Is it a cult? multi million dollar money making machine? sexual abuse? Discuss please. I have visited before and had always an eerie feeling about the whole set up.
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Scientology! Now, this last three months, I’ve been ingesting pretty much all I can on these fucktsrds (with much agita), and I’m amazed not only with their bizarre mythos, but with their weird, freakish, niacin ingesting, RPF slavin’, worker bee world itself.
Back a few years ago Noggin wrote quite a few posts about these types. I reread them tonight, and they were kinda amusing considering what we all know now. Does anyone here have any first hand experience with the CoS? Just curious for stories.
SWCH
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The simple truth is that they do no good, have never done any good, have never succeeded at the alleged purpose for which they were created, and should be done away with as a grotesque reminder of our Mediaeval past.
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“Don’t let out murderers and rapists!” I can hear many of you bourgeois types saying. “If they’re not going to be in prison, what are we going to do with them?”
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That kind of thinking is nonsense. You’re surrounded by killers and rapists and people who have been charged with something. The notion that they’ve “done their time” is spurious, erroneous nonsense, and has its roots in Judeo/Christian b.s. The punishment thing is a load of garbage and turns people into monsters while fixing nothing in terms of our social ills.
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The thinking behind our penal system is very much like allowing the cults that are AA, NA and CA have full charge of people. I say “cults” because they a) have no basis in fact, b) are based upon religious-crackpot 12-step crap, and c) are made up of pseudo-scientific bull-crap. This is the kind of thinking that works behind the scenes in our penal system. It’s like leaving people at the mercy of The Inquisition. “Admit your guilt or we won’t let you out,” for example. This sort of poisonous, Byzantine unreason is something no one in any modern society should be subjected to.
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What do you do with habitual killers of various stripes? Put an electronic monitoring device and a stun device on them and have a mentor with them, or two or three in extreme cases, at all times. Know where they are at all times and keep them under house arrest when they’re not working or shopping or doing something otherwise useful. But DO NOT put them in prison to associate with other people with problems. Only idiots and social bigots do that sort of thing.
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Ah has spoken :^)
]]>Ive heard they are like a “persuasion” cult? What are your thoughts?
]]>According to Buddhism mercy killing cannot be justified. Mercy and killing can never go together. Some people kill their pets on the grounds that they do not like to see the pets suffer. However, if mercy killing is the correct method to be practised on pets and other animals, then why are people so reluctant to do the same to their beloved ones? When some people see their dogs or cats suffer from some skin disease, they arrange to kill those poor animals. They call this action, mercy killing. Actually it is not that they have mercy towards those animals, but they kill them for their own precaution and to get rid of an awful sight. And even if they do have real mercy towards a suffering animal, they still have no right to take away its life. No matter how sincere one may be, mercy killing, is not the correct approach. The consequences of this killing, however, are different from killing with hatred towards the animal. Buddhists have no grounds to say that any kind of killing is justified. Some people try to justify mercy killing with the misconception that if the motive or reason is good, then the act itself is good. They then claim that by killing their pet, they have the intention to relieve the unhappy animal from its suffering and so the action is good. No doubt their original intention or motive is good. But the evil act of killing which occurs through a later thought, will certainly bring about unwholesome results.
Keeping away from mercy killing can become a nuisance to many. Nevertheless, the Buddhist religion cannot justify mercy killing as completely free from bad reaction. However, to kill out of necessity and without any anger or hatred has less bad reaction than to kill out of intense anger or jealousy. On the other hand, a being (man or animal) may suffer owing to his bad kamma. If By mercy killing, we prevent the working out of one’s bad kamma,the debt will have to be paid in another existence. As Buddhists, all that we can do is to help to reduce the pain of suffering in others. Killing for Self Protection The Buddha has advised everyone to abstain from killing. If everybody accepts this advice, human beings would not kill each other. In the case where a person’s life is threatened, the Buddha says even then it is not advisable to kill out of self-protection. The weapon for self-protection is loving-kindness. One who practises this kindness very seldom comes across such misfortune. However, man loves his life so much that he is not prepared to surrender himself to others; in actual practice, most people would struggle for self-protection. It is natural and every living being struggles and kills others for self-protection but kammic effect depends on their mental attitude. During the struggle to protect himself, if he happens to kill his opponent although he has no intention to kill, then he is not responsible for that action. On the other hand, if he kills another person under any circumstances with the intention to kill, then he is not free from the kammic reaction; he has to face the consequences. We must remember that killing is killing; when we disapprove of it, we call it ‘murder’. When we punish man for murdering, we call it ‘capital punishment’. If our own soldiers are killed by an ‘enemy’ we call it ‘slaughter’. However, if we approve a killing, we call it ‘war’. But if we remove the emotional content from these words, we can understand that killing is killing.
