Apparently, there is a sex tape, circulating on the internet, featuring a Navalny ally Lubov Sobol’ and her Dagestani lover.

«Аким! Мы и не трахаемся, и фильм не смотрим, и манго не едим, и колу не пьем! Занимаемся какой-то х**той!»

Соболь пошла по рукам… pic.twitter.com/xc0yJYWm5x

— СуховЪ (@VatnikVII) June 4, 2021

Russia completes first pipeline of Nord Stream 2.

Women, children, and apparently Polish, most hurt.

https://www.ft.com/content/b9f4af6e-deef-473d-b4fd-0329ab1f1d03

Ukraine Uncensored & Related Missives

Better late than never, this JRL promoted piece:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/skeptics/ukraine%E2%80%99s-accelerating-slide-authoritarianism-186368

came out two years after this one:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/24/gauging-ukraine-with-russia-and-belarus/

On the subject of TNI, is this a setup?

https://nationalinterest.org/profile/michael-averko

While positively noting some of its content, I’ve also been a well reasoned critic of TNI’s overall slant. If svidos can be an influential part of the US foreign policy establishment, than there should be room for pro-American/pro-Russian moderates. Related:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/22/bbc-limits-and-related-censorship-on-russia-coverage/

Some people can be their own worst enemies.

Vaccines have always been avoided by big Pharma. They depend on Universities, Charities and governments for development. the only need for big Pharma this time was for rapid production by the billion.

Symbolic of this bar chart.

A sharp reply to the sanctions regarding the SCF:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/06/04/think-tank-wars-and-the-enforcement-of-thought-crime-laws/

Humor for the Open Thread.

PEACE 😇

I think I’ve found quite possibly the most perfect description of the current state of Chinese culture:

China is a billion people from Redneck South. They only like films for tits and explosions.

In a way, it reminds me of the West in the 19th century when it’s ascent was at it’s peak – unparalleled cultural and economic development, yet at the same time absolutely dreadful working conditions for the lower classes, blood sports (animal cruelty) and so on and so forth. Yet at the same time the materialistic cancer is appearing in China despite the fact that their ascent hasn’t reached it’s end yet because Western civilization has subsumed every other one.

Most Westerners don’t seem to understand this. They go for the “hurr carpet nuke china they treat animals badly” while 250 years ago it was the same goddamn shit in their countries too. Like, their thinking style is “we don’t do that, you must magically advance your society in a day, otherwise we will jack off at the thought of exterminating you.”

Obvious conclusion – from global mankurtization/globohomo, to this rabid form of thinking, der ewige westoid is the biggest threat to human survival and advancement.

As far as i know, TNI is realist school of foreign policy funded by Nixon Foundation or something. So their thinking is dual approach – they want to do “Nixon goes to China” thing except this time, go to Russia, and get Russia to join US to contain China.

Also, as realists, they correctly understand that US Empire is expensive and contrary to US national interest. I mean, they call themselves The National Interest for a reason. As such, they dislike neocon/neoliberal/globalist vision at American expense. So they are more receptive to Putin’s multipolar international framework and live and let live approach.

But its an American Interest publication, not a Russian Interest.

What do you think about autonomous drone attack (Turkish drones reportedly used at Libya.)? There has been a lot of news report and pieces recently, mostly negative from the West. I read a piece comparing it to detonation of atomic bomb (lmao).
I think the West, particularly USA, particularly dislike to see cheap and effective drones developed by 2nd tier country and sold pretty much anyone. Affordable killing machines can damage USA hegemony on high tech military equipment. USA don’t want to sell drones, why shouldn’t I go and buy from others? At the end, there’s no congress, no drama, no sanction etc…

America Sucks and is stupid the American military is criminally incompetent and unbelievably corrupt and stupid. Not a controversial thesis but here is some recent evidence

1)failed missile interceptor test. First of all missile defense by way of hitting a missile with another missile or a laser is impossible, second it is just a way of shoving tax payer dollars to greedy fucks, and to fucking fail on top of it all.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-missile-defence-fails-test-drill-military-shoot-down-target-north-korea-a8188236.html
this is from another test from 2017 but embarrassing reasoning http://www.defensenews.com/naval/2017/07/24/sailor-error-led-to-failed-us-navy-ballistic-missile-intercept-test/

2)America is behind on hypersonic missiles and can’t even launch their prototypes during tests, they simply do not have the brain power and discipline and selflessness to make advanced weapons
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/air-force-hypersonic-missile-test-fails-to-launch-from-b-52/ar-BB1fmDhE

3) U.S navy ships crashing because of incompetence and overwork of crews and fucking touch screen ship steering, https://militarytruth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/The-Navy-installed-touch-screen-steering-systems-to-save-money.-Ten-sailors-paid-with-their-lives..pdf you can’t make this shit up

RIP those who lost their lives, though they be Americans they deserve better.

The U.S empire is over, the end.

So South Africa’s population is expected to get younger in 2050?

Amd India’s too? How does that go with falling fertility, and India’s aging population? The southern states are already below 2.1.

If Indian cognitive elites are so smart, why is India a lot worse run than East Asian states?

Socialism vs caste system. Chinese are more equal and meritocratic and Indian smart caste simply doesn’t care about the underlings. Indian rich live very nice.

Reading a lot of horror stories about inflation dooming us all, and indeed CPI is above 4%.

And yet 10 year Treasury sells for glorious 1.55%. Either our Financial Wizards want to lose a lot of money, or something doesn’t add up. And yes Fed is running $120 billion/month QE but that’s been stable for months as far as i know.

Most of their smart fraction is working in American hospitals, tech companies and universities.

Do Indian rich never leave their house? That doesn’t sound too appealing to me.

When killer drones get small and cheap enough Gates and Bezos and Zuckerberg will to have to live under ground 24/7. The future does not completely suck!

Either our Financial Wizards want to lose a lot of money, or something doesn’t add up.

USD is simply one part of global issues with banking and currencies. Russia is selling USD assets: (1)

• What are they going to buy?
• Will the RUB go up versus global trade currencies? If so, RUB denominated oil revenue will decrease because of the unfavorable F/X change.

EUR is much much worse than USD. China’s RMB is almost certainly worse than USD, once the penalty for State Owned Enterprise bad debt is factored in.

“In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.” — Desiderius Erasmus

PEACE 😇
__________

(1) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-reserves-idUSKCN2DF1R9

missed the edit by 2 sec and left a superfluous “to” in the middle of my second to last sentence.

: (

* Alex Tabarrok observed that it is “depressing” that you’d have done better investing in Dogecoin this year than in Pfizer. I think this is a function of (1) vaccines being priced in, and (2) populism was never going to allow Big Pharma to extract significant profits from Corona vaccines, so furthermore, it was never even going to be worth much in the first place. In fact, pharma as a whole not only underperformed Dogecoin or crypto, but even the stock market as a whole. If the vaccines were created to “enrich” Big Pharma, as conspiracy people claim, they sure were not very competent at the “enrichment” part.

It is priced in and “not allowed to extract significant profits” because the way vaccines are imposed and marketed, with as much bad news as good news being propagated, is intentionally divisive thru physical segregation and political polarization. Before that, everyone has been used to losing much of economic and social rights, and the structural social-distancing imposed since the lockdowns (The “international travel not bouncing back” is a good example – year-long border closures and the vaccine passport ensure that a good portion give up their dreams of ever leaving the country)

Whoever going beyond being a black-and-white antivaxxer can see Big Pharma not as the ends, but one of the means. As a Russian who hasn’t been subject to serious lockdowns after the initial burst last March-May and whose prime vaccine is a state effort, our host don’t really see the plot.

The urban young generation is “lying low” (躺平), like the Japanese youth before them.

This is actually related to the predominant employment type: in the 70s heydays, and even up to now, Japan had a rigid system of life-long employment security with career progress based on seniority for the middle class (I’ll assume the working class is close to that, but being more flexible). There was definitely long hours of overwork, but you could at least have a drink at the end of the day while being a breadwinner for stable families.

Come the ’90 crash and the liberalization of labor markets – part-time and freelance (“freeter”) jobs now absorb a significant part of the workforce if not being predominant. Irregular hours and earning barely enough for convenience store food and rent mean eating and sleeping irregularly, bury yourself in otaku pursuits, and have no means for raising kids.

Dengism is this, but with everything played up to Randian levels. There have only been a small contingent of really secure labor, while everyone else races to the bottom.

Blinky Bill posted an interview with Nabiullina, Russian Central Banker.

She noted that to derisk, she wanted to reduce currency holdings in Central Bank portfolio. At this time, it means increase gold reserves.

Effectively, as dollar is eliminated, euro and yuan will take its place alongside with gold. This makes sense because EU and China are Russian trade partners and US is not. Russia doesn’t need USD because Russia doesn’t do much trade with US. It makes no sense for Russia to hold useless dollars.

In reality, Reserve Currency is an obsolete Boomer concept. If in like 1970’s if Angola wanted to trade with Mongolia and didn’t know relative prices, reserve currency was helpful. But since the 80’s at least there was such thing as Internet and fast electronic currency trading.

Whatever currency trading and hedging tools are there for the dollar either already exist for any currency pair or can be developed easily. There is no need for USD or any other currency as middleman. In the past, management of multiple currencies was complicated, today its algorithmic numbers on a computer.

You don’t need reserve currency anymore. Just currency of your trading partners, and hedge your prices and contracts accordingly. So save USD for countries that trade with US, no need for it to be global. And Russia doesn’t really needed until trade with US become significant.

I’ve only been in Gujarat and New Delhi about a decade ago, in my limited experience they live in nice walled villas and drive to gleaming technoparks to work. They drive by people literally living in shipping containers on the side of the highway.

Never been to China, so can’t say how things are done over there.

it amazes me that the powers-that-be across the world and over time never seem to see the danger in masses of their young men having nothing to lose

You forgot the superpowered mystery drone that violated US airspace, scouted critical infrastructure, and escaped not one but two helicopters after a 70 mile chase in Arizona last February:

FBI hunting souped-up drone that air-trolled a border patrol chopper

https://dronedj.com/2021/05/24/fbi-hunting-souped-up-drone-that-air-trolled-a-border-patrol-chopper/

New info surfaces on mysterious Tucson ‘high-powered’ drone

https://dronedj.com/2021/06/02/new-info-surfaces-on-mysterious-tucson-high-powered-drone/

Never mind all the other mystery drones trolling US nuclear plants, destroyers off San Diego, and THAAD installations on Guam.

She noted that to derisk, she wanted to reduce currency holdings in Central Bank portfolio. At this time, it means increase gold reserves.

Effectively, as dollar is eliminated, euro and yuan will take its place alongside with gold. This makes sense because EU and China are Russian trade partners and US is not. Russia doesn’t need USD because Russia doesn’t do much trade with US. It makes no sense for Russia to hold useless dollars.

Gold is a physical commodity. While it is a “store of value”, very few deals are priced in Troy Ounces of Gold. There are all sorts of expenses, overhead, and delays associated with physical rather than electronic transactions.

The Euro (EUR) makes USD look like a paragon of virtue. Their interest rates are even more negative than the U.S. and the ECB is effectively hamstring by German insistence on inflexible Austerity economics that massively distorts intra-EU trade.

Valuation for Chinese Yuan (RMB) is opaque, uncertain, and therefore risky. For example: (1)

-4- The amount of debt in China is massive and the amount is unknown.

