Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by kirtu »

Dechen Norbu wrote: I credit HHDL position on Islam similarly to his position on Bush.
The fact that HH claims to love Bush doesn't make me think he is an adorable person.
The fact that HH claims that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance doesn't make me think that such is the true nature of Islam everywhere, shared by everyone.
Reminds me of the one about the Imam, Rebbe, lama, priest and preacher at a campground ....

What's this logical fallacy about "the true nature of X everywhere, shared by everyone"? Are you asserting that all faith followers are invalidated because they all have at least one bad example (HEY! that means that there's also a chaste non-deviant Satanist somewhere .....)?

I think animosity has driven us over a cliff.

Kirt
“Where do atomic bombs come from?”
Zen Master Seung Sahn said, “That’s simple. Atomic bombs come from the mind that likes this and doesn’t like that.”

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche
Malcolm
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by Malcolm »

kirtu wrote:
But don't you think that these claims of hegemony are serious exaggerations? After all, Christianity is no longer trying to take over the world.
Been to the bible belt lately? The imperial ambitions of Bush Admin. was intimately tied to a Fundamentalist read of history.
Why do you think that Islam in general has that as a serious goal?
Empire is a meme built in all Abrahamic religions. All it needs a little water, and sunlight, and it comes right out.
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by kirtu »

Namdrol wrote:
kirtu wrote:
But don't you think that these claims of hegemony are serious exaggerations? After all, Christianity is no longer trying to take over the world.
Been to the bible belt lately? The imperial ambitions of Bush Admin. was intimately tied to a Fundamentalist read of history.
Don't you know that it's literally across the river from me? Many people would put our fair capitol in the Bible Belt too.

Bush Admin: That's true, egged on by Coulter-like sentiments (kill them, conquer them, convert them to Christianity). But the Crusades have been over for a while, with the exception of the outbreak in Germany and Poland 1933-1947. Well, perhaps not - the genocide committed by the Serbska Serbs primarily against Muslims was alleged to be a preemptive strike to protect Serbs from a repeat of Jasenovac and the Ustashe terror. So the good orthodox Serbs and the Catholic Croats both created execution places for Bosnian Muslims when the Coats and Serbs weren't killing each other (1991-1995). The executions by the Muslims were overlooked because they weren't nearly as successful and they didn't implement mass genocide like the Serbs did. The question of the Kosovar Albanians harvesting Serb organs is another wrinkle.

So maybe the Crusades aren't actually over. That was one of the reasons that bin Laden gave for wanting to bring his caliphate into existence - the protection of Muslims under threat. So maybe he had a legitimate point. But in his case, aside from Bosnia 1991-1995, Afghanistan 1979-1987 and Palestine (where two cousins have each other by the throat and are mutually trying to murder one another) where is this threat against Muslims? Where is the threat against Christians (I know what some Christians would say on this point). Where is the threat from Muslims or Christians? I've never had Muslims chase me down the street trying to convert me (can't say the same about Christians).

In reality the Neocon vision that took over the Bush White House had everything to do with a secular and simplistic view of democracy, markets and individual selfishness (as in: in the US - people act primarily in their own self-interest and NOT in the perceived community interest - this more than anything was the fatal flaw in their irrational plan to have "democracy" sweep the Middle East).
Why do you think that Islam in general has that as a serious goal?
Empire is a meme built in all Abrahamic religions. All it needs a little water, and sunlight, and it comes right out.[/quote]

All? Really? So where were the Jewish empires after the Diaspora? Where were the wars of conquest by the Hasidim (where even was the military training)? Ah - maybe in one of the little Jewish republics set up by Uncle Joe in the 30's and 40's? Where were the Sephardic empires? Where were the Samaritan empires practically ever? I know all about those nefarious Greek Orthodox tucked away in the monasteries planning empire (after all, they still use Byzantine Empire time! GASP! I've proven your point! Woe is me!). And the Desert Fathers - planning empire all that time rather than practicing Christian meditation and good deeds? And the Thomas Christians in Kerala - planning empire all this time? The Sufi's (and I mean the one's off literally in mountains and isolated communities in Iran, Turkey and other places)- more empire? The Baha'i's - empire there as well? Of course the Roman Catholics DID create empire as did many of the Protestants - but not all - where were the Moravian, Plymouth Brethern, Amish, Hutterite, Mennonite and Quaker empires?

Methinks your suspicions re: monotheism has run away with you. Monotheism is a perfectly valid and valuable medicine when not used by people intoxicate with power lust.

