psychology – Page 134

Anti-Buddhism

Most Westerners are familiar with the basic tenets of Buddhism. Few understand that there’s a popular religious movement that seeks to achieve the exact opposite of those tenets, and this movement is sweeping the Western World. It’s called anti-Buddhism, and most practitioners of it don’t even know it’s their religion.

The tenets of anti-Buddhism are essentially the mirror opposite of regular Buddhism. Where a Buddhist will try and make himself satisfied with his lot, thereby decreasing his desires for material pleasure, an anti-Buddhist will try and make himself less satisfied.

The anti-Buddhist will search through every part of his mind, conscious or unconscious, looking for misery. He will ruminate for hours on the most trivial of insults, grinding his teeth at the effrontery, and entertain the most ludicrous revenge fantasies. The tiniest of unfulfilled desires is justification enough to rage at the injustice of the world.

Where the Buddhist cultivates an aura of peace, the anti-Buddhist cultivates one of hatred. The entire world of phenomena is seen through this blood-red lens. As a consequence, everything in the whole world is worthy of contempt. The anti-Buddhist can have no real friends, just temporary alliances founded upon mutual hatred of an other.

And so, nothing is ever good enough for him. The most fortuitous event is not considered a blessing but rather him getting restitution for prior injustices, meaning that no gratitude is necessary. He simply moves straight on to fulfilling the next desire.

Like the Taoist, the Buddhist strives to live a simple life. He recognises that material possessions are just objects that ultimately end up possessing him, because they demand that time and energy be sacrificed to their maintenance and protection. The result of this simple life is the sense of peace and freedom that comes from not having to stress out about defending your wealth.

The anti-Buddhist rejects this line of reasoning as that of a weakling. The value of his life is a direct function of the resources and territory that he controls, and only through the maximum amount of stress and misery can the true value of his life be reached. Indeed, it’s vital that everyone around the anti-Buddhist sees and knows about his suffering, so that they can feel the awe that is the natural response to being around someone so great.

So where the Buddhist greets his fellows with a gentle smile and a reassuring word, the anti-Buddhist scowls and immediately starts going on about his health problems, or the need to exterminate some group of people he hates, because his capacity to cause fear in other people gives him a sense of power that he mistakes for being a worthwhile person.

If there’s one thing that really distinguishes the Buddhist from the followers of other practices, it’s meditation. Through meditation a person can get to genuinely know themselves and the ebbing and flowing of desires within their own mind. Paying attention to how their own mind works, they learn to distinguish genuine desires from conditioned ones and so learn to direct their energy to things that make them happy.

Correspondingly, meditation is the one thing that the anti-Buddhist avoids at any cost. Every millisecond of every day has to be crammed full of as much stimulation as possible, lest one inadvertently catch a few moments of meditation and accidentally become happier. There can be no such thing as rest, no such thing as peace. All efforts have to be devoted to the ceaseless acquisition of capital, because to pause for a moment is to risk slipping back down the dominance hierarchy.

Anti-Buddhism is widespread in our society, but it appears to be falling into decline. We have been so wealthy and yet so miserable for so long, that it’s no longer deniable that anti-Buddhism has failed to bring us any improvement to the quality of lives. Perhaps it’s time to return to the original spiritual practices?

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis).

Te Reo With Mnemonics: Military Words

Army – waitaua

A medieval army lays seige to a tower shaped like the letter Y – the Y tower.

Artillery – ngā pū

A group of soldiers wearing nappies operate and fire an artillery piece.

hit – patu(-a)

A medieval knight hits another knight with a golf putter.

miss – tohipa

Someone has chopped off a large number of toes and put them in a heap. A man throws a cricket ball at the toe heap but misses.

Battlefield – kauhanga riri

On a future battlefield, a giant robot picks up cows and hangs them in trees. A watching soldier says “It’s a cowhanger, really!”

Rifle – raiwhara

A man and a woman get married, and a rifle serves as celebrant. The rifle, from the perspective of the groom, is therefore a wifer.

The Maori word for army – waitaua – sounds like the English phrase ‘Y tower’

shoot – pupuhi

A man fires a gun at another man, but instead of bullets, sewerage comes out. This makes the man who got shot poo-pooey.

Soldier – hōia

Two soldiers are trying to place a mirror on the wall. One of them keeps saying “Higher! Higher!”

Sword – hoari

A woman runs down the street swinging a sword while dressed as a prostitute (a whore).

Tank – waka taua

A battletank swings its turrent and tries to knock down a tower. The tank is trying to whack a tower.

Weapon – patu

A man pulls out an AK-47 and says “This is a weapon,” and then pulls out a magazine, inserts it into the AK-47 and says “This is a weapon part two.”

Shotgun – tūpara

A teenage boy fires a shotgun, the barrel of which narrows down to an extreme taper.

