Between Asgard and the Western Paradise

Yesterday in Australia, Pope Benedict addressed a crowd of 200,000 saying, “Side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading – an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair”.  He also told young Catholics to avoid that “falsely conceived freedom” and instead turn toward Christian values to build a more placid lifestyle.

This is some excellent advice which Catholics need to listen to.  As I have addressed before, we live in a time when people are socialized towards making the so-called means of production ends in themself, perpetuating the need to continually make money to become “distinguished” in society.  In such a society, people are always occupied with petty matters and have little time to devote to spiritual affairs.  Thus, they are unhappy and dissatisfied with the quality of life.  Even when one does manage to break free from the dominant materialist mentality and build a higher course, the world today is such that one is required to advance within the maze of materialism before one can actually exit it. 

The Pope’s words ring true that spirituality is on the decline, but he was also correct about the fact that people seek false freedoms.  In a secular society, many people use the word “freedom” to connote the right to do as one pleases at any time.  It is used as a justification by liberal fundamentalists for hatred of religion and love of sin.  For example, for some time now, the media in America has been most vociferous in decrying the so-called “lack of freedom” in Islamic nations.  Forty years ago, the same liberal fundamentalists had already launched a brutal and effective attack on Christianity in much the same manner, also in the name of “freedom”.  Therefore, we can see that a secular notion of freedom is not always beneficial for religion.

In the Bible, Paul wrote to the Galatians regarding the idea of freedom.  He was much concerned with the way that man viewed freedom.  This is clear in Galatians 5.13 where he writes, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh”.  This is an exhortation for them not to follow worldy, secular freedoms, but to seek freedom of the spirit.

What, then is freedom of the spirit?  To be consise, freedom of the spirit is obedience and submission to the law and will of God, which later was revealed to Muhammad (SWT) as Islam.  True freedom is not the freedom to act on base carnal impulses, but rather the will to power of overcoming those.  This is the same power against the force of flux and degeneration into confusion and lawlessness, recognized by the Buddhists as the “Eightfold Path” through prajna, sila, and samadhi.  In other words, the freedom to which Pope Benedict referred is that which gives us the ability to rectify our lives.

In some ways, this is a reply to a comment on what seems to be my most ‘popular,’ or at least most discussed post.  In replying to my analysis of Baha’i, a commenter calling herself “Susan” asks why it is that we look to the past, and not to the future in matters of religion.

This reason for this is very simple, and we need only begin by consider the meaning of the word ‘religion’.  It was St. Augustine who stated that religion derives from the root ligare, with the prefix re-.  The meaning of religion is to thus “connect again”.  In Chinese, there exists a similar meaning for the word 宗教.  The first character, zong (宗), has the connotation of “ancestor”, while 教 means “teaching”.  Thus the purpose of religion as the ancestral teaching aims to reconnect mankind.  Exoteric religion reconnects mankind through a common bond of ethical precepts, while esoteric religion attempts to reconnect mankind with the unchanging divine, just as the spokes of a wheel connect the outer hub to the center.  It can clearly be seen that it is in the past that religion is rooted, and is therefore not concerned with a world of flux and becoming, but with the world of being and stability.  Evidence of this is found across multiple traditions.  For example, the Christians say “They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail” (Hebrews 1:12).  Even Buddhism views the entire world of Samsara as in a constant state of change, and thus, the entire Dharma of the Buddhists is to transcend such change. 

I think we can look to the condition of the modern Protestant church in America to see what has happened in the name of modernizing religion.  In my travels, I have seen churches which are more like movie theatres than places of worship, heard “praise songs” which only appealed to emotions and had little liturgical value, and listened to ”youth sermons” dedicated to appealing to the lowest common denominator.  Likewise, I have seen Buddhism in the West become nothing more than a platform for social activism.  If the other religions are to follow this current course, what shall become of them?

