare policies to effectively encourage and subsidize single parenthood. All of this resulted in the collapse of families and led to a greater incidence of poverty and crime. This has been one of the more startling transformations of society over the last several decades. ... The devil is the initiator of an unrestricted war on mankind that has created battlefields out of religion, the family, politics, the economy, finance, military affairs, education, academia, the arts, the media, entertainment, popular culture, social affairs, and international relations. The dark energy of the devil can spread from one sphere, group, or movement to another. For instance, after the anti-Vietnam War movement faded in the West in the 1970s, the devil manipulated rebellious adolescents to channel their energies into agitating for feminism, environmentalism, and the legalization of homosexuality. The devil then used these efforts to subvert Western civilization from within. The devil can turn ill-intentioned people into its agents in the human world. It can use hypocrisy to deceive compassionate and innocent people, who then become its apologists. The devil’s agents — most of whom do not even realize their role — are everywhere in society, from the elite, to the middle class, to the lower classes. Thus, its activities manifest sometimes as bottom-up revolutions, sometimes as top-down conspiracies, sometimes as reforms from the center. ... The demon of communism inhabits a variety of complex guises in the West and operates under many banners, making it almost impossible to guard against. The following schools or movements were either derived from communism or used by communism to reach its ends: liberalism, progressivism, the Frankfurt School, Neo-Marxism, critical theory, the counterculture of the 1960s, the anti-war movement, sexual liberation, legalization of homosexuality, feminism, environmentalism, social justice, political correctness, Keynesian economics, avant-garde art schools, and multiculturalism.

More wisdom from Li Hongzhi: Question: Different races have different Heavenly Kingdoms. Why don’t black people from Africa have any? Master: Black people, too, have the gods that created them. It’s just that they forgot them rather early. ... Question: Why do you say that children of mixed blood are pitiable? A person might be a Chinese person in this life, and then a foreigner in the next, and there are all sorts of races and main souls on the earth. Master: In the reincarnation process it is the main soul that reincarnates, whereas what has mixed blood is the flesh body. Different gods created their own different peoples, and in history those gods have all along been taking care of the people they themselves created. White people are white people, black people are black people, and people of the yellow race are people of the yellow race. Any ethnicity in the world is a race that corresponds with the heavens. After mixing blood people no longer have their correspondence to the gods in the heavens. And then it is possible that none of the gods that created humans will take care of them. Then with regard to these people, they are very pitiable. Some people might be wondering what to do, then. I’ll tell you, don’t be anxious. I am talking about the situation at the human being’s surface. Since humans’ main souls haven’t mixed, if people want to cultivate I can enable you to cultivate. If you can cultivate to the last step you can Consummate all the same, and there won’t be any distinction. Cultivation won’t be an issue. If an everyday person is in the circumstance [we just discussed] then he will lead a very pitiable life. The gods above won’t recognize a region where there is a concentration of mixed races, so normally the people in such a region will be destitute and have a hard life.

The wisdom of Li Hongzhi: TIME: Why does chaos reign now? Li: Of course there is not just one reason. The biggest cause of society's change today is that people no longer believe in orthodox religion. They go to church, but they no longer believe in God. They feel free to do anything. The second reason is that since the beginning of this century, aliens have begun to invade the human mind and its ideology and culture. TIME: Where do they come from? Li: The aliens come from other planets. The names that I use for these planets are different . Some are from dimensions that human beings have not yet discovered. The key is how they have corrupted mankind. Everyone knows that from the beginning until now, there has never been a development of culture like today. Although it has been several thousand years, it has never been like now. The aliens have introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes. They started by teaching mankind about modern science, so people believe more and more science, and spiritually, they are controlled. Everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own when in fact their inspiration is manipulated by the aliens. In terms of culture and spirit, they already control man. Mankind cannot live without science. The ultimate purpose is to replace humans. If cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans. Why does a corpse lie dead, even though it is the same as a living body? The difference is the soul, which is the life of the body. If people reproduce a human person, the gods in heaven will not give its body a human soul. The aliens will take that opportunity to replace the human soul and by doing so they will enter earth and become earthlings. When such people grow up, they will help replace humans with aliens. They will produce more and more clones. There will no longer be humans reproduced by humans. They will act like humans, but they will introduce legislation to stop human reproduction. TIME: Are you a human being? Li: You can think of me as a human being. TIME: Are you from earth? Li: I don't wish to talk about myself at a higher level. People wouldn't understand it. TIME: What are the aliens after? Li: The aliens use many methods to keep people from freeing themselves from manipulation. They make earthlings have wars and conflicts, and develop weapons using science, which makes mankind more dependent on advanced science and technology. In this way, the aliens will be able to introduce their stuff and make the preparations for replacing human beings. The military industry leads other industries such as computers and electronics. TIME: But what is the alien purpose? Li: The human body is the most perfect in the universe. It is the most perfect form. The aliens want the human body. TIME: What do aliens look like? Li: Some look similar to human beings. U.S. technology has already detected some aliens. The difference between aliens can be quite enormous. TIME: Can you describe it? Li: You don't want to have that kind of thought in your mind. TIME: Describe them anyway. Li: One type looks like a human, but has a nose that is made of bone. Others look like ghosts. At first they thought that I was trying to help them. Now they now that I am sweeping them away.,

Where I am, Amitabha's Pure Land doesn't sound that appealing. Everyone looking the same? No mountains or oceans? No penguins, giraffes, or octopus? Everything perfectly even and symmetrical? It almost sounds like a shopping mall or a Disney park to me. That is my visceral reaction to it. However, if I lived in a place of rampant violence, cruelty, or instability, racked by earthquakes or storms, or, say, I was in an oppressive job carrying backbreaking loads up and down hills, I bet I would find the Pure Land a lot more appealing and my views of nature might be less rosy. So this might have to do with personal circumstances and propensities than philosophical disagreement.