The total amount of China debt is unknown with S&P estimating the amount not reported by local communities and banks being over $6 trillion:

China may be sitting on a hidden debt pile of as much as 40 trillion yuan ($6 trillion), concealed off-balance-sheet by the country’s local governments, according to research from S&P Global Ratings.

Until valuation is more transparent, there is too much uncertainty to place large amounts of wealth reserves in RMB denominated assets.

PEACE 😇
__________

(1) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/11-reasons-chinas-economy-failing-terrible-shape-never-trust-data-coming-china/

Time to reply all the other posts!

America Sucks and is stupid the American military is criminally incompetent and unbelievably corrupt and stupid. Not a controversial thesis but here is some recent evidence

RIP those who lost their lives, though they be Americans they deserve better.

The U.S empire is over, the end.

Crypto-imperialist mourning the loss of “their” country’s dominance.

Socialism vs caste system. Chinese are more equal and meritocratic and Indian smart caste simply doesn’t care about the underlings. Indian rich live very nice.

Culturally China also had a caste-like division of the “Four occupations”: gentry-scholars, peasantry, artisans and merchants (the order’s rationale is apparent to any traditionalist). But this had never been as rigid as India or even Japan’s castes. The gentry class fused with merchants and the peasantry with artisans: rich merchants buying bureaucratic titles, scholars owning land and making money, and labor moving between the fields in peak seasons and the workshops off-season.
This goes a long way in explaining deep-seated cultural differences.

(Japan industrialized after the caste system fell apart in late bakufu)

Reading a lot of horror stories about inflation dooming us all, and indeed CPI is above 4%.

And yet 10 year Treasury sells for glorious 1.55%. Either our Financial Wizards want to lose a lot of money, or something doesn’t add up. And yes Fed is running $120 billion/month QE but that’s been stable for months as far as i know.

Asset price inflation and people hoarding money because of having their normalcy upended by lockdowns and the false-reopening?
We’re just getting started.

USD is simply one part of global issues with banking and currencies. Russia is selling USD assets: (1)

• What are they going to buy?
• Will the RUB go up versus global trade currencies? If so, RUB denominated oil revenue will decrease because of the unfavorable F/X change.

EUR is much much worse than USD. China’s RMB is almost certainly worse than USD, once the penalty for State Owned Enterprise bad debt is factored in.

This is why the central banks are impatient to get CBDCs set up – they can write-off bad debts with a currency reset.

You don’t need reserve currency anymore. Just currency of your trading partners, and hedge your prices and contracts accordingly. So save USD for countries that trade with US, no need for it to be global.

Reserve currencies are based on the concept of backing – having an anchor in assets which mostly retain their value in the medium term. In the olden days, per Mises’ regression theorem, valuable goods such as precious metals become the reserve currency, and then states minted those. Due to wars and Keynesianism everyone went off the gold standard and onto Bretton Woods, which is backed by USD priced in gold. Vietnam led to USD going off gold standard and everyone followed suit, leading to freely-floating currencies either backed by economic strength, other commodities (petrodollar), or Uncle Sam’s guns (in the case of USD). CBDCs will be backed by banning any other means of payment and controlling channels of distribution, like how the Eastern Bloc did it.

You don’t apparently see the point of reserve currencies, so I have to explain all these to you.

Gold is a physical commodity. While it is a “store of value”, very few deals are priced in Troy Ounces of Gold. There are all sorts of expenses, overhead, and delays associated with physical rather than electronic transactions.

The Euro (EUR) makes USD look like a paragon of virtue. Their interest rates are even more negative than the U.S. and the ECB is effectively hamstring by German insistence on inflexible Austerity economics that massively distorts intra-EU trade.

Valuation for Chinese Yuan (RMB) is opaque, uncertain, and therefore risky.

Until valuation is more transparent, there is too much uncertainty to place large amounts of wealth reserves in RMB denominated assets.

See my CBDC comment above. (China-bashing goes nowhere when the US and Europe have the potential to sink even further)

it amazes me that the powers-that-be across the world and over time never seem to see the danger in masses of their young men having nothing to lose

They’ll either clamor for UBI, quit the system or throw themselves at the riot cops. Compliance, flight or fight.

When killer drones get small and cheap enough Gates and Bezos and Zuckerberg will to have to live under ground 24/7. The future does not completely suck!

If we still had supply chains for killer drones.

“I learned to live simply.”
– Anna Ahkmatova

Reserve currencies are based on the concept of backing – having an anchor in assets which mostly retain their value in the medium term.

I recommend collectible stamps over USD, or Euro, RMB for that matter then.

Fictional foreign assets that you can’t even access if you get sanctioned make no sense in the modern world.

Here is the rate at which we are creating USD backed financial assets.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO

Euro, RMB, etc are likely following the same path.

The good news is this plot is consistent and predictable. The bad news is unless you trade in USD, you know for a fact that if you purchased a $trillion of those assets today, there will be like $10 trillion of that printed next year. Unless you plan on increasing your shipments to US by $9 trillion, that money is useless to you, and that $1 trillion that you already have is sort of useless too unless you import $1 trillion worth of goods from US. Which you won’t as US always runs trade deficit. And if you want to buy something strategic, even if Congress allows (and they won’t, national security reasons), people who just got fresh $9 trillion will outbid your pathetic $1 trillion.

Clearest example is China. They spent a generation working insanely hard to accumulate $1 trillion in reserves. It was their life. And then Federal Reserve showed up and printed $4 trillion in a week with a few keystrokes.

Trollolol. Too bad Chinese. You think China will win a bidding war vs Federal Reserve and associated banks? LOL no. Their $1 trillion is worthless, and they can’t even spend it domestically. China wasted a life of one generation of their people on imaginary numbers that can be created in unlimited quantity at will.

At least China trades with US, but it won’t last long. Once US sanctions start, that $1 trillion will become completely worthless.

Again, i recommend collectible stamps over currencies of non trading partners. Russians understood that a while back. Rest of the world is slower on the uptake, but they will catch on. Only fools will hold on to reserve currency without trading component.

They don’t care. It’s a very dog eat dog world there.

I said “reserve currencies”, not “exchange and trade currencies” (but you are right if you speak in term of pure fiat)

Collectible stamps, or physical commodities you can barter (precious metals foremost, raw materials second). Cryptos possibly.

Chartalist theories (domestically) or exchange currencies (for international trade) besides, it is ultimately real production and flows of goods and service that matters.

At least China trades with US, but it won’t last long. Once US sanctions start, that $1 trillion will become completely worthless.

Sure. China loses that trillion of scrap paper, the US loses some or maybe most of its good imports, and the World loses supply chains and will head towards economic collapse worse than the Great Depression. You are talking about trade embargoes between the 2 largest economies on the Globe, one never tried on the Soviets since the 70s.

The collateral damage will be great – practically an economic nuclear strike, and a MAD at it.

http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-classic-in-praise-of-sikhs-the-coolest-warrior-tribe-around/

The bullet that hit Guru Garanth Sahib on 5th June at 6am. This is the bullet that all Sikhs need to remember. This is fired at you all. #NeverForget1984 pic.twitter.com/XcgnRmqAUx

— Amaan (@amaanbali) June 3, 2021

Dear Bill P, I would now like to answer to your comment, sorry that I’m two weeks late, but better late than never.

And this living simply did not impede her from creating beautiful poetry and raising her son in manner that would allow him producing an outstanding contribution to ethnography (ethnogenesis through passionarity).

Being rich and comfortable is good, staying human is better. If you need to choose, do it wisely.

[MORE]

raising her son in manner that would allow him producing an outstanding contribution to ethnography (ethnogenesis through passionarity).

https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/tag/lev-gumilev/
“Lev Gumilev’s Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere (which, for those of you who don’t know, is an influential work in neo-Eurasianist thought). It certainly isn’t light reading, and is more than a little odd. The idea that ethnic groups (ethnoi) are a product of an upsurge of people who have a mutation giving them a greater capacity to convert energy into work (passionarnost’) is weird enough. The idea that this energy comes from the animate matter of the ‘biosphere’ and also from some sort of mysterious and undefined ‘cosmic radiation’ is downright kooky. At least old Lev was smart enough to realize that the ‘noosphere’ [derived from the Greek word ‘nous’, meaning mind] was a load of nonsense, but otherwise I can’t say that he convinced me of his theories. I sympathize with those who think that they’re pseudo-scientific gobbledegook. ”

I can never get away from the impression that 95% of irrationalist Rightism is a load of horseshit. Everyone can cook up stories like these.

Not a reply to your understanding, but speaking of Buddhism:
I’ve been thinking if the prevalence of Sufism in Turkey and India are because of these people’s (cultural or actual) ancestors being Buddhists. Turkic types in Central Asia had been heavily Buddhist, and the cultural ethos acquired from Buddhism stayed even after embracing Islam, spreading into Persia and Anatolia after adopting a Sufi guise…

It’s all orgones, all the way down.

Gumilyov was a poet, just like both his parents were. His theory is poetic. This doesn’t mean that he was incorrect in his observations.

He correctly described the ethnogenesis and passionarity, but he could not find a convincing explanation of why the ethnogenetic impulse appeared and how it was produced. His “biosphere induced” “mutation ” hypothesis might today be more adequately phrased in terms of epigenetic influence on psychological types and behavioral patterns.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33798973/

Gumilyov was a genius and a seer, seers find a path forward and then “Soviet Engineers ” fill in the details and streamline the narrative so it could be taught in universities.

https://lurkmore.to/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F

🙂

Gumilyov was not a Rightist at all. He was a Soviet ethnographer. Biosphere and Noosphere as states of evolution of living matter were developed by Vernadsky and widely accepted in Soviet scientific circles.

As I replied above to melanf, the fact that they missed crucial elements to describe the underlying mechanism, does not invalidate their observations.

The idea that ethnic groups (ethnoi) are a product of an upsurge of people who have a mutation giving them a greater capacity to convert energy into work (passionarnost’) is weird enough. The idea that this energy comes from the animate matter of the ‘biosphere’ and also from some sort of mysterious and undefined ‘cosmic radiation’ is downright kooky.

I have read a number of Gumilev’s books when i was like 10 (that’s what you get for growing up in librarian family) and that’s not how i remember it at all.

‘Passionarnost’ is an idea adopted from biology (those logistics growth curves that all life follows – steady state, exponential growth to fill the niche, steady state, decline) and applied to culture. I think that was a pretty clever approach and its still valid to this day.

As for energy, ‘cosmic radiation’, and ‘biosphere’… Err… Seriously? Gumilev studied Eurasian nomadic tribes (Mongols, Turkic tribes etc) and how rainfalls, draughts, solar radiation etc were impacting nomadic migration patterns.

In a modern world where if you are hungry you can buy a potato from Japan or whatever Gumilev has less relevance. But in middle ages and earlier, climate had massive impact on both settled cultures and nomadic migration. How is that ‘kooky’? And yes, for people of those times energy came from organic source – horse. Of course. And horse ate animate matter – grass. Grass was impacted by sun radiation and rainfall. How is that controversial in any way i don’t understand.

…Although the official Soviet authorities rejected his ideas and banned most of his monographs…

Doesn’t Dugin work with his Eurasianism? If Gumilev rejected European influence and praised the Mongols, that fits Dugins work, afaik. From a modern perspective, that’s a right-wing idea.

