Dharma Wheel

It is interesting that as Buddhists, many of us place our faith in a system which does advocate a singular authority at the head of a hierarchical institution. The similarity is incidental. The Buddha didn’t have trillions of dollars of military or economic might to coerce people. Rather, he is fol...

It is interesting that as Buddhists, many of us place our faith in a system which does advocate a singular authority at the head of a hierarchical institution. True, but institutions per se have their own logic - it gets a mention in the "oligarchy" definition we've been quoting from - and it's not...

I find that it can help to work with meditative objects, and that in working with a visualisation, it can be equally helpful to contemplate a text about the nature of representation - a bit like using both legs to walk instead of just one.

It is interesting that as Buddhists, many of us place our faith in a system which does advocate a singular authority at the head of a hierarchical institution. It is also Padmasambhava's approach to tame such demons in order to place them in the service of the dharma. So of course - If one were to a...

Thanks to the Mods for their patience on this issue, and thanks also to all who contributed - I found this discussion really helped me get clear on a few things.

...to put it another way - the agencies which can act at a global level are corporations, which are considered as individuals before the eyes of the law, and which the corporate global news is primarily aimed at... but when actually considered as an individual, a corporation is bound to appear psych...

While I get the sentimet behind it, I think it's a bit of a stretch to personify capitalism or even reduce it to a single entity or 'whole' with some kind of self emergent or naturally existing autonomy. Something like A.I would closer match that description. Yes, but this is kind of the point. It ...

Yes, working with anger can be quite difficult. Someone stole some money from me a while back. I trusted them and they let me down. I got a bit annoyed because of my own stupidity more than anything - I should have seen it coming. I realised that in fact, although it appeared that the person had har...

What a dense and interesting talk. Personally I think capitalism is a Gyalpo now. One of the demons of materialism that Padmasambhava warned would possess at least half of the population. For decades some of my employers murdered anyone who spoke against the demon in dozens of countries. In 1599 it...

Being someone on the spectrum this and being over 50 I have a different perspective and my thinking on this issue has been along the following lines since I was a young adult. The natural world outside of humanity is precious and deserving of reverence and respect. Humanity is part of the natural w...

In very simple terms. There is no rational path where the possibility of something bad occurring results in a "let's wait and see" attitude - we have already taken a bit of a psychopathic turn... but, on the other hand, any claim to know the truth is the very mark of ideology... In what kind of univ...

The real confusion for me is this... The argument that what manifests is mere appearance is here being associated with the right. The issue concerning the truth of perceived objects is here being associated with the left. That means that I cannot in good faith align with the left. I 'bumped' into An...

Well, it would seem to violate the basic nature of reality - unless any of us were claiming to know her personally - the discussion was about her representation in the media. This being a Buddhist site, I return to the idea that I would expect us to be clear that no actual Greta Thunberg's were pre...

In the early years of DWM, we were very laissez faire and didn't moderate much. And we received a lot of complaints about that. Some were calling it another reddit forum. Later we cracked down on posts that were just idle chatter, not on topic, etc. And people complained about that too. You can't p...

Not sure what the relevance of that is, the TOS prohibits things like blanket character assassination and proselytizing. When people either lack the communication skills to -not- do that kind of thing in their normal interactions, or they do them simply because they don’t care, we respond as best w...

Of course, our decisions are by nature subjective, we just try to have them line up with the TOS. I posted a link -specifically- about the buying of the climate movement, not a peep. People would rather just live in the land of conjecture. What you saw as a fruitful conversation I mostly saw as peo...

The very OP in that thread violated the TOS. I witnessed exactly two people who seemed actually interested in a discussion of the wider issues. Sure, there is some possibility the thread could go in a positive direction, but from my mod experience so far it was -highly- unlikely. I have my doubts t...

I must say that my perception is the exact opposite here. It is very easy to avoid taking a viewpoint seriously by simply assuming it is playing the devil's advocate and/or trolling, No, one can figure out what the direction (and possibly the intention) of a thread is simply by looking at how peopl...

If you walked into something like a Dharma study group, or even a social function at a Dharma center etc., what would be the reaction to the meat space version of your post? In both situations it's generally not hard to tell whether someone is saying something simply to stir shit, or whether they d...

Well, it seems that at least we are all in agreement that she should indeed be named Time person of the year. I think that's a win-win!