For a few more clips of Meher Baba, see my spanking new Meher Baba Videos. page. I just today got video viewing capacity with sound, and just this minute grokked the embedding code that displays clips on pages. I am FLYING in Baba’s love, and I’m sure that a faster machine AND a camcoder are just around the corner for me.
Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!
amerbud
Below are a couple of examples of scenery photographs that I recently took at Haleiwa Beach Park. All 24 shots in this collection can be seen and downloaded at my Haliewa Sunset, 4 Feb 10 shared folder. These files are comparatively big; in the neighborhood of 1.3 MB. Most of what I post online is scaled down to the neighborhood of .5 MB. These two shots below, which have been posted to Photobucket for display purposes, are smaller because Photobudket has a 1 MB size limit, but all of those at the Box.com shared folder are larger.
(click image to enlarge)
I’m thinking that these could be useful as design elements in graphics projects, by people who can’t come to Hawaii. There is a lot of healing power in these scenes, because the North Shore in general is considered a Heiau (sacred site). Sunset is also one of the spiritually empowered points in the day. Many of these, such as the first example here, include Kaena point, the most westernmost point of O’ahu, which is a titanically powerful Heiau. It’s the place where the souls jump off to the spirit world on this island. In other words, its a place where the veil between the worlds is thin, and you can access spiritual energy there as well.
My current camera, a Sony Cybershot, can take 12 megapixel files, but I choke it down to 8 megapixels from considerations of processing time. I need a faster box, and I intend to fix that within a month. But I’ll still reduce the size of what I post. These numbers are idiotically huge in terms of what you can display on a browser, and a 12 megapixel graphic file can hang many machines. What these large initial graphic files are useful for is greater resolution in the final reduced version.
In further technical notes, I use exclusively open source software, currently Ubuntu, and the Gimp, the totally awesome open source graphics editor. I’m committed to open source, because the whole open source process makes far more sense to me than the Gates-o-barfic money game in which you never finally learn anything about your machine. Open source forces you to understand your machine, while also providing more options than Gates-ware, at a pathetically miniscule fraction of the cost, and it’s getting better all the time. Today I discovered a free Adobe Flash download specifically designed for my operating system. (i.e., until today, I have not been able to view videos such as Youtube.) This is new, and it represents a policy change by Adobe. Over time, the entire industry will follow suit. Open source is not going away, and it has gotten too big to ignore if you’re in the software industry and you like profits.
Oh, and hey, I almost forgot to mention. Open source code is cleaner than its encrypted Gates-o-barfic counterpart, and quite structurally, please, it runs faster as a matter of course on any given machine and in any given application. At the same time, it’s secure. Ubuntu issues routine security updates, and they work quite well. If you surf the Chinese web like I do, you’re at risk, and I have had zero intruders since I started using Ubuntu.
Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!
amerbud
For all 40 shots that I got of this outstanding Halau yesterday, please see my:Halau Na Pua Mai Ka Lani at Kuhio beach, 7 Feb 10 shared folder.
For me, the opening conch image is predictive. If a get a good image of this, the Halau is going to be on. If I just don’t even care about the opening conch enough to even photograph it, or if none of the images come out, the Halau is going to be off.
(click image to enlarge)
Hey, go holo-holo on top the hula pa’a already, li’da’! And slop da one haku lei down oveh da eyes, you! God, I love Hawaiian girls when they get like this!
Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!
amerbud
Prayer of Repentance
Given by Meher Baba on 8 November 1952
We repent O God most merciful, for all our sins;
For every thought that was false or unjust or unclean;
For every word spoken that ought not to have been spoken;
For every deed done that ought not to have been done.
We repent for every deed and word and thought
Inspired by selfishness;
And for every deed and word and thought inspired by hatred.
We repent most specially for every lustful thought,
And every lustful action;
For every lie; for all hypocrisy;
For every promise given, but not fulfilled;
And for all slander and backbiting.
Most specially also, we repent for every action
That has brought ruin to others;
For every word and deed that has given others pain;
And for every wish that pain should befall others.
