Vmarco

It does not matter what I "think"...because thinking can not produce truth,...although it is very helpful in recognizing what is false. As a New Ager said, "we need to draw our attention to what is false in us, for unless we learn to recognize the false as the false, there can be no lasting transformation, and you will always be drawn back into illusion, for that is how the false perpetuates itself" As I've said,...Undivided Light is proof that no god exists. For me, in the 80's, I was still looking for god,...couldn't find him in books, traditions, nature, etc. Then I had an idea, blurted out in a 300 level Religious Studies class,...if there is a god, he must be in the Present. Although I had already experienced aspects of the Present, this was the first that I'd taken it to the next level. Result? The Present was uncovered, and there is no god. There is however, Undivided Light,...the Tathagata,...the Tao,...but no god,...no beliefs,...no hope,...no faith,...no delusions. Although I didn't set out to understand Light, I feel that Light can be an excellent threshold towards uncovering the Present. Breaking through to the absolute Present has so many accumulated barriers and predispositions, that most shut down quite quickly,...for ego does not want to see that everything it thought was meaningful, is actually meaningless. http://thetaobums.com/topic/19803-what-is-light/

It's further than that,...a bodhisattva "sees" sunyata.

Merely saying something, like repeating a set of words for a New Years resolution, is not taking the bodhisattva vow,...although many believe it is. Taking the Kalachakra Initiation, as millions today do, is not a "been there, done that" proposition,...although many believe it is. Sentient beingness is a lie of ignorance, although many believe it is not.

It is said, and I agree, that an authentic Bodhisattva vow carries over into all incarnations. For example, I did not have to take a bodhisattva vow in this life, because such vow was already taken, and when taken, one is impelled from the earliest of age.

No,...that is a misinterpretation of his vow,...his vow was to understand the nature of dukkha, or I will die under this tree. Buddha did not, from what I read, and clearly posted above, seek enlightenment. The way many see enlightenment is that anyone, for any self-centered reason, can breakthrough. This is not the case,...NEVER! To realize enlightenment one must also breakthrough the desire to be enlightened. Buddhas quest was about Other,...not himself. The Bodhicharyavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva) says, "those desiring speedily to be A refuge for themselves and other beings, Should interchange the terms of I and Other, And thus embrace a sacred mystery."

Your sciential process is missing the point. First, why believe the literature you chose to include? Especially that of lineages solely seeking to promote their traditions? Sakyamuni Buddha is a good example of the Bodhisattva vow,...he did not seek enlightenment,...enlightenment was a consequence of his desire to understand dukkha. Likewise, a bodhisattva focuses on the liberation of sentient beings from their sentience, which as a consequence, leads to their own enlightenment. If you seek enlightenment for yourself, my guess is that you will never realize it. Going "inside" is an ego trick to sustain ego. Enlightenment is a consequence of going outside in an honest way, which leads to coming back into oneself as you go out, and thus cease coming and going. The realization of the reverse flow of forward moving things. Buddha said, "the Tathagata does not come and go." Lao Tzu said, "the Tao doesn't come and go." To be a Bodhisattva, one must "see" as a Bodhisattva. You (Apech) do not "see" as a Bodhisattva,...and therefore are unable to grasp the nature of a Bodhisattva, a Tathagata, or the Tao. If you wish to have an understanding of what a Bodhisattva vow actually indicates, I suggest the book Heart Attack Sutra, by prajnaparamita scholar Karl Brunnholzl. To "see" as a Bodhisattva is to have realized a level of liberation from sentience,...that is,...the cause of dukkha. While with all the liberated Bodhisattvas, Buddha agreed with Avalokitesvara when she said, "As soon as one sense-organ returns to the source, All the six are liberated." The only way to liberate sentient beings from their suffering is to liberate their sentience. In order to liberate sentient beings from their sentience, one must first liberate themselves. A Bodhisattva liberates themselves for the sake of Others. Selfishness cannot uncover enlightenment. As Lao tzu said, "the ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle; totally fascinated by the realm of the senses....if anyone threaten it, it actually fears for its life. Let this monkey go. Let the senses go."

Louis Komjathy 康思奇, Ph.D. has a quite biased, sciential point of view and understands very little about Taoism. The essense of Taoism is not religious,...if anything, it is irreligious. Religion is a set of beliefs. Taoism is not about beliefs,...except how beliefs obscure the Tao. Lao Tzu said, "Do not go about worshipping deities and religious institutions as the source of the subtle truth.....religions are desperate, clever, human inventions that rely on hypnotic manipulation of undeveloped minds."

