...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, FREE ADVICE

EUROPEAN INVASION KILLS 100 MILLION AMERICANS!

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Stolen Continents When I read this book my point of view about “America”, and my European heritage were changes utterly, completely and forever.  In fact, my opinion of all human beings was permanently altered. My 5 times Great Grandmother was the sister of the Chief of the Mohawk Indians  in New York.  So, I can at least claim Native American blood in my veins, for which I am proud and grateful.

Everything you ever read in U.S. “history books” is a lie.  All of the “Cowboy and Indian movies” you ever saw were nothing more than slick, Hollywood propaganda aimed and covering up and justifying the greatest human holocaust in history — the slaughter of more than 100 million Indigenous Natives in the North, Central and South America by European “explorers”, soldiers and priests…. The so-called  explorers and colonists or conquistadors who floated over the Atlantic in small wooden boats in search of gold and slaves were literally the scum of the Earth.  Unwashed, uneducated, disease ridden soldiers, thieves and priests.

The “discovery” and “settlement” of the American continents was done over the dead bodies of more than 100 million people, who were, for the most part, peaceful, spiritual, cultivated, civilized beings who lived in harmony with nature and the Earth.  These people were murdered by European diseases.  They were hunted down like buffalo and slaughtered intentionally by the U.S. government as a planned strategy of intentional extinction.  The carnage wrought upon the Native Americans by the European Invasion makes the holocaust of World War II seem like a picnic in Fantasy Land, by comparison.

I urge you to read this book:  STOLEN CONTINENTS by Ronald Wright.  Learn the truth about your own history, and the “karma” we “Americans” have inherited from your European ancestors.  And, fear for our own future.  What went around, comes back around.

The following short videos reveal more about the history and current treatment of Native Americans.

ART, FREE ADVICE, PICTURE POEMS, POETIC NONSENSE, UNIVERSES

THE ICY FLAME

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Before Being was the Icy Flame.
You and I and All.
The Flame conceives.
And From that Eternal Fire comes Thought:
Joy and Love and Pain.
We pretend. We betray.
We deceive Our Selves with play.
We invade the dark relentless void with incandescent Light.
Like candles in a forge we play a game that melts the soul.
Each victory drowns the flame within Our Selves.
And yet The Flame still lingers in us all.
We flicker faintly far from The Hearth of Home.
Burn brightly Lonely spark.
Remember You and I and All:
We are the Icy Fire.

— Lawrence R. Spencer, 2012 —

...and other stuff, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

ILLUSIONS OF SENTIENCE

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

In the philosophy of consciousness, “sentience” can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences.  This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts that mean something or are “about” something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining “consciousness“, which is otherwise commonly used to collectively describe sentience plus other characteristics of the mind.

Eastern religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism recognize non-humans as sentient beings.According to Buddhism, sentient beings made of pure consciousness are possible. In Buddhism, the concept is related to the Bodhisattva, an enlightened being devoted to the liberation of others. The first vow of a Bodhisattva states: “Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them.”  Sentience in Buddhism is the state of having senses (sat + ta in Pali, or sat + tva in Sanskrit). In Buddhism, the senses are six in number, the sixth being the subjective experience of the mind. Thus, an animal qualifies as a sentient being.

In Buddhism the skandhas (or aggregates in English) are the five functions or aspects that constitute the human being.  The Buddha teaches that nothing among them is really “I” or “mine”.  Suffering arises when one identifies with or clings to an aggregate. Suffering is extinguished by relinquishing attachments to aggregates.

The five skandhas:

  1. “form” or “matter”  external and internal matter. Externally, is the physical world. Internally, this  includes the material body and the physical sense organs.
  2. “sensation” or “feeling”, sensing an objectas either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.
  3. “perception”, “conception”, “apperception”, “cognition”, or “discrimination”, registers whether an object is recognized or not (for instance, the sound of a bell or the shape of a tree).
  4. “mental formations”, “impulses”, “volition”, or “compositional factors”, all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, prejudices, compulsions, and decisions triggered by an object.
  5. “consciousness” or “discernment”

The Buddhist literature describes the aggregates as arising in a linear or progressive fashion, from form to feeling, to perception, to mental formations to consciousness.  In the early texts, the scheme of the five aggregates is not meant to be an exhaustive classification of the human being. Rather it describes various aspects of the way an individual manifests.

  1. Understanding suffering: the five aggregates are the “ultimate referent” in the Buddha’s elaboration on suffering in his First Noble Truth: “Since all four truths revolve around suffering, understanding the aggregates is essential for understanding the Four Noble Truths as a whole.”
  2. Clinging causes future suffering: the five aggregates are the substrata for clinging and thus “contribute to the causal origination of future suffering”.
  3. Release from samsara: clinging to the five aggregates must be removed in order to achieve release from samsara, literally meaning “continuous flow”, is the repeating cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth (reincarnation)

— I HAVE EXCERPTED THE TEXT ABOVE FROM VARIOUS ARTICLES AND LINKS FOUND IN WIKIPEDIA.ORG  (LRS)