In your unbounded mercy, we ask you to forgive us, O God,
For all these sins committed by us;
And to forgive us for our constant failures
To think and speak and act according to your will.
((下随之太美丽的中文！ The following is SUCH beautiful Chinese! – amerbud))
最仁慈的主啊，我们向您忏悔一切的罪过：
每一个不诚、不公、不洁的念头；
每一句不该讲而讲过的话；
每一件不该做而做过的事。
我们忏悔由自私引起的每一个行为、言辞和念头；
由仇恨引起的每一个行为、言辞和念头。
我们特别忏悔一切的秽念、秽行、谎言、虚伪、失信、诽谤和中伤。
我们还要特别忏悔每一个给他人带来毁灭的行动，每一个给他人带来痛苦的言辞和行为；每一个希望不幸降临他人的念头。
主啊！在您的无限仁慈中，我们请求您的宽恕，宽恕我们所犯下的一切罪过，宽恕我们在思想、言语和行动上对您的意愿的一再违背。
In America, 1932 was the depth of the Great Depression. Unemployment was running at 33%. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in November of 1932 in a landslide victory over Herbert Hoover. The following events in China are drawn from this Excellent Wikipedia Chronology: All of this was followed by: Nothing of international note happened in 1932 in China after Meher Baba’s visit! Why He then returned, very specifically please, to Bombay rather than Hollywood may have had something to do with this item from the same chronology: Because of the depth of my Chinese karma, and the fact that my own relationship with Meher Baba has been absolutely entangled with the Chinese cultural sphere of influence, there is not one single word of this that is a dead fact for me. It all drips profound meaning everywhere with respect to the titanic movements in the mass mind that Baba was working with. I really need to write and publish that, but that’s another page for sure, and I doubt that I will be able to complete it today. Overall, it can be said that 1932 was a year in which America and China had much in common: for both countries, this was a year of our deep humiliation. I think it only got worse for China with the Rape of Nanjing by the Japanese in 1937. It was that, and the attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 “A day that will live in infamy,” that ultimately brought about the defeat of Japan in WWII. If they had not gone too far like that, we could still be lumbered with a Fascist state in East Asia, with an extended Empire on the Asian mainland and all throughout Micronesia, the western Pacific in general, and SE Asia. Meher Baba refused to visit Japan. Japan was not ready for the Avatar. In the present, Japan is still in denial about its WWII war crimes. Japan doesn’t understand the law of karma, because Japan is not Buddhist. It is Shinto, which is a religion where, by manipulating the spirit world, you can make things go away. Shinto is wrong about this. There’s nobody in the spirit world, and that includes Amaterasu Omikami, who is powerful enough to disappear these crimes from the memories of the nations whose people were systematically and deliberately destroyed, or from Japan’s karmic record. These crimes are a presently rotting and stinking albatross of blame around the neck of the entire nation of Japan, and every one of its citizens individually and collectively, including all members of its royal house, up to its King and Queen, until they have been publicly owned and apoligized for, by some representative of Japan. There are some things that CANNOT come to an end until they have been formalized, and Japan’s absolute blameworthiness about its thoroughly bestial behavior in WWII is one of those things. Japan, and the Japanese people will walk under an eternal cloud of stigma by this entire planet, unless and until its leadership takes public responsibility for Japan’s horrible war crimes in WWII. Oh, and hey, I have also vowed not to visit Japan in this life, because of a similar issue of denied racist agendas by Japanese Buddhist lineages in America. The reason why these lineages have not been transmitted to the American mainstream in seven generations on American soil is that they never had that intention. Their intention, all the way down the line, has been to act as agents of counter-assimilation. In fact, they have failed in that, which could have been predicted, if any of the lineage holders involved ever had either the brains or the integrity to find out what his own congregation wanted. But the denied racist administrative agendas remain, and I despise every single stroke of that 140-year history of clandestine racist administrative policy by the Japanese Buddhist sects in America. Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!
Japanese troops and armor on Sichuan Road in Shanghai in January 1932. This particular road is one of the places that was visited by Meher Baba when he visited Shanghai in June 1932.