Kirt
“Where do atomic bombs come from?”
Zen Master Seung Sahn said, “That’s simple. Atomic bombs come from the mind that likes this and doesn’t like that.”

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche
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mudra
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by mudra »

Dechen Norbu wrote:Well, well, I'm under the impression that we're having some parallel topics to undermine a few opinions me and others have been expressing in this thread by our friend mudra.
First you debate me recurring to red herrings like appeal to emotion with that question about your past tainting you and so on and so forth and now you start parallel campaigns instead of directly writing your disagreement here, where this debate is happening? People read those messages, are fooled into accepting your fallacious conclusions and will have a biased reading of this debate, is it?
Do you realize that both actions are classic ways to manipulate opinion and not very wholesome? You are surprising me. I wonder if you realize the problems with your reasoning or you are unaware of them.

Anyway, let's see those new threads you placed in the Dharmic-free-for-all subforum:

The first I will write about is called "don't let yourself be "embedded". In my opinion, if we are to assume this wonderfully woven post is a reaction of sorts to this thread, we should also note that it contains several problems. This means, loosely, that being embedded is a bad thing and if you disagree with the conclusion mudra posits at the end you have let yourself be embedded. However, we will see that this is a faulty conclusion.
mudra wrote: For as long as we are in a samsaric state, it is always going to be a challenge to think straight. False conceptions
are the stuff of modern life it seems, perhaps more subtly so than in the past. Frankly a lot of people don't even realise that they have bought into subtle or not so subtle media campaigns.

For example, think "embedded". When I was an active photojournalist in what seems another lifetime, admitting to being 'embedded' would have been a cause for shame. Now journalists seem to be proud to 'embedded'. That in itself is damning, let alone sensationalist sound bites that buy and sell the perspective of state sponsored terrorism (eg the Weapons of Mass Distraction spiel, etc).

I have a lot of 'moral' (mainly western to be honest) friends who thought assassinating Osama and dumping him at sea, was totally justified - unlike Mladic who allegedly mass murdered thousands of Muslims (perhaps more individuals than Osama bin Laden was allegedly directly responsible for) but gets to have a trial at the Hague. Mladic too was hunted for years. Is there a fundamental difference? Osama became a much more hated figure than Mladic, yet look at the numbers. Please note the term alleged, because there is in modern jurisprudence the concept that people need to be proven to be guilty, no matter how much evidence there appears to be prior to verification.

The power of the media over the minds of the masses runs quite deep, much deeper than most people who like to think of themselves as educated would like to admit, giving us a kind of unfounded conviction. I worked in media for years, and still do the odd assignment (documentary/editorial). Though war wasn't my "gig" I have covered it a little and a few scenes of mass violence. Most people have just watched this kind of thing on their tv screens. It's different when you see how things actually unfold (and have to try and wash the blood off your shoes after covering the story).

I think as Buddhists we all really need to focus clearly on all aspects of cause and effect when we view samsaric events unfolding around us. It's all to easy to claim this or that group or person is inherently bad, yet we would be letting the Buddha Dharma down by not acknowledging the complexity of these (samsaric) situations
Seems a perfectly well reasoned post, but let's look closer, because if this is a reaction to my opinions, I will make a few comments.

Now, you start this text presenting positions we are all prone to agree with and end with a debatable sentence that doesn't follow from the previous. That's a rhetorical maneuver to induce people who are agreeing with your previous statements to automatically agree with your conclusion while it in fact it doesn't result from them.

Also, it's noteworthy that according to the Buddhist doctrine to the premises that there isn't anything inherently bad and that if something can be said to be bad, it also can be said to be complex, doesn't follow the conclusion that classifying something as bad is incorrect.
Osama Bin Laden wasn't inherently bad, the reasons why he became a terrorist are very complex and yet we can rightly say that he was a bad person. The same goes for Mladic.

It goes without saying that in this thread nobody says that a certain group or person is inherently bad, so if this post comes as a reaction to this debate, you also have a straw man there. It's a critic to an intellectual standing point that I've seen nobody supporting yet.