The above is an excerpt from the upcoming Learn Maori Vocabulary With Mnemonics, by Jeff Ngatai, due to be published by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2017/18.

VJMP Reads: Anders Breivik’s Manifesto VII

This reading carries on from here.

In this section (c. pages 426-573), Breivik discusses “Modern Jihad”, or how adherents of the Islamic religion fight for supremacy in the modern world. Opening with a quote of Surah 9 verse 5, in which Muslims are admonished to “kill the unbelievers wherever you find them”, this section details the existing Jihads carried out by Muslims against non-Muslims.

In his characteristic way, Breivik exhaustively catalogues the crimes committed by Muslims against non-Muslims. No offence, not even ones as prosaic as common assault, is too minor to be listed here. This is enough to give the impression that Islam is at war with every other culture that it shares a border with.

To some extent, Breivik has a point here. There are very few peaceful borders between Muslim-controlled areas and non-Muslim controlled ones, and prospects for there being more are very slim.

However, one glaring point is missed: if Islam is so ruthlessly aggressive when it comes to purging non-Muslims from Muslim lands, why are there still non-Muslims there? Nazi Germany managed to exterminate the vast bulk of European Jewry in fewer than six years of trying – how can it be that non-Muslim communities still exist in Muslim lands after what we are told has been 1,300 years of relentless extirpation?

Breivik mentions that one-sixth of the population of Egypt are Christians still. This seems like an extraordinarily high proportion for a group that has suffered 1,300 years of ethnic cleansing. The Native American population of the USA, the Aboriginal population of Australia and the Maori population of New Zealand are all much lower than this – and they were displaced over 400 years or less, meaning that the Christian exterminations of unwanted populations has been an order of magnitude more efficient and aggressive than those carried out by Muslims.

Moreover, the exhaustive list of Muslim crimes against non-Muslims is not compared to the list of non-Muslim crimes against non-Muslims, so there is no reference point against which to decide whether this list has any import. 800 Americans are shot dead by other Americans every single month – a monthly list of crimes much longer than the Muslim crimes detailed by Breivik in this document. And this is with a population one-fifth of the size of the Muslim world.

To some extent, Breivik is playing on the infamous persecution mania of Christians who see enemies everywhere and a never-ending infernal plot to drive them from the world in order to conquer it in the name of Satan. Ironically, although Breivik correctly points out that Muslims always try to cast themselves as the victims in order to gain sympathy, he does the exact same thing in this document.

There are many ways in which Breivik’s discontent with the current European situation is a consequence of the failure of European leaders. He correctly points out that part of the reason why Europeans are losing rights to increased security measures is because of the Islamic presence in Europe – had Europe never let the Muslims in, they never would have lost the freedoms that have been taken from them in the fight against extremism.

What needs to be done in response is clear. According to Breivik the terms of victory are “the total banishment of traditional Islam from a specific country. Widespread emigration/deportation and large scale conversion of Muslims in the country.”

This is necessary because “An objective analysis can never reach the conclusion that Islam is peaceful, tolerant and consistent with human rights.” Here, Breivik re-emphasises the point that Islam has never undergone a reformation of any kind. What Westerners foolishly call “moderate Muslims” are simply Muslims who are not particularly religious.

This section ends with a frightening question: “How was it possible that Immanuel Kant, who lived in a German state without liberal democracy, could criticise basic aspects of religion in the 18th century, while in the West of the 21st century there are social and legal consequences for criticising other religions and cultures?”

Have we really gone backwards since the Enlightenment?

Te Reo With Mnemonics: Physical Dimensions

big – nui

A man presents a child with a gigantic egg. The man says “I just bought you this new egg.”

small – iti

A tiny mouse is busy eating a pile of biscuits much bigger than itself.

heavy – taimaha

Lying on the ground is a large stopwatch, or timer. The timer is so heavy that it takes four men to move it.

light – māmā

A jar of Marmite is so light that it beings to float up off the kitchen bench.

Height – ikeike

A woman is standing between two very tall, scary looking men. She turns to one and screams, then turns to the other and screams. Her reaction was “Eeek! Eeek!”

narrow – kūiti

A woman pulls a coat through a very narrow ring.

Length – roa

A single rower sits and rows a ridiculously long canoe.

Size – rahi

A ray of sunlight shines from the clouds onto a plant, which then grows to an enormous size.

tall – teitei

On top of a really tall golf tee is a pot of tea. It is the tee tea.

short – poto

A very short man walks along with a pot belly and a pot on his head.

weigh – pauna(-tia)

On a large set of veterinary scales, a vet tries to weigh a pony.

wide – whānui

An extremely wide woman with an extremely wide paper fan sits in the heat fanning her face.

The above is an excerpt from the upcoming Learn Maori Vocabulary With Mnemonics, by Jeff Ngatai, due to be published by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2017/18.