A Satire on Jihad from the Buddhist perspective
A representative from the extremist Buddhist group Kammaṭṭhāna warns of a “coming storm” of spiritual oneness and enlightenment.
WASHINGTON—In a 45-minute video posted on Tibetan websites Thursday, Tsuglag Rinpoche, leader of the Buddhist extremist group Kammaṭṭhāna, threatened to soon inflict a wave of peace and tranquility on the West.
Speaking in front of a nondescript altar surrounded by candles, burning sticks of incense, and a small golden statue of the Buddha, Rinpoche did not specify when or where an assault of profound inner stillness would occur, but stated in no uncertain terms that the fundamentalist Buddhist cell plans to target all Western suffering.
“In the name of the Great Teacher, we will stop at nothing to unleash a firestorm of empathy, compassion, and true selflessness upon the West,” said Rinpoche, adding that all enemies of a freely flowing, unfettered state of mind will be “besieged with pure, everlasting happiness.” “No city will be spared from spiritual harmony. We will bring about the end to all Western pain and anxiety, to all destructive cravings, to all greed, delusion, and misplaced desire. Indeed, we will bring the entire United States to its knees in deep meditation.”
“Wisdom and virtue to America!” continued Rinpoche. “Wisdom and virtue to all living things on earth!”
According to reports, Rinpoche stressed throughout his address that Kammaṭṭhāna soldiers would continue waging a tireless holy war on Western feelings of emptiness and negativity for as long as necessary, noting that “a jug fills drop by drop” and that “it is better to travel well than to arrive.”
The extremist leader specifically criticized the United States for its “blatant disregard of karmic balance within the universe” and ominously claimed that Americans will “one day soon” experience the highest form of metaphysical equilibrium through a union of both body and mind. Rinpoche also said all Western nations would “pay a heavy price in negative thinking and self-doubt” if they do not immediately engage in serious introspection and true spiritual liberation.
Sources confirmed the video then featured an uninterrupted 19-minute clip of water quietly flowing between rocks in a small forest creek.
“From New York City to London, Madrid, and Paris, we will not cease until every major metropolis is left in a state of total nirvana,” said Rinpoche, brandishing a pink lotus flower before claiming that Kammaṭṭhāna will seize any opportunity to aggressively instill a deep-seated sense of oneness in all Westerners. “We offered the unenlightened governments of America and Europe a chance to embrace the Eightfold Path, but you have refused. Now, we have no choice but to impose a peaceful spiritual reawakening upon you.”
“And if you think even for a moment that we will ever relent, remember this: Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened,” Rinpoche added. “You have been warned.”
Kammaṭṭhāna, a radical Mahāyāna Buddhism movement, was founded in Nepal in the late 1970s with the explicit mission to spread a fundamentalist interpretation of the Four Noble Truths to all nonbelievers. According to experts, the multinational organization operates somewhere in a remote region of the Himalayas, though the current whereabouts of Rinpoche and Kammaṭṭhāna’s other high-ranking members are reportedly unknown.
Kammaṭṭhāna first came to international prominence in 1997, when five of its members boarded a New York City subway car and held 42 hostages in a state of transcendent serenity for seven hours while performing atonal syllabic chants. The group then claimed responsibility for a severe 2004 outbreak of interconnectedness in central London, later traced to a 23-year-old Kammaṭṭhāna sleeper cell operative who sat cross-legged in Trafalgar Square and read aloud from The Gateless Gate collection of 13th-century Zen koans.
Kammaṭṭhāna claims to gain “thousands of newly reincarnated followers each day” and is reportedly known to recruit many young Buddhists from around the world, training them in tranquil insurgency tactics at covert monasteries across Eastern Asia.
“I want to assure all Americans that we are fully aware of these threats from Kammaṭṭhāna, and they will not be taken lightly,” acting Secretary of Homeland Security Rand Beers said at a press conference shortly after Rinpoche’s video surfaced, adding that several U.S. cities have been placed on high alert and authorities are watching closely for any suspicious peaceful activity in densely populated areas. “We do believe that Kammaṭṭhāna currently possesses the means to inflict widespread balance in the collective subconscious of an American city. However, we are doing absolutely everything in our power to prevent that from happening.”