Masses fleeing the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in February 1932
amerbud
Check it out: A whole lot of Chinese-language Criticism of Xingyun Dashi ((editing on 4 Feb 10 – amerbud)) I’ve read this stuff to a critical mass of understanding, and I don’t feel called to translate any of it. I like this cartoon, and I think my translations of it are sufficient to this quarrel, because I think it is an accurate portrayal of Xingyun Dashi’s actual presenting state: he’s not evil (which is the attempted drift of the discussion) and he’s not trivial either. He is, however, seriously out of it in terms of both his image and his functionality. I happen to agree with Xingyun Dashi about most of the actual issues which are being quarreled about with him by this author and others. Taiwan is, in fact, part of China. Taiwan is full of reactionaries who are going to be dragged through, what to them will be a perfectly traumatic transition, and the best thing you can do for these idiots in the present is to disagree with their profound geopolitical idiocy. But where I part ways with Xing Yun is that this is MY JOB, not his. As an American observer with civil rights, I can discuss this kind of issue with a degree of clarity such that some East Asians, including some Taiwanese, actually listen to me. Do they agree? Hey, that’s asking for too much in the present, we know that, OK? But the fact is that they can see that I haven’t got anything invested on either side of the Taiwan straights, either politically, or culturally, or racially, or financially, so they might give me the benefit of a doubt about something which while being absolutely clear to me, is absolutely muddy, distressing, and traumatizing to them, when they have enough free energy ahead to think about it at all. Keshi Xingyun Dashi ne? I don’t think so. Monks don’t rule, and there’s nothing that East Asian Buddhism needs more than a separation of Church and State. Anything that Xingyun Dashi says, on any side of any political issue, will wind up hurting Fo Guang Shan. Fo Guang Shan owns huge amounts of property in two fundamentally warring states. Either or both of those states can declare eminent domain and confiscate all or part of that property. This has already happened to virtually every Buddhist lineage in China, numerous times throughout Chinese history. The last time it happened was in the 1950’s. Yingyun Dashi lived through that, and if he even remembered what happened, or what it meant for all of his Buddhist friends and associates without exception, he just wouldn’t be this kind of political idiot in the present. That’s one of the reasons why I have serious questions about his health. Even worse than that, his little nunny-poos that he’s got running his Centers all over the world pick up on this craziness and just amplify it. This is not going anywhere pretty or nice unless Xingyun Dashi either controls himself or is removed from authority. Maybe the best solution would be a coup d’etat at Fo Guang Shan by its mainland members, followed by the replacment of the Taiwanese nuns by mainland monks. I would welcome that. Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!
amerbud
THE FOLLOWING TRUST COMMUNICATION IS WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN RELEASED TO THE PRESS ABOUT AMARTITHI. I FOUND IT AFTER THE FACT IN THIS BLOG ARCHIVE. DO I HAVE TO DO THIS MYSELF NEXT YEAR? I AM NOW GOING TO TRANSLATE THIS INTO CHINESE, AND TO TAG IT TO SMITHEREENS, SO THAT ORDINARY HUMAN BEINGS WILL KNOW, WITHOUT A DOUBT, AND MOST LIKELY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THEIR LIVES, THAT IT HAPPENED.