For the most part, I dislike taking the word of sciential minded folks,...I'll listen, but need a less number orientated view also. From how I understand JoeBlast, there is no carbon problem, thus no global warming. I would very seriously ask JoeBlast to help me understand that better. Joe, if you could spend tonight in a garage with your car running, in the morning explain how nearly 1 billion combustion engine vehicles have no carbon effect within the garage of the Earths atmosphere.

Yes,...peace and love are not the coin,...although most believe that they are the coin,...that they are their beliefs. Many think that the unconditions of peace and love arise though and with the conditions of beliefs, as if their beliefs can come along into the Unconditional, and somehow, the Unconditional will remain Unconditional with their conditions. LOL IMO, belief (which is by nature, untrue) is the main impediment to uncovering peace. This is nothing new,...a 1st Century Gnostic text says,..."when you can disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments (beliefs) and place them under your feet like little child and tread on them, then you will no longer be afraid". People mired in beliefs own aggressive dog breeds to make their fear more palatable, instead of disrobing their beliefs. Surely,...no one's religious, political, dietary, or other viewpoints are superior to another's. They are all beliefs. As Jed McKenna said,..."no belief is true."

I have no emotional charge about it,..I merely don't sympathize with any indigenous group that wants to establish a hate and racist-driven regime based on some White Mens Judaeo-Christian meme. Pretty place, great food, but I could feel the hate against me, and thus I left. I also live a year in Chiapas Mexico, and was very sympathetic to the Zapatistas. I am a supporter of peace. Know god, no peace; gnow peace, no god. There can never be peace as long as beliefs, like those of the Hawaiians, step between sentient beings and their direct experience.

On the contrary,...your questions were addressed in my response

I lived a year on the Big Island,...lots of racism there,...lots of fearful people,...both Hawaiians and Haoles,...lots of racist attacks by Hawaiians on Whites. Maui and Kaua'i are more peaceful. If the Hawaiians wanted to go back to their Polynesian roots I be more sympathetic,...what they want is to kick all Whites out, and live under the laws of the God Jehovah,...as stated in their 1840 Constitution. go figure! http://www.freehawaii.org/cease.html Hawaiians don't want peace,...they want the Old Testament.

Most breeds are already like that. Show me some with a Maltese, Yorky, Newfoundland, Collie, Lab, etc. and I might believe that they are interested in World Peace. In Hawaii, the most popular dog is the Pit Bull,...which suggests that their aloha is superficial,..just a term to suck in tourists. Of course, if I was a lion hunter, I might want to have a Rhodesian Ridgeback,...but for a selfish reason like "protection', I'd just be contributing to the problem.

I disagree with much of that,...including the orgasms. If males could have female type orgasms (and they can, by increasing their estrogen), most females would not want them. Just as a guy who helps around the house, not only gets less sex, but his female partner starts to stray, in search of a proper bad-boy. http://todayhealth.today.com/_news/2013/01/30/16758810-husbands-who-do-her-chores-have-less-sex-study-finds?lite As for my opinion,...I think the above is very unfortunate. Next,...do opposites attract? No! But the belief they do has detrimental effects,..for example, the belief that Wholeness is a union of opposites. The truth is, Wholeness is beyond the sum of opposites. Like attracts like; opposites do not attract. Charles Coulomb’s object-ive point of view, although seemingly appropriate for the attraction and repulsion of electrical charges, is misleading when applied to nature. Like conditions actually attract like conditions. From my view, two magnets cancel out the end poles of any point of union. Every condition, whether a belief, an element from the Periodic Table of the Elements, or a huge planet in orbit within our solar system, has a frequency that attracts to itself what it gives off. Notwithstanding,..there are many interesting ideas in your post. Perhaps though, we should be differentiating what "kind" of love we're discussing. Instinctual love? Biological love? Emotional love? Conscious love? Conditional love? Unconditional love?

Perhaps,...but why are vicious/agressive dogs being bred? Would a law banning vicious/agressive breeds manifest "Living at Peace with Society?" I would think that "Living at Peace with Society" would arise from no one wanting to own vicious/agressive breeds,...no more Beware of Dog signs. In my opinion,...the recognition of the inconsiderateness of vicious/agressive dog ownership, could actually lead to "Living at Peace with Society"...just by bringing awareness to what consideration is.

There's training, and then there's breeding. Trainers, like Michelle Bachmann think they can use reparitive therapy to make gays ungay,...go figure! Having an aggressive breed dog for protection, not only manifests more insecurity,...it is absolutely (let me say it again, absolutely) suggestive of someone inconsiderate of others. Here's the hint again: "All the joy the world contains Has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself." Shantideva No bodhisattva would own an aggressive dog breed.

Because,...by sweeping a major impediment to peace under the groupthinks delusions, makes a discussion on "Living at Peace with Society" ridiculous. and absurd.