“The danger of total enlightenment is very real,” Beers added. “And we must be prepared.”
Few people make path of love, few make national highways of love.
Too much meditation and too little sex make people narcisstic.
It is not a rocket science but common sense…
Few see third world war coming, few see two thirds of humanity being wiped out, few think finally world peace is a reality…
I have also read internet explorer 10 will be free to download.
Will the porn of all kind look real? (MOD: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, PLEASE, SHANTAM?)
And then there’s Shantam booby.
No sex. No meditation.
Enough said.
Arpana, do you meditate?
Yes, over the books.
Great, and what about love life?
I love books.
If you don’t mind, what about sex?
I am fetish about books…they feel like boobs!
“I have also read internet explorer 10 will be free to download.
Will the porn of all kind look real?”
Editor, it is a usual Indian poetry style to create in the end some punchline based on the previous line. Like a joke, it leaves one in the state of bewilderment.
For example, new internet explorer I have connected with porn. I mean, what is internet without porn? In the top 100 sites, 90 must be based on some kind of porn.
How many people care for Sannyasnews kind of thing, where few of the finest spritual thinkers do a brainstorming?
For Ârpana’s sake, I have not added me into this finest catagory. Like Osho, I am simply a guest! (Same style of punchline as before)
Your posts, Shantam, almost always leave me in the state of bewilderment.
Do you post on here strictly for your own entertainment purposes? I feel like you do not comprehend Osho’s core message of meditation. My understanding is that you do not meditate at all & you actually ridicule those who meditate.
Why spend so much of your time on a blog of a master who insists that people meditate?
Many have already gone down this and similar ways, Mrlazy – good luck with your questions (you’ll need it)….
Mrlazy, what a name! Is this a name or a facemask provided by ISIS? And you claim to be a meditator, hiding like a coward. Are you a gay afraid of being prosecuted?
Next time, when you ask me something, come clean with your Christian name or sannyas name and also some biographical note about you. Till then, scratch your head and meditate, if you really know what meditation is.
My presumption is you think xyz come after abcd.
Shantam booby avoids the issue.
Who could have seen that coming?
This satire only works if you think Buddhists are incapable of jihad (i.e. the lesser jihad involving violence). Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
Time Magazine Exposes Buddhist Terrorists in Myanmar:
http://salem-news.com/articles/june242013/buddhist-terror-tk-mi.php
“Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka mass murdered 160,000 Hindus and Christians in 2009….”
“Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka mass murdered 160,000 Hindus and Christians in 2009….”
Why Hindus have the habit to blow everythig out of proportion?
Their virtues they will expand from S to XXXL and their sins – not even capital s!
Hindu mind is working on Osho too.
I have always said, “Westerners in Pune present Osho as pure as possible. 100% dry milk, packed by Nestle.”
Their counterparts all over the country are adding water as per their choice, and that too no Bislari Water, simply street tap water. Anyway, adding water in milk is a usual situation in India…
A housewife asked her milkman, “Why the price of milk is risen so much during last 6 months.”
Milkman replies,”Madam you know quite well, water bills have risen even more.”
Friends,
There is this text, which aroused a smile in me, here and there, and there is this pic, showing a monk in sitting posture of the Bön (the shamanic Tibetean tradition, or other Dzogchen tradition), as far as I am able to acknowledge. And both together have quite a different effect on me.
About the text, nothing much to say, reminds me of the way Osho used jokes to give ´wake-up-calls´; sometimes with quite some harsh contents and silence and laughter.
The pic though reminded me of a moment unforgettable, seeing some monks here in Munich together – walking in same outfits (as this speaker), walking in a kind of row and with the energy of fabulous Kung Fu fighters, some more as ten years ago. I lived at that time near a big hospital (of the Merciful Brothers) – and this hospital as such is also situated near the Chinese embassy.