… because?

This is something I mentioned in another thread, about Buddhist versus Daoist attitudes to nature and aesthetics. There are no mountains and no oceans in the Pure Land, because they are expressions of mental volatility. Likewise the trees are not really trees but are perfectly symmetrical jewel formations; the birds are not really birds but the Buddha's mental emanations, and they sing nothing but the truths of the Buddha dharma. Overall the subtext seems to be that there is something very wrong with the natural world we see around us- all of it is formed from deluded or confused mental states. It's easy to understand, considering the suffering and violence that seems built in to virtually every aspect of life on earth. This attitude is very prominent in Indian Buddhism but countered to some degree in East Asian Buddhism, partly by application of Nagarjuna's insight that samsara and nirvana are one, partly from, I suspect, the predilection in both Confucianism and Daoism for admiring nature in all its wild imperfections and variety.

Vwelcome

Again I suggest the Nathan Robinson article at the top of the thread, where he deftly picks apart Maher's argument.

All the picture is missing is a mullet and some nunchucks.

I have a hunch Immortal4Life won't be with us much longer. It also seems odd to me that he started posting so prolifically after a whole bunch of people were banned.

Deforestation is going to be a constant danger for releasing pathogens, more than melting ice caps probably. Of course the two problems are linked. China has had a huge reforesting program with mixed success. There are big flaws in the way it's been done though- for example, in many places, people are only planting one kind of tree.

A decent article from the LA Times last month: As some media outlets cover the coronavirus, journalists are mixing up wet markets and wildlife markets. But most wet markets are not wildlife markets, and confusing the two is dangerous. “Wet” markets are what China calls its fresh food markets, the kind you see all over the developing world and in many parts of Europe, where small stalls sell fresh vegetables and butchers sell meat, primarily pork. They are the daily market for tens of millions of Chinese who prefer to talk to the people who sell them produce, meat, seafood and tofu, and in small cities, are often the only outlet for small-scale farmers who can’t meet the supplier requirements for supermarkets. (Still, it’s important to differentiate: Most wet markets, especially in big cities, may look like farmers markets but are buying from the same wholesale suppliers as supermarkets.) They are a cornerstone of China’s food distribution system and have benefits for society both tangible and intangible, from improved nutrition for children to stronger interpersonal relationships. So-called for their open-air origins, where the ground was hosed down throughout the day, they are the traditional backbone to China’s food supply system. Read the rest here: https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2020-03-11/coronavirus-china-wet-markets

That Tom Friedman article seems actually somewhat sensible though not exactly groundbreaking. Of course for every sensible thing Friedman says, there are a hundred inanities and blunders. In the world of big-time American "journalism" there is rarely accountability for being wrong- more often, you fail up, and Friedman is the poster boy of that phenomenon. Apart from the World is Flat he cheerled the Iraq War, wrote a fawning puff piece about MBS a few months before the Khashoggi murder, and did not one but two articles arguing for the US to support ISIS- not, mind you, because he likes ISIS, but because bleeding Russia and Iran is worth any price. I think in most professions that track record would mark someone as an idiot, but in the NYT bubble it makes him an edgy maverick.

I’m not a fan of the Iranian government but for an “incompetent” dictatorship they are outsmarting the US at every turn.

If China were to fall the people there would be too preoccupied with the collapse of their society into a post-Soviet style hellworld of mafia goons and neoliberalism to give a shit about Li Hongzhi’s scamgong UFO cult. Thankfully that won’t be happening any time soon. The trajectory of Falun Gong is somewhat comparable to another cult, the Iranian Mojahedin-e-Khalq, a weird blend of Marxism and Shiism. Early in the Islamic revolution they actually had some support and a role in the new government; once they were pushed out, though, they got crazier and crazier. They sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war and made friends in the US and other western governments. At this point they are universally hated in Iran but some Western politicians still pretend they could be the core of a new Iranian government.

Currently I sit zhengzuo/ seiza, with a zafu turned on its side to support my butt and a rug under me. I find this to be more consistently comfortable than any of the cross-legged positions, and I find it much easier to keep my back straight.

We're not talking about individuals, we're talking about the Falun Gong cult and their media arms Epoch Times, Shen Yun, New Tang Dynasty. They get funding from the US and Canadian governments; they use their money to support Donald Trump and promote a homophobic, racist, misogynist agenda. Li Hongzhi is a scumbag and so is anyone who shills for him.

Which is why they spend millions on pro-Trump ads and teach that homosexuality and feminism are tools of Satan. It's all spiritual, you know?

I'd never heard of you until you started spamming the forum with right-wing nonsense. Remember, according to Li Hongzhi, computers are part of a scheme by aliens to take over human bodies. Better heed his warning and log off.

Don't worry, we totally believe you.