Now, the following fallacy is more subtle.
When you present those who felt killing OBL was justified as being doubtfully moral, thus presenting such adjective between apostrophes ('moral'), knowing that you are in a Buddhist board and most Buddhists disagree with such POV, and in the end sentence drawn your conclusion, you establish a relation between them and those who, according to you, consider groups or persons bad without taking account for the complexities involved, meaning me or those who in this debate expressed similar opinions. That is called poisoning the well and is a logical fallacy where adverse information about a target is pre-emptively presented with the intention of discrediting what the target person is about to say, thus trying to make your conclusion unassailable, since those who are likely to disagree with it perhaps share something in common with those who found OBL death justifiable. It may work for those less cautious readers, but not for someone who has some familiarity with rhetorics.


The next topic is called "Abramic religions evolve..."
They do, to protect themselves, just not because of the text you present us.
mudra wrote: Thought this was kind of interesting...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... ution.htm
Well, the fact that many Islamic thinkers claim the divine origin of the Koran because it predicts scientific facts that couldn't be known at the prophet's time is nothing new neither shows some sort of evolution. Saying the theory of evolutions is not problematic for the Islam goes along with this line of claims.
I would call it religious adaptation so that Islam doesn't fall in discredit as science progresses.
We all know who got the wrong end of the stick when the Bible clashed with Darwin's theory of evolution...

OK, that's it.

Best wishes.
Dechen,

I really didn't want to post anymore on this subject as it has become quite personal and to my perception unfriendly.

But as I discovered that you are responding to my post elsewhere, I felt compelled to ask why you didn't just respond there on that thread? And I must be getting forgetful because I don't recall posting that link? Maybe I must have posted the wrong link!!! It's kind of weird.

M
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by Malcolm »

kirtu wrote:
Methinks your suspicions re: monotheism has run away with you. Monotheism is a perfectly valid and valuable medicine when not used by people intoxicate with power lust.
Monotheism inevitably leads to warfare and genocide.

N
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by Heruka »

people really need to research the return of the 12th imam, the Mahdi, and those that wish to create the conditions for that return.
then look, compare and contrast the return of the christ lord, and understand those that wish to create the conditions for that return.

hope hhdl can cool those heads by whatever means he can.

lol, some people even would like to give sara palin the launch codes for atomic bombs...


crazy times we are in..
Last edited by Heruka on Sat Jun 04, 2011 4:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by mudra »

Just for the record Dechen, this is the actual link I posted http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... ution.html

Am a bit at a loss for words - are you saying that I am attacking you if I post another thread on a subject that is related? This thread started out as a thread about Ole Nydahl, and has instead become a debate about the nature of Koranic verses.

You say I made a cheap emotional appeal when I asked if my background made me tainted - actually I was referring back to the beginnings of this tangent when it was discussed how the overwhelming numbers of MUSLIMs (not the Qur'an) in Europe posed some kind of threat. I spoke from my personal experience.

This thread has become quite the personal battleground with people's credentials being demanded and so forth.
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by Malcolm »

mudra wrote:
You say I made a cheap emotional appeal when I asked if my background made me tainted - actually I was referring back to the beginnings of this tangent when it was discussed how the overwhelming numbers of MUSLIMs (not the Qur'an) in Europe posed some kind of threat. I spoke from my personal experience.
Actually, what was suggested was that the increasing immigration of Muslims into Europe made Europeans feel threatened, thus leading to the present xenophobic reactions of some Europeans that reminds some other Europeans of the fascist era.
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by mudra »

Namdrol wrote:
mudra wrote:
You say I made a cheap emotional appeal when I asked if my background made me tainted - actually I was referring back to the beginnings of this tangent when it was discussed how the overwhelming numbers of MUSLIMs (not the Qur'an) in Europe posed some kind of threat. I spoke from my personal experience.
Actually, what was suggested was that the increasing immigration of Muslims into Europe made Europeans feel threatened, thus leading to the present xenophobic reactions of some Europeans that reminds some other Europeans of the fascist era.
IN as far as that that was ONE of the opinnions expressed yes it is true. But allow me to quote you:
but Islam is a religion based on cultural warfare and ethnic cleansing
and to be fair you said the same of Christianity and Judaism, but then you ended that paragraph with
Islam never went through an Enlightenment.
a bit later
You forget, for Moslems, all non-Moslems are automatically "others". You would do well never to forget this.
others such as Gyalpo posted quite strong statements by teachers like
When I was attending ChNN Rinpoche teachings in Merigar in 2006 (but I am not sure of exact date), Rinpoche one day was saying about how we have to be carefull about moslims
but sort of tempered by caveats like
Yet at another hand I dont think every Moslim is bad. For sure there are fantastic people among them. But at the same time we had to be on watch over Islam.
(I didn't bother addressing his statement about Muslims in Southern Thailand because obviously he doesn't know that it was actually the Thai 'Buddhists' (government really) who were oppressing the southern Thai Muslims first - who actually were more interested in their Malay identity as they are ethnically Malay, but got radicalized when they started to be oppressed and dealt with in very harsh ways. Rest assured that just as "not all Muslims are violent" not all "Thai Buddhists" are gentle. Having lived in Thailand I have seen incredible violence there).