下列的信托声明是应当曾早发表给新闻界的永恒日之消息。我曾事后找到它在这个博格档案. 明年，这方面是不是留给我的？ 现在我要翻译它为中文，还要把它标签不得了，不可说，不可数，不可算，甚至到下次谁也不会忘记、还不会忽视、还不会逆反、还不会胡说八道呢。我真想知道、这场杰出人物性的态度到底是谁所开始的呢。
41st Amartithi – 30th January to 1st February 2010
第41届永恒日节 – 1月30号到2月1号2010Written By: Cheryl Aoife on January 6, 2010 No Comment
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Avatar Meher Baba’s Samadhi (tomb-shrine)
阿瓦塔美赫巴巴的三摩地 （坟墓-圣地)Telegram “MEHERBABA” Ahmednagar
Telephone:..2343666/2347093 Ahmednagar
AVATAR MEHER BABA
PERPETUAL PUBLIC CHARITABLE TRUST
KINGTS ROAD, POST BAG NO. 31,
AHMEDNAGAR, (M.S.) 414 001.V.S. KALCHURI
22nd OCT. 2009.((probably a typographical error in the date -amerbud, 3 Feb 10))
10月22号2009 （大概有打字排版错误 – 马八万，2月3号2010）Dear Sisters and Brothers in Beloved Avatar Meher Baba,
参与心爱的阿瓦塔美赫巴巴的亲爱兄弟姐妹，The forty-first .Amartithi of Beloved Avatar Meher Baba falls on Sunday, 31st January, 2010. For this sacred occasion it is expected that pilgrims from all over India and around the world will be visiting the Tomb-Shrine of Avatar Meher Baba at Meherabad Hill, Ahmednagar (M.S.) India to take part in the Educational Gathering.
心爱的阿瓦塔美赫巴巴的第41届永恒日节定期在星期日，1月31号2010. 这届神圣的场合，预期全印度、全地球的朝圣者要访问瓦塔美赫巴巴的坟墓圣地在 Meherabad Hill, Ahmednagar (M.S.) 印度为参加我们所预备的教育集会。
The observance of the forty-first Amartithi (Anniversary of Avatar Meher Baba’s Darshan) will be for two days, i.e. 30th January morning to noon of 1st February, 2010. The main function, as usual, will be on 31st January, 2010.
第41届永恒日节的遵守（阿瓦塔美赫巴巴的沾光的周年纪念日）要持续两天，即1月30日早上到2月1日正午2010. 主要的功能，像往常一样，要发生在1月31日2010。
By Beloved Baba’s grace, it will be made possible for pilgrims visiting the Tomb-Shrine of Beloved Avatar Meher Baba, for the forty-first Amartithi, to stay at the Meherabad Estate from 8:00 a.m. of 30th January to 12 noon of 1st February, 2010.
经由心爱巴巴的慈悲，访问心爱的阿瓦塔美赫巴巴的坟墓圣地的朝圣者，在第41届永恒日节的场合，有了投宿在 Meherabad Estate 从1月30日早上8点钟到2月1日正午2010的可能。
ATTENTION – 注意
Darshan of Beloved Avatar Meher Baba will be available inside the Tomb-Shrine of Beloved through a regulated queue designated specifically for this occasion. However, due to the influx of pilgrims during Amartithi, it is requested for the benefit of all that pilgrims take the least time possible for darshan and to take darshan only once on 31st January, 2010.
阿瓦塔美赫巴巴的沾光可得到的在坟墓圣地之内 ，以利用这个场合特殊所指定的管理行列。然而，由于永恒日节朝圣者的流入，请求为大家的利益，朝圣者严节省时间的取沾光、在1月31日只取一次沾光。
QUEUE TOKEN SYSTEM – 行列表征系统
We are continuing our Queue Token System. After collecting a single token with a number on it, each Pilgrim will be free to move about until the number on his/her token is announced and displayed on the signboards. THE PILGRIMS SHOULD JOIN THE QUEUE WHEN THEIR NUMBER IS DISPLAYED. Please be alert because if your number has passed through the Darshan line and the next higher number has also passed, you will miss your turn and will require a new token.
我们在继续我们的行列表征系统。受到了一张有号码的表征以后，每位朝圣者有随便移动的自由，直到他表征的号码被宣布的、还显示的在布告板上。在他们的号码显示的时候，朝圣者应当立刻排队。 请注意，要是你的号码跟下一个号码已经通过了沾光行列，那你要失序列、需要再次拿一张新的表征。（由于人山人海的情况 – 马八万）。
A) REGARDING ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE: 关于达到、离开:
Please note: 取悦关心：
1) Pilgrims should not arrive at Meherabad before 8:00 a.m., on 30thJanuary, 2010, and should leave Meherabad by 12 noon, on 1st February, 2010.