The latter often at this time being a spot where Tibetans and also Chinese people (Falun Qi Gong practioners) stood up there demonstrating, claiming their Human Rights.
Strange, that the mix of the pic with the printed text posted here-now brings that memory up as also memories of just some of the many ethnological events concerning Tibetan culture as also religious practising rituals and so on.
And memories of how I felt (and feel quite often): A mix of being in awe, respect, feeling the strong energetic power, being deeply rooted in quite some other culture. A power I am alien to and even fear. Sometimes.
A shamanic power I am not able to align emotionally to as easily, as, for example, to the shamanic power of North or South American Indian natives.
However, what I get from the thread’s proposal is the feeling that many we might not know personally are really concerned in these times of chaos and crises, and do their best to contribute help. Being open to that, looking inside, feeling where to join others and which invitation might be fitting, can be very confusing.
I feel glad of having had the opportunity to be with a Master, giving the quite challenging proposition to die every moment to the PAST. And the latter seems to be a lifelong everlasting school and homework for me at least, as I cannot say that I am very successful in fulfilling the task.
So – I am busy – to my best capacities.
And grateful to have heard that (THIS).
How are you this morning, Friends?
Madhu
Afternoon, Madhu,
Always nice to read your heartfelt observations.
The emphasis on helping others and letting the past go is an ongoing one. And you are right, there are many ways to help, and how can be confusing. It’s my experience that any help is best offered to those most immediately around me and not to concern myself with global issues or things that cannot be changed.
The plight of the Tibetans or others far away are a symbol of what is not possible to change, whilst where you are you are acting as the vehicle for change.
Even this cyber page, because it comes straight into our home is an opportunity. You, with your honest and direct observations change me, and you are much more successful than you might imagine.
Your presence as a woman; your honesty and your example of someone who speaks from the heart is expanding my heart too. Thanks.
In a culture based on legal redress, surely there should be insurance available for the risk of suffering offence? Or being accused of offending? Or third party fire and offence? Fully incomprehensible? First offence: 4 points off your offensive weapon licence? Curfews, electronic tags, so you can only be offensive indoors?
Mmmmmm, very interesting topic, PM, “insurance for the risk of suffering offence”, after you openly invited offence in a recent post!
Getting cold feet, are we?
On second thoughts, what is more likely, I believe, is that you have managed to shake-up one of your very own unique and special ´Martini cock-tales´, again, for your own pleasure! Haven´t you? Well, I hope you enjoyed it?
Fortunately, it seems, you did not allow the Garbler Dicktum bird to dip its beak, on this occasion.
Thank you!
From a relieved reader.
Hi Wind-sock,
I think the Simpsons have the answer. There’s an episode where Homer designs his own religion for himself…I think its called ‘God the Heretic’.
(There’s also one on being vegetarian – a big part of the Simpson founding producer’s animal-centric ethic. Don’t ask me the name, as I’m not martiwikipedia).
And I recently read Salman Rushdie’s views on not having laws to protect from offence, which he describes as being very sensible.
George Galloway (UK MP) is politically correct, legitimately respectable but – and this is where all his previous commendable anti-war wisdom fails him, he is ethically, psychologically, protectively paternalistic, even unreconstructed Leninist-socialist, in his most recent views on this issue. Like the Pope, he fails to address the lunacy of authoritarian religious belief, validating it as socially acceptable, wonderful even.
But also the State itself is riddled with belief in itself via education systems etc. and so cannot claim impartiality either. But that is legally-based Statehood religion…since about 1650 in the UK (see John Taylor Gatto for the history of the ideology of the State in US Schools, a fascinating read, if you have a month to spare).
Galloway sees Muslims, being himself one, as the oppressed and invaded proletariat which is caused to be aggrieved by historical western military oppression and in turn sponsoring the resultant internecine chaos by default and hypocritically too. I’d agree. But it really gets us nowhere in terms of empowering our language and ideas. Being right is not sufficiently definitive of a unifying, unthreatening insight either.