Well,...we live in a cerebro-centric society, not a cardio-centric one. In fact, most who believe that they acting out of a cardio-centric viewpoint, are really cerebro-centric. This is why the thymus gland begins atrophying right after birth,...whereas in ancient cultures, the thymus was as large as the heart in adults. Somewhere in history, the psyche took prominence over the thymos,...knowledge became more important than gnowledge,...empirical evidence trumped gnosis.

What I'm comprehending from you, is that you believe a dog, which over hundreds of years, has been bred to kill, mame, harm, terrorize, can simply be trained to no longer have the traits it was bred for,...even though millions every years, are killed, mamed, harmed, terrorized by these breeds,...even against the best and most trained of owners. Where you really should not take your eyes from, and address, is how the owners of breeds bred to kill, mame, harm and terrorize, contribute to a peaceful society? Training a dog bred to kill, mame, harm and terrorize to be other than what it was bred for, would be like wishing a rose, bred to be blue, to be red.

No,...a good example of not moving on, and allowing the topic question, which does not want to be honestly addresed, to be swept under the delusion.

I likely hug forty non-family members per week, and surely feel that outward displays of honoring others is appropriate. In fact, if everyone visualized hugging a poster before responding, instead of visualizing them as an opponent, I'd bet the posts would be different. However,...hugs are not necessarily translating to love. As you expressed a keen appreciation for deep philosophical items, consider that real love may not have the same outward display as hippies like to express. In 'Practical Work on Self' by EJ Gold, he writes: "Real emotions are communicated by outward radiation of the mood, and originate through an awakened emotional center, which has no reverberational effects in other parts of the body, and is not necessary to verbally communicate the emotion. Positive and negative emotion are subjective mental states occuring in reflex, and must be verbalized and elaborately described, explained, rationalized and mentally communicated and understood. Those who can produce real emotions in themselves never communicate about emotional states in mental language; they just radiate the emotions, allowing the emotion to speak for itself. "In the presence of someone who is able to produce real emotion, we experience feelings - perhaps for the first time. Very often, someone who has awakened the higher Emotional Body and who has learned to radiate emotions becomes a celebrity-guru, and people gather like cattle to bathe in the higher emotions. These higher emotions are often mistaken for some mysterious cosmic force or interpreted in some pseudo-religious way, but really they are just emotions. What a pity that human beings are so unaccustomed to emotion that they feel compelled to submissively huddle together in the warmth of the emotional radiation of someone just as mechanical as they are, but who happened to have activated, by accident, the higher Emotional Body."

Yes, I agree you are going off topic,....what does your feelings about me, have to do with the question,...does ownership of vicious, aggressive dog breeds, known to cause injuries, terror, and death to millions every year, promote "Living in Peace with Society?"

That is a very ignorant statement,...especially in a thread about Peace in Society. A dog bred to kill, mame, harm, terrorize, is not a "trait" of bad ownership. That's like saying you can train a lynx to be a house cat. Perhaps, over time, you can create a new bred of lynx, but you are not going change the genetic temperment of an existing breed through good ownership. HOWEVER,...what makes that statement even more ignorant, is that it has nothing to do with "Living at Peace with Society" The question should be,...why do millions of people have the need to perpetuate a non-peaceful society by owning unpredictable dogs breeds that, as matter of fact, injure, terrorize, or kill millions of people per year. Where's the PEACE in that? That's the question. Not if your subject-ive view is that Pit Bulls are beautiful animals. A peaceful person does not own a dog bred to be vicious and aggressive Clifford Wright was a known Pit Bull advocate who facilated local and Statewide Pit Bull ownership workshops,...he was killed by his loving Pit Bull. http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/05/04/news/pit-bull-advocate-fatally-mauled-by-beloved-pet.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clF0Q-Arj1E

Discussion of those few breeds of dogs that end up in millions of attacks per year (4.5 million in the US alone) must surely be a legitimate subject for a thread titled "Living at peace with Society" There is nothing "Offtopic" about why millions of people choose have unpredictable, territorial, barking, growling, threatening, terrorizing dogs breed for attacking, protection, killing, etc. Living at Peace with Society? Can a person, inconsiderate of others safety, by owning a dog, that is inherently dangerous, breed to injure, harm, terrorize, be living at peace with society? Out of more than 500 dog breeds, the facts say 3 breeds, Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios were responsible for 65% of the canine caused homicides. Do the math. In a peaceful,...aka., considerate society, would there be millions of dog attacks per year? Of the 4.5 million dog attacks in America in 2011, up to 53% are known to have been by Pit Bulls and their hybrids. "All the joy the world contains Has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself." Shantideva

Sure,...it was copyrighted in 2007, and you have my permission to use it. VMarco