1）1月30日8点钟之前，朝圣者不应该达到 Meherabad，还需要2月1日正午最后离开 Meherabad。
2) There will be stalls selling light refreshment and meals at Lower Meherabad, New Site and Upper Meherabad till early afternoon on 1st February, 2010.
2）Lower Meherabad, New Site、Upper Meherabad 要有卖点心、膳食的货摊，直到2月1日近午后。
3) There will be separate lodging arrangements for men and for women at Meherabad as usual. Pilgrims are reminded that they should continue to abide by Beloved Baba’s wishes, as expressed by Him in the 1958 Sahavas, that men and women pilgrims should stay in their own quarters and not visit, enter, or rest in each others quarters. Pilgrims should lovingly cooperate with the Management in this matter and the Management reserves the right to caution any pilgrim who fails to abide by Beloved Baba’s wishes as mentioned above.
3）像往常一样，Meherabad 要有男女分隔的寄宿安排。朝圣者该是提醒的，他们应当继续遵守心爱巴巴的愿望，如表现在 1958 Sahavas, 即男女种要停留在各种有分别的营房、还不要访问、进入、或休息在互相的营房。在这方面上，朝圣者必须和管理合作，而且管理又保留着警告非遵守心爱巴巴所该上提到的愿望的朝圣者之权利。
4) Pilgrims are requested to bring warm clothes, blankets, bedding with mattress, and flashlights (torch). The quarters for men and women are separate; so to avoid confusion it is advised that men and women of the same family pack separate bags, and bundle their bedding rolls separately BEFORE their arrival at Meherabad.
4）请求朝圣者带来暖和的衣服、毛毯、有床垫的寝具、手电筒。男女种的各种营房是分区的，所以劝告最好的办法就是达到 Meherabad 之前，每家要装好男女各种的彻底属于其种之行李。
5) Meherabad Management requests pilgrims to use water very sparingly. Hot water for bathing will be provided from 1 1:00 p.m.,30th January to 7:00 a.m., 31st January. … ((and so forth -amerbud))
5)Meherabad 管理请求着朝圣者很保守地用水。 沐浴之热水要供给从1月30日下午1点钟到1月31日早上7点钟 … （等等 – 马八万）
Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping
Even though the major news media are just being their normal clueless selves, Meher Baba is alive and well in the blogosphere. Check it out:
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Darshan this morning
Meherwan Jessawala, Falu Dadachanji, Davana Brown, Peter (don’t know his last name, but he’s staying in Meherazad to help Falu) and I stood in the queue this morning for around an hour and took Darshan. Amartithi formally starts at 3 pm today. We were reminiscing about the 7 days that Baba was in the Tomb in 1969 and the first Amartithi in 1970. Conditions for the pilgrims who came in ‘70 were primitive. The toilets were pits with wooden boards put across so people could squat over them. There was no hot water, in fact it was so cold that for the only time in my memory there was a very, very thin membrane of ice on water kept out overnight. The tents didn’t have cloth to the bottom and the icy wind whistled through, chilling everyone. We would pack mattresses, blankets, sheets, pillows, etc. in the ubiquitous ‘bedding rolls’, a very Indian phenomenon, and we were still cold and had to curl up against each other.Today, the family have a home close by, and we stay in great comfort. But the magic of those early Amartithis is still bright in our hearts. We’d start the day with Arti in the Tomb with Mehera, Mani and the rest of the ladies, though we may have been awake all night with Eruch, and Mansari would let me help to clean the Tomb early – before the ladies came in. There were not that many people, so volunteers could let people take their time and not hurry the pilgrims as we do today. Some come from thousands of miles away, in very uncomfortable trains or buses, and don’t even get a few peaceful seconds to be with their Beloved. Others come just to be in His presence, they don’t really get a chance to take Darshan, but are content to touch the walls of His Tomb and consider their journey blessed.
Amartithi is the time Meherabad is fully charged with the energy and love of the thousands and thousands who come to be with Him on the day He left the physical form behind. It is a time of joy but also the pain of those who never saw Him. The young girl in front of Meherwan in the line put her head on the Samadhi and sobbed her heart out. She had to be helped up to leave the Tomb, she really wanted a few moments more, but there was a crush of people behind her and she had to go. Baba brings us so much that reminds us that He is the Ancient One, the Lord of Lords, the Highest of the High. Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai!!!