One of the True Levellers preachers of the UK Civil War, a chap named Everard (I kid thee not) said that if you try to take a starving man’s bread he’ll fight you for it…if you try to take away his religion he will allow himself to die for it. Osho said that the more irrelevant a belief the more stubbornly it is held.
Therefore mocking that proletariat’s credo is unfair and symbolic of exploitation and readily used by unscrupulous xenophobic forces. Galloway condemns it. The Ghettoes have a champion. But then how to use satire effectively for transforming what is cherished en masse or refuse the challenge? Maybe the old Osho fire and brimstone mockery is finally irrelevant. More editing necessary? Just stick with the Dualism thing?
It’s obvious that targeting others’ credos as a form of self-definition can lack self-belief.
And yet it formed a large part of Osho’s oeuvre..over and over again. It was easily attractive and created all sorts of clear codes, via dress and behaviour etc….However, he wasn’t just provoking but building communes, and already fully self-immersed.
Then came being threatened from within and without…and hey presto, a targetable community that needed to protect its assets.
It had its uses, but in microcosm it had all the hallmarks of these wider societal issues. The idea that Amrito told our own Detective Sherlock that satirising Osho was beyond the pale, mimics in large part all this guff about sincerity, religious respect, and on and on.
Truth is not absolute though, so sometimes it’s good to not laugh if the Roman Emperor talks about his friend Biggus Dickus – or you ‘wisk being fwown to ve lions’…As everything is contextual, that’s why civic law requires constant application as proof. Unlike spituality, which doesn’t even bother acknowledging whether social responsibility can be codified or not.
Moment to moment responding is all that’s left that we are in charge of…apparently.
Hope that helps, it’s late and I thought this header needed some attention…I’m just typing out allowed.
Night night.
”All politics begins in the family” (Vaclav Havel)
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/10422597_887840461273100_3043810612129805400_n.jpg?oh=e61968f546d839127536a7b2c4ad3e50&oe=55208259&__gda__=1432656356_3112c7254fdbd4b0582cff05255a3f30
PM wrote:
“The idea that Amrito told our own Detective Sherlock, that satirising was beyond the pale, mimics in large part all this guff about sincerity, religous respect, and on and on.”
Yes! Very interesting point, PM, I definitely think you are on to somthing here.
The rest of your post was sprinkled with some interesting info, too. However, the point I have indicated above is the one that stood out.
You are also right to observe and recognise my ever-changing spiritual metamorphosis from being predominantly `Ass`, to more like ´Wind`, on occasion. I think I should blow a little bit more wind in your direction, more frequently, don`t you? It certainly seems to produce some interesting results.
Perhaps this is an appropriate soundtrack, but even if you do not think so it will let you know what I get up to in my spare timr. Guru, Guru…
https://soundcloud.com/luke-mitchell/guru-guru-tommy-sm-mc-loke-ibiza
Lokesh
I’m very disappointed , your song missed out Barry Long! Why just eastern gurus, aren’t there any in the West?
So now I know what you get up to out in your island paradise, away from the world!
Do you have a B&B as well?
Yes, Simond, we have a small apartment attached to our house, which we occasionally let with breakfast etc. but only to cool people.
I’m cool aren’t I ? No perhaps Im cold and unfeeling and too analytical!
Hey, I’m just jealous you live in such a hot place, but what about all them western gurus?
Hot place? Hailstones are coming down right now.
Wintertime is Ibiza’s best kept secret.
Haven’t seen a Western guru since…let me think. Oh yeah, a month back there was some sannyasin guy doing kundalini group. Some of the locals were quite taken with him. I never saw him though. Maybe come summer we will have some gurus show up. Then again, everyone round here at this time of the year is a bit of a guru.
Enjoyed the psychedelic dance, Lokie.
Coolio.
Me too!!
I was pleasantly surprised, really enjoyed it, McLoke!
Thankee kindly.