Gumilyov did not extend this ethnological ecumenism to the medieval Jews, whom he regarded as a parasitic, international urban class that had dominated the Khazars and subjected the early East Slavs to the “Khazar Yoke”. This last phrase he adapted from the traditional term “Tatar Yoke” for the Mongol domination of medieval Russia, a term Gumilyov rejected for he did not regard the Mongol conquest as a necessarily negative event.

There is more to Reality than meets the eye.

Gumilyov had to find a “material ” cause to explain his observations, otherwise he would have been accused of idealism by the official Marxist Sovok thought police. Therefore, he came up with the idea of “mutation ” that would have occurred somehow in large groups of people simultaneously at the same time. He wrote himself that this is something that should be worked upon and investigated more and that he himself found his theory somewhat lacking.

The notion of epigenetics and large genomic data analysis are relatively recent knowledge. I would even argue that genomic data science is not yet sufficiently mature to yield completely convincing results. We need an AI / Deep Learning approach to complete genomic data science and be able to describe dynamic patterns of genetic information expression in human populations.

Perhaps we would find some patterns leading to passionarity and others to decay and downfall of human populations creative potential. Then we would perhaps look back and say: this looks quite like Gumilyov imagined it. What a genius this man was!

🙂

Using the famous meme as a template:

Gumilyov did nothing wrong…

The simple fact that Russian Westernizers and their post-Khazar allies hate him and disparage him, is proof enough that Gumilyov’s insights are valuable.

Well, to be fair to his detractors, Gumilyov had to venture into the speculative area of environmental influences upon the human psychotypes and the impact of the psychotype upon culture, religion and social organizations. One of the questions he tried to answer was: why and how minor and obscure ethnic groups (Slavs, Arabs, Turks…) end up suddenly swarming apparently out of nowhere, occupying huge areas and assimilating more advanced and well established neighbors.

He explained it as a sudden modification of the behavior of these populations that made a large proportion of them for a time into “passionaires” (or would it be “passionaries” in English?). This modification in behavior was correlated with a change in psychotype. Given that he operated into a Marxist materialistic framework, he had to posit a material cause, e.g., a “mutation ” that suddenly changed the genomic pool of a given population. How this might happen, he was unsure of and was vague about.

Today he would have probably just said: Epigenetics !

And everyone would have applauded (without really understanding) …

🙂

Using epigenetics to explain mass differences in psychologies seems like an empty theory to me. All things are possible, but then again, all things are possible.

Only proper that he got cucked by a Chad Dag.

LOL

If you gave one population a regular dose of lead in their food to grow up with, while their clones in another population did not, they would exhibit quite divergent psychologies. Technically speaking, epigenetics isn’t any different, via triggers on methylation that alter expression of genes which affect neurotransmitter profile, which will affect psychology and thus personality.

Vodka can provide an accessible experiment on this.

why and how minor and obscure ethnic groups (Slavs, Arabs, Turks…) end up suddenly swarming apparently out of nowhere, occupying huge areas and assimilating more advanced and well established neighbors.

Did he have a comment on the Genghis Khan process of going up to a mountain top and then after taking his army in the direction the Sky God instructed him at?

Maybe the guys at Cambridge and Harvard think this is too silly to give a minute of discussion to but there must be some nuanced views.

Russian Government to move further towards “traditional values”

New National Security Strategy:

To neutralize the threats associated with the distortion of history, with the destruction of basic moral and ethical norms, with attempts to introduce alien ideals and values in the field of education, culture, religion, the Strategy formulates a new strategic national priority “Protection of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, culture and historical memory “.

https://rg.ru/2021/05/31/patrushev-raskryl-neizvestnye-podrobnosti-zhenevskoj-vstrechi-s-sallivanom.html

from June 1, a law comes into force, which introduces the concept of “educational activities”. It is designed to regulate the conduct of various lectures, courses, the organization of presentations, as well as the creation of educational portals. The document spells out the directions of educational activities, in particular, “the dissemination of the spiritual and moral values ​​of the peoples of the Russian Federation”, “the development of the ability of creative self-expression” and others. It also regulates who exactly can engage in educational activities. Educators must have at least two years of work experience or participate in the implementation of socially significant initiatives. They will also be obliged to publish all their legal data and work on the basis of contracts. Non-profit organizations recognized as foreign agents will be completely prohibited from engaging in education. As specified in the State Duma, the law is intended “to protect schoolchildren and students from anti-Russian propaganda presented under the guise of educational activities.”

Honored Jurist of Russia Ivan Solovyov comments: “The state tightly controls part of education (the schoolds), but through other supposedly educational activities it is easier to influence the younger generation. First of all, traditional values ​​will be subject to protection: history, family, peaceful existence and development of different religions, cultural potential, achievements in science and technology ”.

https://www.mk.ru/economics/2021/05/30/chto-izmenitsya-s-1-iyunya-shtrafy-za-rezinu-kontrol-cen.html

The US has had plenty of accidents and disasters before with the military – the Mark 14 torpedo, results of the Bikini Atoll tests, etc.

The empire will likely endure this reasonably.

Is there an update or followup post for this?

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/afrotriumphalism

Based. But if you dislike Putin and hate westernizers, what do you believe in?

Agreed, but the normal epigenetics anecdote seems to be along the lines of “my ancestors worked very hard as slaves, which changed my genetics, so I npw need to catch up on sleep.”

As if flapping your arms will give you, and your kids, the genes for wings.

Epigenetics as another word for magic is pretty common, unfortunately.

I believe in the biological and spiritual survival of my kin and kind. Starting with, but not limited to my own genetic lineage. See my reply to FerW on the previous open thread.

Epigenetics is the word for the environmental impact upon the expression of genetic information mediated through the modification (mainly methylation, but also supercoilng or relaxation of DNA) in utero and early childhood. As I wrote in my reply to mal above, the majority of people who hear this word have no clue what it means.

Below a nice review on the topic, see for yourself if that might perhaps explain some of the things Gumilyov has described :

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32706263/

A psychology is first and foremost the amount and balance of neurotransmitters in your brain. Do we agree?

Look, flat out you said it’s not your job to tell others what to find sacred or not.

Ie you won’t get a Dharmic state that bans cow slaughter & promotes Honor killing.

Therefore, you’re an unserious homosexual।।

4/6
The necessity for a policy & enforcement of punishment to uphold archaic Dharmic culture is critical.

Once that capability of Kshaatra is lost, the Vedas (and their interpretation) sink to lower states of consciousness. All other dharmas become mechanical or die out. pic.twitter.com/knaqnqfjbw

— Allama 1ball (@Parikramah) July 27, 2020

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

As far as i know, TNI is realist school of foreign policy funded by Nixon Foundation or something. So their thinking is dual approach – they want to do “Nixon goes to China” thing except this time, go to Russia, and get Russia to join US to contain China.

Also, as realists, they correctly understand that US Empire is expensive and contrary to US national interest. I mean, they call themselves The National Interest for a reason. As such, they dislike neocon/neoliberal/globalist vision at American expense. So they are more receptive to Putin’s multipolar international framework and live and let live approach.

But its an American Interest publication, not a Russian Interest.

At times, both interests work – arguably more so than is generally noted.

The basic TNI slant is realist, while giving space to neocon and svido views. My contention remains that there should be room for the pro-American/pro-Russian perspective. Concerning TNI:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/08042016-fuzzy-history-how-poland-saved-the-world-from-russia-analysis/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/07112016-realists-on-russia-analysis/

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/08/21/getting-real-with-the-us-foreign-policy-establishment-realists/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/25052020-what-evelyn-fakas-trey-gowdy-and-some-others-dubiously-have-in-common-oped/

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/11/slanting-against-russia-us-establishment-pastime/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/31082017-talking-russia-continued-us-foreign-policy-establishment-limits-analysis/

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/09/21/remembering-stephen-cohen/

As far as i know, TNI is realist school of foreign policy funded by Nixon Foundation or something. So their thinking is dual approach – they want to do “Nixon goes to China” thing except this time, go to Russia, and get Russia to join US to contain China.

Also, as realists, they correctly understand that US Empire is expensive and contrary to US national interest. I mean, they call themselves The National Interest for a reason. As such, they dislike neocon/neoliberal/globalist vision at American expense. So they are more receptive to Putin’s multipolar international framework and live and let live approach.

But its an American Interest publication, not a Russian Interest.

At times, both interests work – arguably more so than is generally noted.

The basic TNI slant is realist, while giving space to neocon and svido views. My contention remains that there should be room for the pro-American/pro-Russian perspective. Concerning TNI:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/08042016-fuzzy-history-how-poland-saved-the-world-from-russia-analysis/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/07112016-realists-on-russia-analysis/

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/08/21/getting-real-with-the-us-foreign-policy-establishment-realists/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/25052020-what-evelyn-fakas-trey-gowdy-and-some-others-dubiously-have-in-common-oped/

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/11/slanting-against-russia-us-establishment-pastime/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/31082017-talking-russia-continued-us-foreign-policy-establishment-limits-analysis/

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/09/21/remembering-stephen-cohen/

Not really. Even if somewhat true, that view is so reductionist as to be unhelpful. Like saying a container is foremost for storing things, therefore it has water in it, as water is a thing.

Okay, so how is information mediated in your psyche?

🙂

Bashibuzuk has collected two accusations of homosexuality in two days. At three, he wins the game.

I suggest the vodka experiment. Bashi can recommend brands, I’m sure.

What was the 2nd one?
Something I missed.
But today being homo is socially”adaptative ” as you would say.

🙂

The only one I personally drink is Russian Standard. Among the non-Russian ones, Gray Goose is good. But I agree with the Sputnik & Pogrom crew that vodka is rather a tasteless and boring alcohol. I prefer whiskey and bourbon.

Speaking of gay: Danya Milokhin, a Russian tic-tocker has become the star of the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum and will be the new face of the Sberbank advertising:

Danya Milokhin is on the right, wearing the cute skirt.

https://vz.ru/news/2021/6/2/1102400.html

What happened to rums and brandies? 🙂

You are right. I like those better than vodka too.

I was thinking ‘why has this man not set up a quasi PayPal-esque service that allows cryptos to be interchanged with real cash money (USD, RMB, EUR, RUB); a robust micro-financial system. I should be able to deposit diamonds in South Africa and get USD via crypto in Canada’. With his technical understanding and capital wealth surely it’s within reach.

I can only forge so many Nigerian death certificates to claim large sums of money as “inheritance”. And I’m not even black. It’s not like uncut diamonds where you can walk them to any jewellery chain-store in Canada, claim they were from “grandma in Israel” and get a stack of cash.

Then I remember Jack Ma, his internal ‘illegal’ Alibaba mini-bank and the soy sauce stains of crypto-currency that enabled its smooth operations across borders.