Posted by Mehera Arjani
I was there in 1969, and I never noticed any of that primitive stuff. I was FLYING the whole time I was there. Totally altered, bra. On nothing but love. Finally, the day before departure, I got a severe case diarrhea that brought me down to earth.
Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai!
amerbud
My first contact with the Taiwanese was as a Naval Intelligence recruit at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California in 1967. I had joined the Navy to avoid the draft, and was sent by them to Monterey to study Chinese. I was vulnerable to being drafted because I had dropped out of Catholic seminary when I found that it was totally corrupted by faggots in charge. At that point in my life, I was basically trying to stay out of trouble by doing what I was told, and at the Language Institute, I was given a “Sun Yat Sen” award by the Taiwanese teaching staff for “understanding Chinese culture.” What that meant was that the most beautiful of my teachers was trying to go to bed with me, and I had systematically declined. This bribe failed to motivate me. My roomate, who was actually the most brilliant student, thought that I was politically naive, and he was right. He had gone off to Berkeley on the weekends, and had gotten himself a nice Red girlfriend from the Chinese mainland, and his story was “They’re not teaching us Chinese.” Everybody thought he was crazy, and I was no exception. Only this year did I finally dork out that what the Taiwanese were teaching us was a lowlife dialect that would have immediately excluded us from any kind of meaningful interaction with any real-world Chinese that we tried to speak this to. Why would they do that? I’ll get back to this. My focus at DLI was the Chinese language itself. That was a full-time job for me, and I did not want to be bugged by either Chinese goddesses on the make, or politically perceptive roomates. On the weekends, what I had been doing was to go off to San Francisco and to involve myself with a Sufi group there, which was under the direction of Avatar Meher Baba, then still in the body. Fast forward to 1969. I was stationed on the island of Taiwan, having absolutely played all my cards right from a political point of view. I was stationed on Zhong Shan Bei Lu（中山北路）in Taibei in what was then called the “MAAG Compound.” The whole vibratory atmosphere in Taipei just felt corrupt. Eveybody had a hidden agenda. One day I come home and found a very expensive air conditioner in my shared room, placed there by the Taiwanese houseboy, whom I overheard saying, in Chinese, that he was trying to make friends with me. I had to threaten to throw the thing in the garbage bin to get him to remove it. The interactions in my intelligence work group were still normal, thank God, but anything on the outside immediately dripped with secret agendas, and this included the other US government agencies. I was in the business of uncovering secrets, and I was good at it. I still am. I can smell hidden agendas at three hundred paces blindfolded. Usually I choose to let them alone. However I can be pushed too far, and I’ll get back to this point too. On 31 Jan 69, while I was in US Naval Intelligence stationed on Taiwan, Avatar Meher Baba took Mahasamadhi (left the world), and his followers were invited to come to India for the Last Darshan program, which had been set up by Baba before he passed away. It was clear to me that this was my last and only chance to gain a personal connection to the beloved Avatar of God, and I was bound and determined to go. This was the point at which I stopped being politically naive, because that determination was opposed by every single one of my personal connections, including my Sufi teacher. However, I faced her down, and literally got written permission from then CincPacFlt Adm. Elmo Zumwalt to to on pilgrimage to India. Yay! I’m not even going to describe what happened in India, but I will say that it obliterated the determinsitic force of my birth karma, and since then everything that should have been a binding for me has simply and progressively unravelled, leaving me free to belong to Baba. Fast forward to roughly four years ago. Walking into a new Taiwanese Buddhist temple on the 2nd floor of the Chinese Cultural Center in Honolulu, I heard the entire Sangha chanting the Diamond Sutra, which I had studied in detail under Prof. Lewis Lancaster in the process of taking a BA in Oriental Languages at UC Berkeley after getting out of the Navy in 1970. This was being led by a bona fide Buddhist Saint named Yi Jiao, who was then the Fo Guang Shan Abbess in Honolulu, and I was immediately reduced to tears. So I joined Fo Guang Shan, and ultimately took Refuge and Lay