Dear Simond,
Beautiful, that you responded.
Well, to your other points, I would like to share with you that I DO have a relating to the stuff I mentioned by so-called everyday life here, trying to connect with people, also by feeling that in most of the so-called news, REAL people are meant like you and me.
Otherwise, the memories I spoke of have been related to real happenings here in Munich where I am living for quite sone decades, without travelling.
It´s a multicultural city, like most cities now happen to be. So you can, if you are not blind and deaf, meet much of the problems in terms of everyday inter-personal affairs as encounters in various places, whenever you leave the house (if you are bugged then also inside, so to say).
Face-to-face and deep the experience. As a feeling being.
I am that much grateful that I could have a good education and also that I had the chance of meeting remarkable Beings. Osho is my root ´buddha´, how it is called so lovingly and I like the way that it is called like this.
To a sangha, whatsoever, I am disconnected for quite a while. I am alone. I always loved to be alone, but confess not to the extent that it is happening in that last phase here.
When I say dropping the past any moment if possible, it is a very precise survival kit, Simond, to live in precarious times, also on a very personal level.
In previous times, it was simply the joy of a kid, but nowadays, it IS a necessity.
Then you picked up the ‘helping others’ stuff. Well, I studied ´psychology´ the time when we discussed the ´helpless helper´ stuff, so quite some decades ago, but I say to you, the knowing that there is truth to such issues was one of the many points that brought me to meet a Zen Master like Osho is, even though not any longer in His body.
Helpless helpers are doing a lot of harm in their very special way. I didn´t write to help; maybe the least to say, maybe I can help myself; the longing to express and to connect with humans, where it seems to be possible.
So simple as this.
Thank you again for responding
It’s TEA TIME now, isn´t it?
Madhu
And have to deal then with the emotions, with the thoughts which that triggers.
You scratch my back, I scratch yours; with this kind of energy around world can achieve an everlasting peace.
Sannyasnews peace prize of the month goes to…
Simond!
Forget the back-scratching. Today’s method of operation is…how can I help you deal with ‘your’ enemies?
I am sure, Sannyasnews writers and readers will love this video.
It is one of the best about India.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLvr80ZrCqo#t=166
Thank you, Shantam for the link to the Hindu Nectar video.
Hinduism contains neo-sannyas and sannyas, atheism and agnosticism, Sikhism and Buddhism, existentialism and rationalism, etc. – a miracle!
(P.S: the word ‘miracle’ does not mean ‘supernatural’, it comes from the Latin ‘miraculum’ meaning that which causes wonder and astonishment).
Are you sarcastic here with your short remark, Bodhi Vartan?
Seeing a contribution of yours after quite a while, I wonder how it is meant.
And wonder what is said in between the short lines?
Madhu
Your contributions under the name Shantam Prem are teaching over and over again something very important, especially in modern information society technical age.
They teach most accurately that ´mind´ is a robot, a machine, and they also teach that a machine will never be human, and that quite more as 90 per cent of our all minds function like that; and they teach us all how destructive that can be for a organic life, so to say. Not to speak of a joyful ´coming together´ as human beings, not even written with capital letters, just human, organic.
And by ´organic´ I mean something that has the capacity of healing broken wings and stuff like that, what can be called a miracle.
And the latter is also happening now and then, but there is not much fuss about it.
But maybe should be…
Thanks for the strong teaching.
Madhu
This is one of the bullshit installed in the minds of so-called spiritual seekers that they see mind everywhere but not in them.
Madhu, I will be glad to know if you tell from your own life, where lies 90% robot and where is that 10% human.
If Christian beliefs are robotic so are the Sannyas beliefs.
“And by ´organic´ I mean something that has the capacity of healing broken wings and stuff like that, what can be called a miracle.”
I think after our common master´s death, capacity of healing broken wings and stuff like that is available in some kind of family constellation groups or ‘organic subway sandwich leading towards path of love’.
“Call any vegetable and the chances are good the vegetable will respond to you” (Frank Zappa).