old3bob

My take is that all 'lesser' desires can be boiled down to or driven by a seeking for the true desire (often in all the wrong places via the schools of hard knocks) which is for freedom and satisfaction of the soul finding and knowing its own Soul. To try and quash that and related life force is missing the boat and futile. True desire is the force behind or within all beings to find and know what the hell is really going on (including right dharmas) , thus not an elaborate and or high sounding philosophy that may get turned into or be interpreted as a dead like denial of that force.

right, similar wonderings for politics which are part of most everything mankind does regardless of trying to deny so.

not much mention about the ways and means that the Devas and Gods help out mankind? (including helping the historic Buddha at a critical juncture) What gives? Just meditate and be happy is all it takes.... since we have "our books and poetry to protect us" along with an all powerful intellect.

on a side note: religions are for use of mankind, mankind is not for use of religions...

yea, we can hope the whale burps

did Jonah say there's light at the end of the whales belly?

Lets not forget that are probably organic pretzels to be had somewhere that are baked with ancient sea salt on them; so watch out for those GMO ones with bleached salt that is minus natural trace elements! Btw, If I remember correctly Jesus had something to say about salt, and in his day most of it probably had its natural trace elements.

"Autobiography of a Yogi" goes into Hindu-yoga/ Christianity correlations a lot but to me parts of it are a bridge too far...

well I've done some of that pretzel-ing myself but it doesn't really work that well with the wide and sometimes very drastic differences among religions even if ultimately they all or mostly derive from on pretzel.

I'd say most "Eastern religions" and many of its ways do not correlate or match up all that well with major parts of orthodox Christianity. Thus many (new age like) attempts to conflate same could twist one's mind into a pretzel even if there are some correlations that do match up. Btw, "the last will be first, and the first will be last" Matthew 19:30. Is a saying I appreciate but what does it mean to me? My take is that the first to manifest will be the last to return to the unmanifest, or in other words the very first and purest light and sound (aka the "Word" in Christianity) to manifest will be the last to return to "Mystery" (a term used in Taoism) or the unmanifest which the human mind can not really wrap its head around except as a concept. Btw #2, Ime Master Jesus is like both an awesome indomitable "lion" of unbreakable golden/white light spiritual will power yet He can also be like a gentle shepherd with us human beings (with many of us that are like lambs or sheep in comparison to the more evolved souls that are like lions in their will power that is in alignment with the greater power) per or in an appropriate context.

One form of heavy duty punishment is the "silent treatment"/isolation, its a tough one to deal with for us human beings who many would probably prefer someone getting on our case if need be in comparison!

most everything has a political aspect of some kind, (good or bad) no getting around that, including thinking that it doesn't ! fear of or crossing those in power like dictators is adharmic politics in action...

another paraphrased tangent about punishment: Jesus stopped a crowd of people that wanted to stone a woman to death who had been 'naughty' by saying, "he who is without sin cast the first stone" but no one in crowd could do so. Soon followed by him saying to her privately, "go your way and sin no more". so about 180 degrees off from the earlier quote from Luke although in a very different context, yet I'd say is something think about/realize compared to the pro-judgement mentioned in the op. and also in some points that it sounded to me like some were trying to get across. (?)

for human beings and all other beings there are dharmic rules or laws and related consequences if broken...thus not so different in result. The "kindness to the unkind" aspect you speak of hopefully kicks into the awareness of the offender quickly or at least after eons...

like every vow and precept that an order has. Annihilation of ego is one thing but that is not annihilation of Self or Spirit which is not on a slippery slope and may be exacting or compassionate depending on the case...(which btw is not really comprehensible to the human mind since same is beyond it)