In the Qur’an, Allah says:

“I have perfected your religion for you, completed My Favor upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion” (Sura al-Maidah 5: 3)

“Say, O people of the Book exceed not the bounds in your religion, trespassing beyond the truth. Nor follow the vain desires of people who went astray in times gone by, who mislead many and strayed from the even way. Curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who were disbelievers, by the tongue of David and of Jesus son of Mary, because they disobeyed and persisted in excesses.” (Al-Maidah 5:77-78)

When people change or revise religion, this is called bidah (بدعة).  Who, then, decides what is right and what is wrong?  In our world today, there are certainly some unscrupulous people who use devious methods to achieve their own political or economic ends.  This has already been seen when people have created cults such as Scientology, Falun Gong, the People’s Temple, and countless others.  Suppose one group wants to promote communism, and another capitalism.  When they alter the religion in service of worldly ideologies, this is the cause of much misery and conflict.  However, we should note that Bidah in matters of science are different from those in matters of faith.  For example, there have been scientific advancements which are helpful to mankind, which are not considered haram.  This is also why Islaam can be practiced by so many cultures from the time when Muhammad (SWT) until the present day without contradicting the faith.  Religion does not to be revised in order to fit the present day, but rather the faithful shall exercise restraint and not fall into temptation and sin.  It is for this reason, revisionism or bidah has been forbidden.

This tells of the danger of bidah.  All the divinely-revealed religions have been perfected by the Creator himself, and then transmitted through the Holy Prophets for the benefit of all mankind.  By creating new religions, we indeed trespass beyond the truth.  I am not denying that Baha’i has some social objectives which many people find to be attractive.  Yet, these are only social objectives: another commentator makes a point that noble thoughts and well-wishing do not constitute prophethood, and this is a correct notion.  In religion, we need to think of how best we can keep the Tradition alive in this decadent modern age.

According to Chinese author Táng Lùyu (唐陸羽), who wrote the treatise on tea Chajing (茶經), the tea plant has several names.  In Mandarin, tea can be called jiǎ, shè, míng, and chuǎn, in addition to the already-common name cha (一曰茶，二曰檟，三曰蔎，四曰茗，五曰荈).  In the eighth century, the character tu (荼), which today describes the sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) was used for a variety of bitter herbs, which included tea.  A similar character, using the tree radical(梌) with an identitcal pronounciation appears in an early medical text, which is traditionally attributed to Shennong.

Today, the name for “tea” in many languages around the world derives from the character 茶, but a few languages also derive the pronounciation from the Minnan pronounciation of 荼, te.

In Russian and Turkish, tea is called чай and çay, respectively, with a similar pronounciation; in Arabic, the word is pronounced “shai,” indicating a derivation from cha. In Italian, Spanish and German, the words are tè, té, and Tee (again with similar pronounciation), indicating a derivation from tê. Incidentally, these derivations also shed light on the way in which tea reached other parts of the world. For example, Russians and Turks likely recieved their tea through overland trading routes based in Central or Northern China, and thus heard the “cha” pronounciation. Meanwhile, the English and Spanish traded in Southern China, and heard tea refered to as “tê”.

A few visitors have asked me if I would do a short segment on the Beijing Olympics, and I am responding to that request.  Remember, if you’d like to suggest a topic to appear on this blog, simply send an e-mail at lin.dewei1@gmail.com with your name, city of residence, age, and desired topic, and I or the managers of this blog will attempt to write an article.

With the Games of the XXIX Olympiad to be held in Beijing just a month away, groups such as Students for a Free Tibet and Amnesty International are still calling for a boycott of the games.  Nearly every aspect of the games has come under intense criticism from ‘activist’ groups.  As early as 2005, Students for a Free Tibet had proposed a boycott of the Olympics games.  More recently, others have been concerned with the ‘involvement’ of the Chinese in Darfur; still other human rights groups in the West have drawn comparison between the 1936 Olympics in Germany and this year’s event.  The London Times has even run an article criticizing the hiring of Albert Speer, Jr., as an architect for the Olympic Complex.

To complicate matters worse, the March riots in Tibet once again thrust China into the spotlight and exposed some of the problems, both real imagined in the TAR.  Former Socialist Party member, and current Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner was the first in the said country to openly call for a boycott, with Sarkozy following shortly after.  Likewise, in the United States, the well-timed riots gave more grievance to the Free-Tibet crowd and, combined with what seems to be biased media coverage of the riots, was enough to nudge many people in favour of an boycott.  Celebrities have also been quick to voice their opinions, from Mia Farrow to Steven Spielberg.  And who can forget Sharon Stone’s infamous “karma” comment in the wake of the Sichuan Earthquake?