The events I see through my inebriation:

1. Tesla sells well in China
2. Chinese farmers produce most of the bitcoins out there.
3. Musk states Tesla will accept bitcoin (which will inflate or at least solidify the viability of cryptocurrency.)
4. Only non-regulated Chinese environment suffers. This is perfectly fine as the Chinese have poisoned the land from the air to the ground water tables.
5. Chinese government, not understanding that capitalism and nice western things have civilized them, decide to stamp down on crypto-businesses and mining (probably due to mental retardation from heavy metals in drinking water)
6. Musk says Tesla won’t accept BC because of “green” (or some communist shit).
7. More likely Tesla was threatened by the PRC that it will close its business if it starts to accepts BC (again after Jack Ma got a stern talking to for his secret Alibaba quasi-bank which utilized cryptos as one of many ways of moving money around).
8. A few hasty news post (in various media) shortly states that Tesla may (or may not) open a factory in Russia. Unofficial intentions and feelers, build Tesla in Russia, sell to China. Gotta maintain that 1.6 billion customer base.
9. Huge sells from mysterious wallets, dropping the price of crypto across the board.
10. Musk bitches like some 8 year old girl. Linkin Park was explicitly mentioned in a true sign of homosexuality. A random drunken tweet of illiterate pixel-based art somehow tricks twatter fags to believe it is a signal (like QAnon homos or a prostitute that thinks she’ll get an extra tip if she does the “swirl”).

I get an impression Elon Musk had the SEC crawl up his ass for manipulating stocks, but needing a fast way to make large stacks of cash he jumped to manipulating cryptos (twatter plebs will believe anything). No regulations, no criminal charges. And now he boohoos because his (lack of) statements are not making waves like they used to to bolster his secret wallets and off-shore accounts and shelf corporations. Feeding “profits” back to SpaceX and Tesla. Jack Ma and his services seem to have been shut down and no one of relative scale can assist.

I recall John Carmack (Armadillo Aerospace, ID Software, Oculus) talking about Elon Musk and how he nearly bankrupted himself at one point trying to get his first SpaceX rocket off the ground (after many failures). A man like that is a true, blue, balls-deep gambler.

The things that I see impact pricing of cryptos:

-If China (primarily) or G7 nations begin to regulate or prevent crypto trading. Or worse, tax capital gain. This is probably the largest impact, it’s ability to move money from nation to nation and almost tax free made cryptos sexy for the young and hungry.

-The volume of trades based on black market transactions (drugs, organs, counterfeits, firearms, diamonds, etc.)

-How much A-rab money Gulf Mohammedans are pumping through Indian intermediaries. It’s illegal in most states but not for the Indian migrant force that has its own web of connections back home.

-Whales, hodlers, and other rejects selling in bulk.

-Activity by nations excluded by the financial system (Iran, North Korea and friends); I imagine if Hamas is using cryptocurrency the Israelis will be soon shutting it down with a vengeance even if it creates a hiccup in its illegal diamond and organ trade.

-Elon Musk and his squad of desperate no-high-value-skills legion surging from one coin to the next

-The number of exchanges that trick normies (mostly women) that cryptos are just like stocks.

The future of crypto:
As for all the 56-IQ fags who think crypto (that we see in today’s form) will last well into the future know this…. all our CPU infrastructure is based on MOSFETs (x86 and ARM) and we are coming close to its limits. NVIDIA is making moves for a GPU-powered computer which means the big boys (Intel, ARM designers) need to make a bigger move. CPU pipelines are so thin and so close to each other that electrons literally will quantum tunnel to adjacent pipelines; when enough of them do this there is your bit-flip and thus your error and thus why there is extensive bloat ON EVERY STACK in error-checking and cycle-redundancy checks and prediction engines and error-correcting RAM and and and and and….

There is great potential in photonic and quantum CPUs but as of yet there is no Intel-like entity to build the global infrastructure to allow these CPUs to be made cheaply. All computer science is based on this foundation. All cryptos are based on this computer science. I shouldn’t need to extrapolate more than this to get through to people. Use crypto, make stacks, start making businesses that generate revenue. Hodling, it’s what I tell my girlfriend to do to my balls when i nut in her.

One of the questions he tried to answer was: why and how minor and obscure ethnic groups (Slavs, Arabs, Turks…) end up suddenly swarming apparently out of nowhere, occupying huge areas and assimilating more advanced and well established neighbors.

Peter Turchin’s cliodynamics answers your question well, here is a good rundown https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/to-overthrow-an-empire/

It is also important that the leader comes from outside the social system. It is extremely difficult for one of the tribal leaders to unify the tribes by imposing himself as an overarching authority. The other tribal leaders are liable to say: why you and not me? This quickly leads to bickering and things falling apart. This is why great unifiers, such as Muhammad, Chinggis Khan, and Paul Muad’Dib, were relative outsiders (but at the same time, they were attuned to the culture of the people they ended up leading).

A group with high Assabiyyah unites behind a figure with such traits and applies their Assabiyyah to the surrounding population.

Gumilyov is an original thinker in his own right, I hadn’t heard of him before this thread. the idea of capacity to convert energy into work being a ethnic trait that factors into who gets conquered is lost on most Westerners who will point towards things like ethics, intelligence, god, genetics, germs, steel etc. Though some of these things explain sluggishness, they do not prevent future sluggishness or explain past passionarnost’. Vigor/morale is behind success.

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/transhumanism-2/#comment-4700719

Social adaptation probably has its limitations against the limitations of reality – not all which is malleable to social conception, but yes, quite a powerful rank on our new caste system of reality.

I think that an awful lot of faith is placed in the dissipating powers of porn, drugs, and other will killing distractions. And seemingly not without some justification judging by the rather pathetic state of most manhood. What we have today is far better than the old bread and circuses.

Just wait until mass market VR porn is rolled out. I predict a discouraging number of males retreating to a fake world of bonking CGI porn stars all day rather than facing the system grinding them down.

An ugh emote is needed, Unz.

The first one with growing leashed tyranosaurus is good and truthful, but this sort of thing probably has roots reaching year 1992 when GOP had huge trouble with another hugely popular political outsider billionaire Ross Perrot catching large parts of previous Reagan/Bush voters, while opposing NAFTA trade agreement. Leaving aside Trump’s petty, vulgar and noveau riche type personal character peculiarities aside, he could be called Ross Perot 2.0, just the one who went into Republican primaries, instead of running as independent.

Perhaps inviting Danya to the SPEF, an event where Putin himself made a public appearance, was a subtle signal to the “Western Partners ” that RusFed is looking for a compromise before the Putin – Biden meeting. And if that was the signal, then it was well received, with the Denmark stopping the construction of the Polish – Norwegian pipeline, which was to be an alternative to Nord Stream 2, on completely ridiculous (pseudo)environmental grounds.

What do you mean by “psyche”?

In FUSSR there was a belief that answering a question with another question is typically Odessite (i.e., influenced by the Jewish way of communicating). Moreover, I would like to remind you that you were the one who wrote that epigenetics cannot explain differences in psychology.

Therefore I expect that you already know what psyche is. But if you express opinions about potential epigenetic influence on psychological characteristics of populations or lack thereof, while you still need an explaining what psyche is, then I am probably wasting my time exchanging with you.

Be well…

Just fall back to gold and silver when the hammer falls on cryptos or the lights go out

People use words in different ways, so, before I answer a complex question, I prefer to clarify what it is they mean by the question.

I have no idea what your rant is about, but I’ll reflect on it and see what it informs me about you.

I agree that words are subjective and that the topic that we discussed (starting with my post about Akhmatova and her son) is a complex one. It didn’t stop you from writing that abrupt changes in behavioral patterns of populations cannot be correlated with epigenetic modification of the genomic expression of the individuals who belong to these populations.

Here is your comment:

Using epigenetics to explain mass differences in psychologies seems like an empty theory to me. All things are possible, but then again, all things are possible.

From your comment, I derive that you have a good grasp of the following concepts : “epigenetics” and “mass différences in psychology “.

Please correct me if I am wrong, that is if you did write this comment of yours without having an adequate understanding of “epigenetics ” and “mass psychology “.

My comment 88 was addressed to Triteleia Laxa as a follow-up on our exchange started with comment # 50. For some reason, it was detached from the rest of the exchange.

Sequel: “Afromediocrity”

Albeit with the inevitable constriction of gibs, these low IQ places will become rather socially darwinistic. Afrotriumph is possible – in a very long term future.

There is great potential in photonic and quantum CPUs but as of yet there is no Intel-like entity to build the global infrastructure to allow these CPUs to be made cheaply.

Seems like a job for a large state with a lot of money and tech ambitions… Wonder who it could be…

While the USA’s ruling trash are up to the job of fixing this, it still appears the US dollar is still the least worst for parking a lot of your assets. Other potentially good ones like Switzerland and its franc are just too small, you covered some of the problems with gold for this purpose.

The news about the Russian sovereign wealth fund dumping all its dollars is interesting, but it’s only $186 billion to begin with, around 4% of the nation’s estimated annual GDP per Wikipedia. Absent other evidence, I assume it’s because of the malintent of the increasingly Jewish US ruling class, they can’t hide their centuries long desire to damage or destroy “Russia.” And that’s not counting how “Putlier” and “Russia” convenient excuses for things like the Democratic party apparatus having terrible computer security or being so wretched they inspire people to leak damning information about it.

I’m starting to get the impression that you’re more interested in “gotchas” than discussion.

I have a reasonable understanding of the concepts you mention. I am just waiting for you to clarify what you mean by “psyche” as it is word used differently a lot. I am also confused as to why you are so reluctant. It reinforces my negative impression.

No expeditionary military facing peer or near peer adversaries can continue to be effective in that domain with the sort of social engineering that’s happening to the US military right now. See the “Proud Legions” chapter of This Kind of War by T.R. Fehrenbach on how the US army so quickly lost its core competencies between the end of of WWII and the beginning of the Korean War.

Perhaps it will be adequate for a civil war in the US, the other type of military is focused inwards, and it should be able to continue to “break things and kill people” in the Third World absent intervention from Russia etc. for some time. But that’s not quite the same thing as remaining the world’s hegemon unless it starts to openly threaten the use of nukes, and that doesn’t work well against nuclear armed adversaries, and would certainly change its reputation and the nature of its “soft power.” See how well the PRC’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy is working abroad, or not.

The Bikini Atoll test was an accident in the fusion device working too well, at the time we didn’t have enough lithium-6 for it to create tritium during the explosion process, so it had a lot of lithium-5 that was thought to be mostly or entirely inert. Which turned out not to be the case.

We need some positive energy in here।।

Ano4 you’re cancelled from being Dharmic.
Imagine trying ੨ find esoteric meaning in faggotry

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

Slowly but surely, America is becoming a better place.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/opinion/Naomi-Osaka-ambition-women.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/upshot/jobs-rising-wages.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Alright, for me psyche / self is just a concept created by humans to describe the integrated set of perceptual and cognitive processes as well as their emotional appreciation.

That a person is both conscious of and not conscious too?

No expeditionary military facing peer or near peer adversaries can continue to be effective in that domain with the sort of social engineering that’s happening to the US military right now.

That’s what Elon Musk’s Starlink/Skynet is for. Total battlefield dominance via direct command and control satellite groups and drone swarms. Good luck jamming those – you won’t, at least not from Earth surface.

US military is preparing for war with very little human soldiers, and correctly so. The only question is of “human rights” formality – can’t legally have machines do all the killing, some human must click “approve” button on a computer screen prior to attack to make it legal.

And who is best to click “approve” button as much as possible in a genocidal war scenario? An experienced soldier who has seen violence in combat first hand and has some compassion? Or a transgender person with deep psychological issues who treats warfare as video game and has been brainwashed to hate “fascist” Russia from birth?

So yes, that’s a near peer conflict that US is gearing up for, and the strategy for fighting it is far from irrational. People who don’t see it are stuck on the last war and history shows fighting the last war is always a deadly mistake.