Precepts and learned a lot more Chinese language. However, the ugly head of Taiwanese corruption, which originally wasn’t there, later reared up in that temple. I first perceived the stink of corruption in the use of primitive apocryphal “Repentance Rituals” which have been forbidden on the Chinese Mainland, for the reason that they encourage corruption. How so? Because this is how the upper classes, in traditional Confucianist Chinese society, which is thoroughly corrupt from any Western POV, absolve their crimes. They buy the performance of these rituals, in which everyone repents for all possible crimes, in other words, the Buddhasangha repents for the crimes of the individuals who buy this performance. It is the belief that this annihilates the karma involved, leaving that individual free to then go commit the same crimes all over again without karmic retribution. By the conventions of Confucianist society, the temple, having received money from that individual, is now also obligated to support them politically. On the face of it, what’s wrong with repentance? Nothing. The wrong is in the hidden agendas that lurk, by over 1,000 years of impure motivation in the use of these rituals. There is also an issue of psychological health involved in the denial of individual responsibility here. I never objected to this in the temple itself, but I did write this on this blog, and the result of that was a lot of attitude towards me in the temple. Furthermore, the more I objected, the more this caused previously unscheduled Repentance Rituals to be performed ad hoc. That was being pushed too far. That behavior is not the teaching of the Buddha. Furthermore, the present Abbess is not a Saint. She is a political creature completely. What made it clear to me that my original intuition was correct, i.e., that the real root of all of these Repentance Ritual games was corrupt money, was Leslie T. Chang’s epoch-making book “Factory Girls.” Leslie doesn’t name names. That would be political suicide in East Asia. But she does name countries of origin. And guess what is the nationality of the employer who is the second most brutal towards their employees, after local Chinese, in the Pearl River Delta? Would you believe the Taiwanese? Traditional Chinese corruption, which is a direct and necessary result of the flawed and failed Confucianist ethical code, is the biggest presenting hereditary cultural curse in East Asia. The Chinese on the mainland still suffer from it, but at least they realize what a curse it is, and realizing that as they do, they will inevitably obliterate it over time. But the Taiwanese, far from understanding this curse for what it is, have literally become the planetary upholders of the Confucianist drivel which justifies and perpetuates it. This has become a first-class, world-class ethical nuisance, and there is absolutely no valid reason for any Buddhist sect, including Fo Guang Shan, to be taking money from such people, or to be supporting this in any other way, including corrupt Neo-Confucianist apocryphal liturgy, i.e. Repentance Rituals. Oh, and hey, why would Taiwanese teach a flawed version of their language to US servicemen in Monterey in 1967? Because, when your entire birth culture is fundamentally corrupt, you create barriers to communication, automatically and as a matter of course, because you need such barriers to hide behind. Namu Amida Butsu
amerbud
…In researching this book, I gave up the standard journalistic technique of writing down a bunch of questions in my notebook beforehand, and then running through them in the course of the interview. I found it was best to just spend the day with someone, to watch and be quiet and see what developed. We talked about whatever was on their minds at the moment — dating, job searches, fights with parents, whatever. It was telling that in my long acquaintance with Min and Qunming, they almost never brought up politics. Once Min asked me, “Who is Chairman Mao now?” That was her way of describing the nation’s leader, and she knew nothing of current political figures like Jiang Zemin and Hu jintao. Another time, Chunming took me to a Hunan restaurant with a portrait of Mao Zedong, whom she described to me as a great poet who had defied convention to marry the woman he loved. That was all the use she had of Chairman Mao — a person she had reinvented as a romantic hero….
Read the whole great 2010 interview:
How L. T. Chang Boldly Went Where No Journalist Had Gone Before
Namu Amida Butsu
amerbud
American Buddhist home schoolers, your lesson plan grief is over ! Dig H. S. Olcott's Excellent Buddhist Catechism.
Travelling dragon cannot crush local snake. 旅行龙压不碎土地之蛇。- Charlie Chan
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