In recent years many scientists and some religionists have used the expressions like ‘humane killing’, ‘mercy killing’, ‘gentle killing’ and ‘painless killing’ to justify the ending of a life. They argue that if the victim feels no pain, if the knife is sharp, killing is justified. Buddhism can never accept these arguments because it is not how the killing occurs that is important, but the fact that a life of one being is terminated by another. No one has any right to do that
for whatever reason.
The Tibetans have suffered every bit as much as the Palestinians. Over a million of them died as a direct result of the Chinese occupation of their country. Where are the Tibetan suicide bombers? Where is their cult of martyrdom? Where are the throngs of Tibetans seething with hatred, calling for the deaths of the Chinese? They are not likely to exist. What is the difference that makes the difference? Religion.
It doesn’t take a mental acrobat to call Tibetan Buddhism religious and claim the difference is what kind of religious dogmas you hold (killing oneself, killing the other, etc).
Just because they use self-immolation instead of bombing, doesn´t mean they don´t commit suicide ´in defense of their faith´. It´s the return of their religious figure as a political leader that´s what causing chinese authorities to violate human rights by locking them up. After reading what Michael Parenti has to says on the issue (Friendly Fuedalism), I´ve been less and less inclined to blindly follow the anti-chinese sentiment. Though obviously we could enter a political, economic and social debate that would undercut the other argument Sam makes (that these would be universal if only we´d be reasonable).
I still call myself a buddhist*, still support students for a free tibet (at least in name) and saw the Dalai Lama speak (and was underwhelmed by his old-fashioned views on sexuality and sexism in particular).
*Mainly because of this quote
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
which as been paraphrased by new agers to signify that facts and conversation do not need to disturb the dogmatic mind.
In my native language there is a poet who claims to ´be god in the deepest (corner)´ which I found to be a good way of looking at consciousness. We could claim there´s a lot of sophistication in gnosticism and there´s no need to rely on buddhist teachings because it´s been turned into a religion-cult by the people who ´worship the buddha like he´s santa claus´*. In the beginning of christianity, it was nothing but a variety of cults and for every dogma there was an opposite dogma (even for the divinity of christ, such as socianism). Why there should be nuance in buddhism but none in christianity is beyond me. Though I readily admit I’d still rather call myself a buddhist than a christian, it’s mainly to avoid misunderstandings.
*Or cutting of flowers and letting them rot at the giant statues of buddha. This idolatry has little to do with the philosophy and I didn’t mind the Taliban blowing that UNESCO heritage up (unlike some artsy farty non-buddhists I know who cried). It was giving buddhists a bad (meaning religious) name. Although I’d rather nobody destroy anything and people be more reflexive (surely they’ve all built their own mini-shrines by now so it didn´t help).
I think the self-immolation is a form of martyrdom, similar to Jesus on the Cross (if we skip the reading where that was an accident and he was calling for a violent revolution which failed). Making it okay to suffer, because he’ll be incarnated in heaven anyway.
I consider it impolite to give a speech at a forum without posing a question, so here it is:
Does anybody have a source for the 1(.2) million people being dead as a direct result of chinese occupation?
The point being that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are likewise cults, as are Buddhism and all other organised beliefs.
It’s only a “cult” (in the derogatory sense) if it’s someone else’s belief.
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