Seems like a dangerous strategy. As in, the transgender person with deep psychological issues gets immediately gangstalked on the internet by Russians. A cheap but effective tactic for such people.

Something though tells me those hypersonic missiles might not be for… earthly targets, then.

Either way, the US has to be decapitated and dismantled by the end of the century if humanity is not to deserve an extermination.

All information flows including the ones we are not conscious of at the individual level.

Ok, great. I have 3 points. I will repeat my original post below as well.

Using epigenetics to explain mass differences in psychologies seems like an empty theory to me. All things are possible, but then again, all things are possible.

1. Epigenetics faces an epistemological problem when explaining mass psychologies. You really have no way of testing your hypothesis and a particular epigenetic explanation will always remain just one possible hypothesis among “all” potentials.

2. Most theories therefore, to be compelling, have to substitute out evidence and replace them with superficial connections. Or maybe they don’t “have” to, but then I can’t otherwise explain why they all seem to be of the “the land became dark and lost its green, so epigenetics means that their personalities became dark and lost their green” variety.

There is little reason to think the two should match up, yet, in these theories, they always do. I consider this astonishing similarity, between external factor and that mediated through changed genes, to reveal that there’s no there there, and this adds musculature to my first point.

3. I believe that your psyche extends far beyond the limits of your body. Call me kooky, but I am confident in my own experiences. Obviously I do not expect your agreement on this, but my perception is what my perception is.

Interesting:

In search of the first mosque in France

From 1915 to 1919, the Bois de Vincennes hosted a mosque, attached to the hospital dedicated to the Muslim soldiers of the First World War.

Someone didn’t read the linked “Proud Legions” chapter; get back to us after you do that.

Someone also doesn’t know anything about satellite communications; your scenario doesn’t require a Starlink scale network, and signals from satellites aren’t very powerful when they reach the ground. Although I suppose a huge network would make current peer adversaries’ anti-sat capabilities moot.

Someone needs to fill in the blanks about how “drone swarms” will actually get to combat zones; insert “… and professionals discuss logistics” which includes scale, how big will these drone fleets need to be? Which unless your streets are paved with gold also includes where they’ll return to, maintenance, etc., and how these parts of the system avoid retaliatory attack from peer or near peer adversaries. We’re not talking about killing a general from a Third World country visiting a really trashed one we still have lots of assets in, that’s not in a position to do literal tit for tat retaliation.

I’d also be interested to know how well non-stealth drones will survive against, once again, peer or near peer adversaries. They get a much stronger vote than Third World “goat herders.” As Svevlad implies, they can mount serious intelligence operations to reveal who and how to cause the self-destruction of barely functional “transgender persons with deep psychological issues who treat warfare as video game.”

Continuous counterstrike capability development is the only reason why Russian cities are not burning today like in Iraq or Libya.

In 2002 US withdrew from ABM treaty and by 2006 proclaimed nuclear primacy, that is, ability to launch first strike and survive retaliation from Russia. But US got bogged down in Iraq and Financial Crisis in 2008. The tie eating Georgian performed below expectations and war was canceled. That tie sacrificed itself but saved a lot of people.

In 2009, pesky Russians started work on Sarmat, 2011 – Bulava, 2012 – Kh-101/102, in 2015 Calibr made a splash in Syria, 2018 – Avangard/Kinzhal/Poseidon etc.

There’s always something. By the time Starlink and the drones are ready, Nuklon should be as well. As long as Russians can keep up, war will keep getting canceled.

Someone also doesn’t know anything about satellite communications; your scenario doesn’t require a Starlink scale network, and signals from satellites aren’t very powerful when they reach the ground. Although I suppose a huge network would make current peer adversaries’ anti-sat capabilities moot.

Starlink does what, 200 Mbs/s right now? Once fully rolled out its bandwidth will support a huge drone army. And a very large part of that army won’t be on the ground.

Someone needs to fill in the blanks about how “drone swarms” will actually get to combat zones

Are you familiar with a little thing called Starship?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/the-us-military-is-starting-to-get-really-interested-in-starship/

I mean, Ars Technica is trying to present it as something new but the purpose of Starship has been obvious from the start. Its a military bomber, or “cargo delivery” vehicle. Can drop drones or precision rods, doesn’t matter.

and professionals discuss logistics” which includes scale, how big will these drone fleets need to be?

1,000’s of tons.

Which unless your streets are paved with gold

Welcome to the Pentagon, golden toilets too.

where they’ll return to, maintenance, etc., and how these parts of the system avoid retaliatory attack from peer or near peer adversaries.

Next round of Starships, from the middle of the ocean, or the middle of Oklahoma, doesn’t matter will deliver spare parts and supplies, and bombs/rods to the opposition.

You can retaliate of course, but those Starships are made from cheap steel and launched from a cornfield on Mexican border. It is a very ‘Russian’, or post-apocalyptic design approach. You can blow up a few steel tanks or a cornfield here and there, but it won’t stop them from coming.

You will need your own space infrastructure that can keep up with the US, but that’s a different discussion.

I wonder if this is typical of the mainstream French media coverage of this kind of issue? It feels quite grounded compared to coverage of similar topics in British papers.

It seems like this chap is now almost a household name for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Blanke

Some wise words from Ch’an master Linchi. These words go completely against the grain of modern life, especially in the West. Seeming so innocuous, they are subversive and revolutionary. If you tried to live this way in the West you would meet tremendous pushback from everyone. Yet evidently, these words also went against the grain in ancient China. Humans in all ages suffer from the same diseases.

Buddism has no room for special effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat and drink, then move your bowels and pass water, and when you’re tired go to sleep. Fools will find me ridiculous, but the wise will understand

It is the least worst because most of the funds come from American satrapies.

Once American influence fails the capital will vote again, either somewhere else or in more tangible assets.

To everyone speculating war tech development and military mental degeneration, financial warfare in the form of meddling with USD, trade war, embargo, international COVID restrictions, etc. are far more effective – cutting the money means none of these outrageous proposals get fulfilled or maintained, and psychology of the soldier never matters.

Tho at the end of financial war will be the hot MAD war all of you want to avoid (or secretly hope for).

Buddhism is fun, it supports a variety of ontologies as wide as Greek philosophy. Tantrism, Zen, Theravada, Pure Land and so on…
Only that Greek philosophy is positive while Buddhist philosophy is negative.
(This sounds a lot like Taoism but only superficially)

I am looking forward to election of the first Black Russian president. If Grigoriy Siyatvinda becomes a politician, he might perhaps play his most extraordinary role as the president of RusFed. Imagine Kamala and Grigoriy signing the treaty of friendship and cooperation between USA and RusFed, imagine them launching together the construction of trans-Beringian railway…

“And the stone that the builders refused, shall be the head cornerstone…”

Greek philosophy has something very similar to Chan and Mahayana philosophy – the skepticism of Pyrrho.

Hercalitus, also, produced a version of Taoist non-dualism, and he was known as the “dark philosopher”. Pythagoreans and Stoics are similar to religious Mahayanists and Theravadins respectively.

Unfortunately the West took as it’s central philosopher the banal Aristotle. Although the Renaissance was inspired by the poetic Plato, and maybe he can be compared to the Buddhist “mind” school – although the theory of Platonic Forms has wrecked much intellectual havoc in the intellectual history of the West, and is now reappearing in the guise of a strict (rather than loose) HBD.

The pre-modern West and East were not so different – it’s just a question of emphasis. You could be an excellent Taoist just based on reading Montaigne’s Essays.

Buddhism itself sees it’s many manifestations as not in conflict, but as appropriate to people on different levels of insight, no matter how contradictory each manifestation seems. I substantially agree with this view, and it has the great benefit of eliminating conflict and replacing it with a “hierarchical” approach, which I think far more intellectually mature.

Dualism creates conflict and intolerance, and strikes me as intellectually immature – although I have noticed, that many people who claim to be Buddhist have a deeply dualistic approach to the world, so superficial labels should not be given undue weight.

Further, Buddhism sees all it’s approaches as basically just medicines, expedient means, and not as actually reflecting some kind of ultimate reality. It’s a remarkable conception, but a fully realized Buddhist is someone who has actually left Buddhism behind 🙂

So it doesn’t really make sense to fight over views that aren’t even meant to reflect reality 🙂

I couldn’t disagree more strongly. I find everything said here garbage, complete garbage, and nothing but complete garbage. Just sayin’.

No problem 🙂

It’s certainly not for everyone, and I did say it rather goes against the modern grain, especially in the West. It probably goes against the mainstream in every society in every age. I certainly would not recommend this as a “general” philosophy suitable for everyone – indeed I would regard it’s widespread adoption as impossible.

But it is an important sensibility, that historically has been influential in elite intellectual circles across the world, notably East Asia, but also significantly in the West.

Politically, this sensibility has been rather suppressed in the modern world, and opportunities to live according to this philosophy have grown exceedingly scarce.

Now this poses a political problem – force everyone to be part of the “productive” system, and those that find such a life distasteful, and would more naturally be suitable to a life of quiet contemplation or abandon, will become rebels, agitators, subversives, and malingerers.

In it’s milder forms, you will get a Bartleby the Scrivener or a Hunger Artist, at it’s more extreme, a political terrorist.

Beyond that, the value of this philosophy is that even if it does not replace the mainstream philosophy of “productivity” that the mass of men live by, it lessens it’s intensity, which is a massive mental health benefit. And there are serious indications that modern society is groaning under the weight of its own intensity.

Finally, the value of this philosophy is it’s immense life-affirming effect on those naturally predisposed to appreciate it, and it’s capacity to liberate into health and joy those who can benefit from it. Historically, Ch’an/Zen has been a great source of art, poetry, and life.

You have every right to dislike it and reject it for yourself, but a wise and healthy society will find a place for it.

Looks like we are perhaps witnessing the “eclosion” of a Covid Bellingcat.

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke-wuhan-lab-story-embarrassed-media-1596958

China would be like “oups”…

Linji Yixuan was quite drastic in his purging the kleshas from his pupils’ minds. This is due to him being soundly beaten up by his teacher Huángbò Xīyùn every time he attempted to ask stupid questions or tell idiotic stories.

That’s how Linji became enlightened.

Some people would strongly benefit from receiving Huangbo’s 40 blows even to this very day.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/276779.The_Zen_Teaching_of_Huang_Po

“All the concepts you have formed in the past must be discarded and replaced by Void.”

You cannot fully appreciate Rinzai if you don’t know what he learned from Obaku.

Hey, I’m starting a book on Pyrrhonism!

I have been really preoccupied, perhaps morbidly from a “normal” perspective, with the COVID vaccination drive. It’s probably time to move on and see it as a symptom of a wider sentiment of rejection:

Anti-vaxx isn’t really about whether the vaccines have issues, or coercion, or medico-political right, but fundamentally it represents how it is administered in a consumption-based society, dispensed shot by shot, with the power of the state. It might actually be a subliminal rejection of consumerism, and with that modern production, how human identity is reduced into an individual that impact others and be impacted, and both the economic and political structures that are bound up with it, if we adopt the perspective of Dugin’s . Which is why it is mostly the types dissatisfied with the old status quo that are most central (including libertarians that are crypto-localists and crypto-agrarians), in addition to those masses who have been alienated more mildly.