The Chinese government has been rather vocal on the matter of not politicizing the Olympics, and this seems to be a key point.  One should ask if the left-liberals who so adamantly oppose the Olympics in China would be opposed to holding the Olympic games in Venezuela, a country, which like China is also communist and has documented cases of human rights abuses.  To rebut the accusation that they are politicising the Olympics, the left-liberals have claimed that “the Olympics have always been political”.  If this is true, then what distinguishes these Olympics from any other “political” Olympics?  If anything, it shows the incompetence and double-standards of liberals when dealing with political issues.

In reality, though, we must ask ourselves what an Olympic Boycott might accomplish.  The US boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow did nothing to stop the Soviets from invading Afganistan, for example.  Likewise, there is no real indication that a boycott of the Chinese Olympics will do anything to help ethnic Tibetans or dissidents within China.  Instead, a boycott could worsen the conditions for the very people the pro-democracy evangelists are attempting to help.

There must be at least a few people who realize this.  However, I suspect that there are people with an ulterior motive, that ulterior motive being to embarass or humiliate China.  For months now, a few activist groups have been discussing amongst themselves how best to sneak into Beijing and stage a protest.  The drive to humiliate China has also been quite evident in the liberal-biased Western media.  For example, a few media outlets were quick to cherry-pick discriminatory comments towards Tibetans on Chinese forums, but made no mention about far more copious anti-Chinese comments on phayul.com (although most of them by Westerners who support the Tibetan cause), a website dedicated to Tibetan independence.

What we must ultimately realize, is that if everything is political, then nothing is.  And while we may have our political disagreements, the Olympics is a chance for all people to put aside those agreements.  Is it then too much to ask for a peaceful Olympics?

On this day in 993 AD, St. Ulrich of Augsburg was canonized.  A German monk of Alamanni and Swabian descent, he lived a devout life of celibacy and simplicity before becoming Bishop of Augsburg.  He would later become a general in the dfense of Augsburg against the Magyars.

In 1054, Chinese and Arab astronomers recorded a supernova in the region of ζ-Tauri, making the Crab Supernova the first to be recorded in human history.

In 1359, Gil de Albornoz, supported by the Malatesta of Rimini, defeated Francesco II Ordelaffi, securing the northern Italian city for the Papacy.

In the United States, this otherwise uneventful day is known as Independence Day.  But what is America?  From its beginnings, America has always represented the false idol of progress, and Americans worshipped this idol more above all else, Chistianity included.  Wherever there was an old idea to be overturned, Americans were the first to embrace such ideas, and thus gave rise to the disease we now label ‘liberalism’.  As a result, America has become a cultural wasteland, in which the only products of creativity are mass-marketed items such as rap music, Hollywood movies, and the like.  In modern times, internally and externally, America represents the other side of the Bolshevist coin.  The most dangerous strain of Bolshevism may only take root through the ruthless uprising of the masses, and establish the so-called ‘worker’s state,’ and deprive the people of their material well-being in the process.  Americanism, though it does not value dialectal materialism is just as dangerous in being advocates of its unmasked opposite.  Furthermore, as an economic system, Bolshevism can co-exist and protect certain aspects of culture; the Soviet Union, for example, was far more resistant to cultural degeneracy than America.  In this respect, Americanism is the far more dangerous beast, for while uttering the false spell of ‘liberal democracy’, and with the standardization so commonplace through mass indoctrination in the media, begins the crumbling of higher culture.

In a previous entry, I discussed the concept of Eurasianism and Atlanticism.  Having defined the character of Americans, it is now much clearer when we speak of the kulturkampf of the Eurasian and Atlantic worldviews.  To put it concisely: the former is the world of being, while the latter is the world of ceaseless becoming.   

I leave the gentle reader with some famous quotations and food for thought:

“America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilization.” - Oscar Wilde, English author

“The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, ‘I think, therefore I am’: Americans do not think, yet they are. The American ‘mind’, puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardisation.” - Julius Evola, Italian philosopher in ”Civiltà Americana“

“Everything about the behavior of American society reveals that it’s half Judaized, and the other half negrified. How can one expect a State like that to hold together?” - Adolf Hitler, German politician

“[The Americans]…are enterprising, defiant, and touchy; impatient of authority; furious politicians; very tolerant of fraud and violence; possessing much high and generous spirit, and some true religious feeling, but strongly addicted to cant.” - Francis Galton, English naturalist

“[Their] preferred music…is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires” -Sayyid Qutb, Egyptian scholar, in Amrika allati Ra’aytu