And then of course Dechen Norbu himself:
Only someone who wants to sink his head in the sand like an Ostrich doesn't see the problems the world is facing with the Muslims. Come one guys! It's not that Bin Laden or Al Qaeda is made of Jews, Christians or Buddhists!
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by Malcolm »

mudra wrote:but then you ended that paragraph with
Islam never went through an Enlightenment.
Correct. It didn't.

You forget, for Moslems, all non-Moslems are automatically "others". You would do well never to forget this.

Right, for them, we Buddhists are kaffirs.
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by kirtu »

Namdrol wrote:
kirtu wrote:
Methinks your suspicions re: monotheism has run away with you. Monotheism is a perfectly valid and valuable medicine when not used by people intoxicate with power lust.
Monotheism inevitably leads to warfare and genocide.

N
You said that already. What wars have the Amish, Hutterites, Hassidim, Ismai'li, Druze, Bahai's or Samaritans started? What genocide have they committed? There are a couple of revolts in this group but no wars or genocide (in the case of the Ismai'li's no modern war and it's virutally impossible for them to go to war).

Therefore monotheism does not inevitably lead to warfare and genocide, even through any faith can be corrupted under the right circumstances.

As for war and genocide, please remind us of the Sakya-Drikung war, Mongolian troops traipsing through Tibet *after* their taming began, and so forth. Clearly the followers of Shakyamuni (at least some who profess to follow his teachings) are not immune to instigating warfare.

Kirt
“Where do atomic bombs come from?”
Zen Master Seung Sahn said, “That’s simple. Atomic bombs come from the mind that likes this and doesn’t like that.”

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by kirtu »

Heruka wrote:people really need to research the return of the 12th imam, the Mahdi, and those that wish to create the conditions for that return.
then look, compare and contrast the return of the christ lord, and understand those that wish to create the conditions for that return.
Thurman mentioned this on Charlie Rose a couple of years ago.
lol, some people even would like to give sara palin the launch codes for atomic bombs...


crazy times we are in..
Ahmadinejad/Palin - they mirror one another.

Kirt
“Where do atomic bombs come from?”
Zen Master Seung Sahn said, “That’s simple. Atomic bombs come from the mind that likes this and doesn’t like that.”

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche
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kirtu
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by kirtu »

Namdrol wrote:
mudra wrote:but then you ended that paragraph with
Islam never went through an Enlightenment.
Correct. It didn't.

You forget, for Moslems, all non-Moslems are automatically "others". You would do well never to forget this.

Right, for them, we Buddhists are kaffirs.
So are we to many traditional Christians and certainly some Jewish people. Who cares?

Kirt
“Where do atomic bombs come from?”
Zen Master Seung Sahn said, “That’s simple. Atomic bombs come from the mind that likes this and doesn’t like that.”

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

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Will everyone please note this topic is called "Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?" Please return to the subject being discussed. Further deviation from the topic will result in posts being removed and/or the topic being locked. Thanks for your co-operation

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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

Post by Malcolm »

kirtu wrote:
Therefore monotheism does not inevitably lead to warfare and genocide, even through any faith can be corrupted under the right circumstances.

As for war and genocide, please remind us of the Sakya-Drikung war, Mongolian troops traipsing through Tibet *after* their taming began, and so forth. Clearly the followers of Shakyamuni (at least some who profess to follow his teachings) are not immune to instigating warfare.
Monotheism was born of war and genocide; perpetuates war and genocide, and ends in war and genocide.

Christian monotheism was tempered by accommodation with Pagan cults; but not in its protestant form.

The history of monotheism is the history of the destruction of anything in its path. This is irrefutable. All those minor Christian sects you mention are irrelevant, eddies in the river of destruction monotheisms have wrecked upon human history. Monotheism is inherently imperialistic. If you don't see it, you just don't see it. I don't really have a need to convince you.

During the present day, Islam is the strongest form of monotheism -- it therefore the most dangerous; seconded only by Christian fundamentalism.
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Re: Lama Ole Nydahl, what do you think?

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