That’s widely understood but barely put concretely, except by agorist authors and critics of capitalism who are on the trend – because deep down, those don’t acknowledge this still affirms the Old Normal, even if that inevitable leads to a form of social control more or less like the false reopening.

(Contra Bashibuzuk, no, I’m not making the move since the prospects of anywhere, and even that of staying, are ultimately illusory, in the Buddhist sense of word. If facing the beast of liberalism’s own doing is in the Karma of humans living under global liberalism, you cannot avoid it. That is called 應劫 in Chinese.)

There are 1,000+ Russian troops and contractors in the Central African Republic supporting the government in taking on insurgents. But why? How in the world does it fit into any Russian grand strategy?

Epigenetics is mechanically sound, its not particularly complicated and it is rather self-evident via the gut-mind ecosystem, etc. Its not really much more complicated than anything else in evolution which can cause actual genetic changes via natural selection, including phenomena like convergent evolution.

Neurotransmitters are to the brain as the concept of combustion physics are to the car engine: the basis of its operation. As noted before, for an accessible personal experiment, vodka provides all that is needed. This also functions en masse. Its not “superficially compelling”; alteration of neurotransmitters will directly affect your judgment, inhibitions, emotions, etc. You can also look up the operation of dopamine reuptake blockers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_reuptake_inhibitor

He’s our diversity inclusion poster for the mentally challenged.

It should be noted that such notions of “lack of reality” have been argued to have severely stymied development of science in China(though tbh the Chinese usually didn’t take it that far in practice) because it essentially undermined the notion of first principles, making deductive reasoning impossible by positioning either an infinity of causes to effect or close enough to it.

Aristotlean logic, while strictly incorrect in its concept of elements, provided a basic for workable theories on the world.

You keep on referring to “collectible stamps”. You have my attention. I’m interested in finding out more about this market. Is it really a good place to invest money right now? How safe is it? Why might this be a better place to invest than say numismatic coins? At least with the coins, you do own some precious metals, with stamps all you have is paper.

My mother must have shared a similar philosophy. She had a black belt for less serious infractions and a red one for “special occasions”. 🙂 My father was only called in once or twice for really special operations. It all worked out quite well for my benefit. I’m afraid to think what might have become of me had my own proclivities for “stupid and idiotic” behavior been given free reign to expand.

I think the theory once was visited that Russia would end up with an election of Natalia Poklonskaya versus Ramzan Kadyrov as president, a highly entertaining contest that would have only the assured outcomes of that it would be almost certainly negative for her residents.

First Principles impede the ability to be open minded about the results of experiments. They are mental straitjackets. All you need for good science is a willingness to experiment, a sense of adventure, and honesty about what works.

Today, we have First Principles – but little real science.

First Principles, peer review, the whole scientific bureaucracy – secure prisons for little minds. Eventually some bold and fearless spirit like Francis Bacon or Lin Chi will sweep all that nonsense away, and usher in a new era of experiment without presuppositions.

Your intelligence is perfectly adequate for science, Daniel – what you lack is boldness, courage, a sense of adventure. You seek security, like all small men.

Yes, at the highest levels the insight that there is no ultimate reality does eliminate the motivation to do Faustian science, because the element of drivenness and fear is eliminated, and one lives a life of joyous appreciation. But this is a tiny fraction of men.

As Nietzsche said, the most intelligent and spiritual men will always be relatively uninterested in science, mere control of physical things, and science will always be the domain of the broad base of intelligent but mediocre men. But this broad base of mediocrity will benefit from living in an intellectual culture free of a heavy accretions of definite notions about reality.

Huang Po is another one of my all time favs!

Confucian China had become suffocated by a heavy encrustation of order, decorum, ritual, custom, and convention. This happens periodically in every society and sometimes drastic measures are required to break spiritually free from the dross.

We will perhaps soon require drastic measures ourselves. Well, it is all expedient means anyways.

For a gentler version of the same message, there is the Japanese Bankei.

Don’t Get Mad – Get Even

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/football/ukraine-football-kit-map-russia-scli-intl-spt/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Most+Recent%29

A map of Russia with Crimea included, along with a Slava Rossiya.

Francis Bacon, like Isaac Newton, all held principles of an ultimate reality, though it was not necessarily the material reality.

For Francis Bacon, science was no less than humanity’s religious mission. He believed you could read this right out of Genesis 1, where God laid out his own creative process, and then invited humanity to imitate it.

As Bacon saw it, God had ordained for humanity to rule over the world, and although humanity had corrupted its reign through wickedness, humanity’s reign could be restored through the ambitious, but disciplined, application of humility and love.

It’s important to understand how he saw this fitting together.

Humanity’s power, Bacon said, was knowledge. To know the world was to have power over it. So in order to exercise all the power that God had intended for us to have, we first had to understand everything we could about the world that God had made.

You need not concern yourself with that: you should focus on your next dosage of Thorazine which might make a valiant, if most likely futile effort to combat your mental weakness toward hypocrisy and perhaps even against all odds, grant you a limited theory of mind.

Bacon’s advance was to be open minded about what Gods rules were.

Yet he did indeed retain the idea of a stable reality, with a fixed set of rules. That worked well until quantum science.

Today, the assumption of fixed, stable reality is known to be false, and retaining it is a mental straitjacket impeding progress.

No position is false, it exists in a nested hierarchy, with each appropriate to a particular level.

At a particular level of reality, the assumption that a fixed set of rules exists may be quite helpful. At a higher level, quite injurious.

At an even lower level, the scholastics “knowledge” had utility.

This is just as things pertain to science. At higher levels, a concern with science itself impedes flourishing. Science itself exists within a nested hierarchy.

But this is beyond what you can appreciate, so I will leave off there.

But this is beyond what you can appreciate, so I will leave off there.

The reply button to the lower left of the message.

Yes, I can see why you might think so, and indeed, it is valid on a certain level of reality 🙂

It might actually be a subliminal rejection of consumerism, and with that modern production

Good insight.

These political feuds are never about concrete fact, but always symbolic in nature. Countering a political opponent with fact and reason, when he is operating on the level of symbol and myth, is a futile exercise.

I think it’s increasingly important to recognize the huge role myth and symbol play in human life, and the comparatively small role reason plays.

In politics, it never pays to understand something literally. One must always dig deeper.

For instance, in the latest Israel-Hamas conflict, liberal progressives were aligned with Hamas, which on the surface violates progressive principles in every way. Yet pointing that out was singularly ineffective.

Because on the mythic level, Israel represents technological civilization, European culture, and Whites, and progressives are “about” being anti these things more than they are about anything else.

LOL i don’t know. 🙂 It was just an example.

Martin Armstrong is big on collecting antique coins; it seems to have mostly worked out for him, but its more of a fetish than investment.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/ancient-economies/owning-a-piece-of-history/

I have read somewhere on teh internets that Ramzan has taken a second wife. As a true Mu’meen (I like to use weird transliteration styles for the Islamic lingo) he technically qualifies for four wives and an endless number of infidel concubines. I would suggest he takes Poklonsksya as a third wife (if she converts to Al Din) or as a concubine (if she doesn’t) the progeny of their union would a marvel to behold.

🙂

Same here. I am quite fortunate to have had a stern upbringing. And I thank my parents for everything.

I had quite a strange upbringing, basically alone and surrounded by books, eventually adopting at times fairly fanatical views and living most of my life without anything like television.

I think it did well for me, to be honest but it did make me very strange(perhaps on top of whatever natural strangeness I possessed), with an intense fondness for asceticism.

Apologize for getting into an argument with you over science.

I am not very interested in science. I’m a simple person who isn’t materially successful, so I shouldn’t be talking about what it takes to gain power over the physical world.

I’m sure you, who are passionate about science, understand it much better than me. Its just my big ego.

3. I believe that your psyche extends far beyond the limits of your body. Call me kooky, but I am confident in my own experiences. Obviously I do not expect your agreement on this, but my perception is what my perception is.

I don’t disagree with you on that, but does your psyche extend beyond your mind?

Also:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5487283/

Well, I was a bookworm for most of my life, especially when young. But, as I already mentioned once in one of my previous comments, around 16 years old O understood that girls don’t really like the quiet bookworm types, then I started doing sports and adopted a more “young thug” attitude. That was easy because the fall of the Soviet Union was a time of intense youth violence, especially in Moscow. I think being strange is okay. We need strange people so life doesn’t end up predictable and boring.

Echoing your link, this also finds a similar effect:

https://neurosciencenews.com/adhd-drugs-epigenetics-18563/amp/

Concerning, this does not seem to require prenatal exposure; it appears that dopaminergic drugs are somehow modifying sperm and although the mechanism seems to be unknown, the effect is substantiated.

Well AaronB is just taking words out of their context, after all Chan is beyond books and words, precisely because it is transmitted through teacher-disciple lineage. It is absolutely impossible to understand Chan without instructions from a master, which is commonly accepted fact among all legit practitioners of Chan, and even less when you translate cryptical and terse Classical Chinese texts to modern English and study alone. Every master of Chan has studied under other Buddhist masters, in an unbroken line going through Bodhidharma to Mahakasyapa and finally to Buddha.

I find it out funny how Aaron legitimises the behaviour of many anti-semites on this site. Oh, how those guys just love to take random citations from Talmud and Bible and say: “see how those evil Jews want to enslave and rule over us, we know better than Rabbis and Bible scholars!” At least those damn nazis can claim that Judaism and Christianity are holy book based religions, unlike Buddhism which has no one holy book, but a Dharma transmission lineage from the Buddha.

For such delusional beings there is no value in the living tradition itself, but only how that tradition serves in legitimising their own particular worldview.

No matter, it’s cool that Aaron has gone further on the Way than our monks! What a guru!

Fools will find me ridiculous, but the wise will understand

🙂

Some words of wisdom from great Taoist of the West, the Ch’an master of 16th century France, Michel de Montaigne. At age 38, he retired to live a life dedicated to “tranquillity, freedom and leisure.”. Initially depressed, he achieved liberation from burdensome mainstream ideas by adopting Taoist wu-wei –

It seemed to me I could no better serve my spirit than by surrendering it to the savouring of its own thoughts.…Like a bolting horse, it had a hundred times more space to move in….”

In his pursuit of an easeful state, Montaigne wrote that “there is nothing I would break my head against in the name of scholarship.”

While he went so greatly against the grain of the Western Faustian culture of struggle only then emerging, elite Western intellectuals down the ages adored him – perhaps some instinct of self-preservation telling them he was the antidote to the mysterious disease they suffered from. Nietzsche, utterly opposite in sensibility, loved him.

Here are some quotes. Many of his best I could not find online sadly –

“….We are great fools. ‘He has passed over his life in idleness,’ we say: ‘I have done nothing today.’ What? have you not lived? that is not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious of all your occupations….”

“….I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: it’s all the same thing … to attack a tough position in war, conduct an embassy, govern a people, are illustrious actions; to … laugh, sell, play, love, hate, and gently converse with our families and with ourselves in the right way … not pretending to be what we are not, that is rarer, more difficult and less remarkable …”

Concerning, this does not seem to require prenatal exposure; it appears that dopaminergic drugs are somehow modifying sperm and although the mechanism seems to be unknown, the effect is substantiated.

Also see this:

THE YAZATA HAOMA

The Yazata Haoma, known in Persia as Hōm Izad, in India as Hōm Yazad, is the divinization of the force or spirit (Av. mainyu-) within the haoma plant (cf. Boyce, 1992, pp. 52-53; Lommel, p. 187). In the Hōm yašt Haoma manifests himself to Zoroaster “at the time of pressing” in the form of a most beautiful man and exhorts him to gather and press haoma (Y. 9.1-2). He is frequently hailed as “the Golden-Green One” (zairi-), also as “golden-green-eyed” (zairi.dōiθra-). He is “righteous” (ašavan-, q.v.), “furthering righteousness” (aša-vazah-), and “of good wisdom” (hu.xratu-,cf. Skt. sukratu- “wise” of Soma; see AirWb., cols. 246, 254-55, 1681, 1772-74, 1819). Through the potency in his plants he grants “speed and strength to warriors, excellent and righteous sons to those giving birth, spiritual power and knowledge to those who apply themselves to the study of the nasks” (Y. 9-22)

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/haoma-ii

Someone should look into the epigenetic effects of Ephedrine. Although, to be fair it is quite possible that Soma/Haoma was not (solely ?) ephedra.

But why?

To repaint the CAR war map, of course.

🇨🇫 Was asked to update a map on the War in Central African Republic and I have no idea what is going on there.

Might research this area in the future. pic.twitter.com/KuojWXZduP

— Rafal R. (@rr0162) February 24, 2021

This map highlights the current battle-lines in Central African Republic 🇨🇫 pic.twitter.com/YawBXdnrl9

— Samuel Ramani (@SamRamani2) May 5, 2021

I assume it’s because of the malintent of the increasingly Jewish US ruling class, they can’t hide their centuries long desire to damage or destroy “Russia.”

Almost correct. Russia has excellent relations with the Palestinian Jews of Israel. And, you can see the virulent hatred for the Palestinian Jews of Israel coming from the SJW Islamic Globalist Elites in the U.S. Thus, it would be more accurate to say:

… it’s because of the malintent of the increasingly Muslim US ruling class, they can’t hide their centuries long desire to damage or destroy “Russia.”

Ilhan Omar and Rashid Tlaib are Elite U.S. leaders pushing the “Russia, Russia, Russia” myth. George IslamoSoros has been funding Anti-Semitic & Anti-Russian NGO’s for decades.

Russia has temporarily stoppered its Muslim problem by getting rid of troublemakers like Boston Marathon Bomber Tsarnaev. However, dumping is a short duration tactic that has to be replaced by something else.

PEACE 😇

From Pavel Pryannikov’s Telegram blog (Google translated from Russian)

I don’t disagree with you on that, but does your psyche extend beyond your mind?

I would probably use those as synonyms.

Thanks for the link too.

I agree with your comment and I don’t believe it disagrees with mine.

Buddhism which has no one holy book, but a Dharma transmission lineage from the Buddha

Is it consistent with Buddhism for an individual to be able to just close their eyes and see?

I find it out funny how Aaron legitimises the behaviour of many anti-semites on this site. Oh, how those guys just love to take random citations from Talmud and Bible and say: “see how those evil Jews want to enslave and rule over us, we know better than Rabbis and Bible scholars!”

Indeed, but I do not claim my selections “represent Buddhism”. I have always made quite limited claims. I have been clear that I am talking about one particular sect within Buddhism, and that I am even only speaking of certain particular masters within that sect. So a sect within a sect. My selections don’t even represent the whole of Ch’an, just an influential sect.

I think that’s intellectually responsible and quite different from what the anti-Semites are doing.

I have also claimed that in my opinion, I think the logic of Buddhism tends naturally to develop into the selections I’ve offered. I’ve explained my reasons for thinking so, and made clear that I have no problem if others do not find my reasons compelling.

You say that Ch’an relies on transmission outside words. But the selections I offered do not present any positive teaching – they merely negate received views. So no verbal transmission is indeed being offered.

I think we can see, that your charge is baseless. To be charitable, perhaps you did not understand the specific and limited nature of my claims, so I will not impute any I’ll motive to you.

But I am glad you gave me the opportunity to clear that up.

My mother tried but any disciplinary actions just made me sneakier and better at covering my tracks.

Gang psychopath, I guess

June 6th – Our General Finally Falls, Obtaining Shaheedi. “Baba Deep Singh came so far to give his head at this place, and I am privileged to be able to give mine right here,” stated Sant Bhindranwale before running out of ammo, charging the machine guns with his Talwar (Eye Wtiness accounts). from Sikh

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A post shared by Kshatriya Khalsa (@kshatriyakhalsa)

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

I don’t get your question? Different meditative practices are quite common in Asian religions.

Isn’t being silent and eyes closed, so that one could think more clearly, and therefore “see,” consistent with all humanity?

Qi-shi: You have crossed the ocean to come here and have thus endured danger. What is the object of your visit?
Ananda Jennings: My object is to realise the Buddhadharma.
Q: One should be clear about the question of birth and death when one studies the Dharma; what is your opinion about ‘birth and death’?
AJ: Since fundamentally there is neither birth nor death, what is the use of formulating opinions which alone are ‘birth and death’?
Q: If there is neither birth nor death, what is the use of studying the Buddhadharma?
AJ: Fundamentally there is no Buddhadharma, and he who realises Dharma is Buddha.
Q: The Buddha possessed thirty-two characteristic marks and when he pressed his toes to the ground, the ocean symbol radiated; can you do this?
AJ: Both the ability to do this and the inability to do this pertains to phenomenalistic sophistry.
Q: Although your interpretation is profound and what you say is correct, the mere speaking of eating does not satisfy hunger., what, according to you, is the ‘Ultimate Sentence’?
AJ: The Ultimate has no ‘sentence’ and speech also has no basis, the non-thinking nature of enlightenment being free from verbiage of opinion and ideas.
Q: You have spoken of it in detail and every word of yours accords well with the Patriarch’s meaning. But the word ‘knowledge’ is the gateway to all kinds of calamity. Since you have entered by means of correct interpretation, may I ask you this: Without using words or speech, what is your fundamental face?
AJ: The Diamond Sutra says, ‘Anuttara-samyak-sambhodi is not Anuttara-samyak-sambhodi.
Q: It seems to be so, but the life-root can not be cut off by knowledge and views (consciousness). I hope you will look into this.
AJ: I have not had much opportunity to read the sutras. After my previous seclusion for four years, when I spoke to others, they all said that my words accorded with the Buddhadharma. In my opinion, understanding that does not derive from the mere reading of sutras seems not to belong entirely to human consciousness.
Q: That which does not derive from the reading of sutras and shastras but manifests during one’s meditation still belongs to the former wisdom which is also consciousness.
AJ: That Buddhadharma postulates true realisation but does not rely on human or cosmic consciousness.
Q: By not being bogged down in sutras and shastras and by not clinging to the self-nature, the ‘thusness’ of the Dao is everywhere and the truth prevails anywhere one may happen to be. It can expediently be called ‘The One’.

I don’t get your question? Different meditative practices are quite common in all Asian religions.

You seemed to be saying that Chan/Buddhism needs teacher-student transmission.

In reply, I wondered whether an individual might just see the truth themselves?

Or, perhaps be shown what they need by creatures/spiritual phenomena?

Isn’t being silent and eyes closed, so that one could think more clearly, and therefore “see,” consistent with all humanity

I wouldn’t use the term “think” for a process that is more like watching an interactive film, but I also don’t know what term to use.

Patriarch Linji is not any minor figure. Did you not notice Silviosilver’s reaction? Tarnishing the image of Dharma for one’s egoism is not intellectually responsible behaviour. Maybe this is news to you, but faith is a sensitive thing for other people too.

Chan teachings are advanced Sutrayana traditionally only meant for monks who have gone far in the path, and who are well grounded in Buddhist basics, in Chan Dharma lineage is of paramount importance, there has never been a Chan master without his own master. Even Linji was a monk, with a master, living in a monastery.

But go on Aaron, please go on and explain us more how you don’t really care and how you are happy by not caring, maybe you should write a 10 000 word essay about how you really don’t care, and if we still would not believe you, maybe you should then write a book about about how you dont really care, maybe repeating to people how you don’t care makes them to believe that you really don’t care, so go on Aaron!

(Arrested development?)

Graham Greene wrote that every man’s life has a turning point; and that most men don’t recognize it when it comes along. But Jonathan Franzen wrote, what if the big event is not an event at all, but an insight; and that everything is clear after the insight. I think Franzen is right, so I read all of the philosophic viewpoints in the comments looking for the insight. Thank you AaronB, especially. These are quite interesting. Maybe next time.

I’m tired, I will go to sleep….

But before falling sleep I think that maybe there’s not enough violence nowadays, is it good that people have so much of time to think of non-sense? Is this how our species uses it’s precious free time, after hundreds of thousands of years of constant struggle?

Raising the retirement age was justified by the fact that it would save the “missing” 850 billion rubles per year.

They would have raise retirement age regardless of money. Its the same situation as in most of the world – they will need people to keep businesses running.

Japan can (and does) print whatever money it needs, but it still needs business to operate. So they have to keep old people employed. Those who don’t breed, work to death.

Breaking female workers down by age, the increase in employees aged 65 and older stands out. In June there were 3.59 million such workers, up from a monthly average of 1.45 million in 2009.

But as a percentage, only 17.7% of women 65 and older were working, compared with 34.3% of male seniors. As Japan’s population continues to age and the labor shortage continues, more senior women are likely to enter the workforce.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Japan-sees-record-number-of-women-working-but-challenges-remain

Did you not notice Silviosilver’s reaction?

Ah, so the quality of a spiritual text is to be judged by an avowed atheist who embraces aggression. Apparently, spirituality is a popularity contest lol. Not superficial at all – can see I am dealing with a person of real depth here 🙂

I quoted Linchi verbatim. I urge everyone to go read him, as well as his wonderful master, Huang Po. You, on the other hand, seem to be scaring people away from reading him with mystifying mumbo jumbo. You are scared people will think for themselves.

By lying to people here that I misquoted him – something easily checked, so a futile maneuver – I am beginning to think that you are a dishonest person with an agenda – not necessarily a conscious one, though.

I think you have an unconscious desire to keep people attached and materialistic, and hence miserable. Unable to achieve liberation yourself, you instinctively wish to prevent others from doing so. After all, misery loves company.

In this last age of the Kali Yuga, people like you appear with increasing frequency. Self appointed gatekeepers trying to bar the passage to the other shore.

I am here to fight your heavy, lumbering atmosphere with divine lightness 🙂

Chan teachings are advanced Sutrayana traditionally only meant for monks who have gone far in the path, and who are well grounded in Buddhist basics, in Chan Dharma lineage is of paramount importance, there has never been a Chan master without his own master. Even Linji was a monk, with a master, living in a monastery.

Ch’an is liberation from all that childish nonsense.

But go on Aaron, please go on and explain us more how you don’t really care….!

My intention is to write a library of books on not caring 🙂

Because not caring is best demonstrated by caring, as anyone who understands not caring knows.

Guatemala reacts to Kamala Harris.

No one takes the illegitimate Harris/Biden regime seriously.

PEACE 😇

Your intention is to bolster your rather pathetic ego via attention seeking. It is both childish and predictable. The only reason that you don’t realize it is that on top of your total lack of theory of mind in understanding others, you further incapable of realizing how ridiculously pitiful you come across.

But I suppose, that’s one of the basic defining characteristics of mental illness.

It looks like the government forces have the upper hand and are retaking the country. But can anyone answer why do this? How does it fit into the overall strategy?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_the_Central_African_Republic#/media/File:LocationCentralAfricanRepublic.svg

Your intention is to bolster your rather pathetic ego via attention seeking.

I’m pathetic, childish, egotistic, pitiful, and mentally ill. I’m ok with all that.

I am quite worthless. But it is good that these ideas, that go against the grain, get out there 🙂 It is good that people know about Linchi.

It is good that the gloomy, serious, ponderous, heavy, water buffalo people, the ones without a divine spark, the attached and materialistic, and consequently the unhappy, do not quite have it all their own way.

And the rage I reliably elicit in you and Altan and others of your ponderous flat footed ilk is proof I am threatening your empire of gloom 🙂

that’s one of the basic defining characteristics of mental illness

Those who see a bit farther always seem mentally ill to the dull conventional conformist.

You’re missing his whole “financial prophet” role which I see as the most important (he says the whole set of mistakes, COVID & Great Reset, will tank the West by 2032-37 and shift the financial center of the world to China)

I’m skeptical of all so-called prophets, though I find him interesting.

Trump would be smiling in his Floridan retreat. But if there hadn’t been that much rigging and Trump had kept the office then the Guatemalans should have been telling him to mind his own business and go back home, too, since both Biden/Harris and Trump/Pence are two faces of the same Yanqui imperialism.
Trump isn’t the new Jesus.

An update on HK’s vaccine rollout: the BioNTech vaccine is inducing strokes in young uni students, something that only occured in much older cases with real latent risk for the Sinovac one. I think both have their own share of Bell’s palsy and Guillain–Barré, some on relatively young cases, which are likely to be rare reactions common to all COVID and some other types of vaccines, and maybe independent from the type of platform used.

Audacious Epigone and lots of anti-vaxxers say the risk of adverse reactions from the vaccines is much greater than the risk from natural infections, young people should reject it altogether. They’re thinking on the assumption that since the whole COVID thing is a ploy and there is no fundamental need to vaccinate, one case of avoidable reaction is too many (kinda like what Cuomo thinks of the lockdowns he ordered, saving one life is worth it). Besides there are reports of vaccinated individuals contracting COVID (this is possible since many types of vaccines only alleviate symptoms), and even wilder claims of dying of COVID after vaccinations.

Here’s the question to pro-vaxxers: what would you think to be the acceptable base rate on rare and serious adverse reactions like the ones I mentioned above? How does this compare with vaccines for other diseases where vaccination is compulsory by state mandate, or to annual flu vaccines? If you see any thing “wrong” with my above thinking you can say what you know too (but those will be seen as deluded from a antivaxx perspective).

I hope this will be constructive and won’t devolve to name-calling, bitter rivalry and arguments of social systems many debates on COVID vaccines have become nowadays.

One of the more amusing, yet rather sad parts of your belief is that you trigger rage. Its yet another aspect of your surprisingly uncreative and ultimately, deeply inwardly focused mindset toward self-promotion.

Like I said before, work on your theory of mind.

That and Thorazine.

Based Africans.

[MORE]

https://www.takimag.com/article/institutional-collapse/
Another seeing the writing in the wall, except that his perspective is only limited to the US while everyone else’s governments are more or less on the action.

Great point to Bashibuzuk for his “Westroika” observation in that it is actually an reaction of globalist elites to the structural crisis caused by their previous mistakes in policy decisions (or if Kissinger to be trusted, some elements of malice). I see it as being based on the logical conclusion of liberalism pointed out by Dugin, of freeing the individual of its self into “dividuals” and of the possibility of post-humanism, something the globalist elites are channeled into seeing and which implies lots of off-the-wall policies – that’s precisely what is meant by the World-System & Liberalism’s “Karma”.

It is good that the gloomy, serious, ponderous, heavy, water buffalo people, the ones without a divine spark, the attached and materialistic, and consequently the unhappy, do not quite have it all their own way.

So we are the water buffalo people without the divine spark? You are now Aaron revealing quite much about the inner workings of your mind, I must say. A tribalist with a messianic complex?

You seemed to be saying that Chan/Buddhism needs teacher-student transmission.

How else you will understand a tradition or training that can not be expressed by words and is beyond the scriptures? How else Chinese could have discerned between self proclaimed Messiahs like Aaron and genuine Chan masters?

[T]he origins of this lineage-based transmission scheme are to be found in Indian Buddhism and the fourth- and fifth-century Buddhist meditation tradition of Kashmir. There are a number of parallels between the Chan transmission scheme and Chinese family genealogies of the eighth century and later, but we should remember that Indian Buddhists had parents and teachers, family genealogies and initiation lineages, just as the Chinese did. As an amalgamation of Indian and Chinese elements, though, the Chinese transmission schema developed within the Chinese Buddhist context and was particularly well adapted to that milieu.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_lineage_charts

In reply, I wondered whether an individual might just see the truth themselves?

Good question! It is theoretically possible in Buddhism, but self awakened Buddhas are exceedingly rare, iirc chances to become self awakened Buddha are something like a one in one hundred billion.

But remember Buddhas are driven by sincere compassion, therefore it’s probably even harder to meet Buddhas on internet, where most people are motivated by selfish desires and pride, myself included.

Or, perhaps be shown what they need by creatures/spiritual phenomena?

Possible, but not advisable for anyone except highly realised masters, and even for them it can be a risky endeavour. Mind can be a tricky think and there is no limit for human delusions.

I wouldn’t use the term “think” for a process that is more like watching an interactive film, but I also don’t know what term to use.

Are you speaking about clairvoyance or imagination? Well our mind has also its own way to see things, often after concentration and careful pondering we see better how things are.

“.. you trigger rage..” – This is very telling, Mowgli. You should talk about your rage issues with your machine therapist. Perhaps it will tell you that pointing to humans that their “theory of mind” is not adequate is not how humans think and communicate. Humans have minds while machines have only theories of it.

Yo Anatoly when’s that Great Bifurcation text dropping?

You are coming from a different background, so my questions and observations may only translate with difficulty.

If I ever seem obtuse in this conversations, please be patient with me. I am trying my best. It is fun to explore ideas like these.

But remember Buddhas are driven by sincere compassion, therefore it’s probably even harder to meet Buddhas on internet, where most people are motivated by selfish desires and pride, myself included

I feel that someone motivated by deep compassion would suffer a lot. They would appear to those around them as a blank canvas, perfect for putting our most extreme qualities onto.

In this way, their presence, might bring out those people’s most extreme qualities, which is generally dangerous and hurtful all around.

Are you speaking about clairvoyance or imagination?

Is “imagination” where your pride goes into overdrive, and “clairvoyance” what you see when you drop that?

Possible, but not advisable for anyone except highly realised masters, and even for them it can be a risky endeavour

Maybe those spiritual phenomena deserve love and acceptance too?

Rage comes from a place of feeling threatened. What threatens you about AaronB?

The point is that he doesn’t, it’s a self-belief of his that he keeps insisting due to its self-promoting implications: if you trigger rage in others, you are threatening in some fashion and therefore important.

His hypocrisy is annoying and it’s entertaining to call him on his nonsense, but its not really very anger-inducing.

His greatest threat to me is if I waste too much of my time in responding to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

Perhaps water buffalo people is too harsh.

Just very “earth bound”, gloomy, heavy, serious, attached, unhappy, people.

As for Messiah complex, I am proposing that some people might enjoy an alternative to heavy, serious Faustian striving, and showing that many of history’s most eminent minds, East and West, thought a simple, ordinary, unambitious life the best one – a point of view that I believe, is suppressed today, and perhaps the source of much of our modern angst.

A rather modest claim.

But one, tellingly, that elicits rage 🙂

Sorry for misunderstanding, your comment seems sensible.

Personally, I like his posts. They have something of Hermes to them; who made jokes and tried to rile people up too.

You might prefer comparing him to Loki, but he doesn’t seem malicious or out for vengeance.

If you find mythological comparisons too grandiose, you can also just use the word “fool”. Such types are often tempered by developing their nurturing side.

Personally, I like his posts. They have something of Hermes to them; who made jokes and tried to rile people up too.

When Leonard Cohen went to Mount Baldy Zen Center, he met with its abbot Sasaki Roshi. On one of their first meetings, the Roshi told Leonard Cohen: “Here you are not a Jew and neither am I a Zen Master”. Leonard Cohen stayed at the Mount Baldy many years and became a personal secretary to Sasaki Roshi.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/from-the-archives-state-of-grace/article32811767/

Perhaps Aaron should go to Mount Baldy, although Sasaki Roshi has passed away a few years ago at a venerable age of 97 years.

https://www.mbzc.org/

you can also just use the word “fool”

Excellent comparison.

Actually, I am a huge fan of what has been called “crazy wisdom” rather than “sensible wisdom”, and have always been attracted to these types. Zen literature is absolutely full of these types, and Christianity has something somewhat similar in it’s “fool for Christ” (Although too serious for me personally).

I think it’s a natural consequence of philosophies that “see through the world”. I think humor and a sense of the absurd comes naturally.

Such types are often tempered by developing their nurturing side.

You are right, I have trouble understanding just how subversive and frightening this light-hearted, carefree attitude is to conventional, common sense types. It always shocks me. I always forget how much people want to take themselves seriously.

It isn’t my intention to be a rebel, and I would happily leave normal social conventions untouched, I just find that today society suppresses this view so completely, and takes everything so seriously, that it’s quite unprecedented.

So I merely wish to carve out some small space for what used to be a widespread and legitimate attitude, if not exactly mainstream and popular, and rehabilitate it.

I think the part of the understanding that is still mostly nascent and mysterious to us is the means of intrageneration transmission for such epigenetic factors. Some of it is probably just cultural, via changes in diet cause changes in gut microbiota and subsequently hormones, etc which contribute promotion or reduction of hormones, but the role of seminal fluid and vesicles is seemingly novel to our understanding.

It always shocks me.

Its even more shocking that people correct you when you lie about historical figures.

But of course, there can’t be any lies when you claim it exists on another level of reality, no? Solipsism’s great. Its also a complete waste of time to engage with beyond mockery.

So enraged 🙂

Thanks, that’s interesting.

Many people bemoan the collapse of trust in American institutions, but those institutions are implicated in a whole way of life – material domination of the earth, development of technology, ambition, a life directed not at satisfaction and happiness but at a dubious future state of perfection, a life of excessive seriousness with little carefree joy.

If America, and after that the world, is transitioning to a new era in world history – one more centred on contentment, happiness, joy, and away from Faustian striving – then loss of trust on the old institutions is absolutely necessary as a stage.

Something new cannot come into being without the old dying first.

Cohen went there to hide from his coke dealers so that might not be a good example of anything.

I am not sure about that, according to what he himself told, he was battling a chronic depression. Zen helped him to get back on track. Perhaps he used coke as self-medication, a lot of addictions are in fact self-medication to cope with some mental problems.

Its just the Unz equivalent of this, which gets boring real fast:

https://tri-statedefender.com/i-a-fat-beautiful-black-woman-get-lots-of-sex-why-does-that-bother-you/08/07/

I, A Fat, Beautiful Black Woman, Get Lots of Sex. Why Does That Bother You?

Oh God, so now you’re also enraged by beautiful fat black women getting sex!?

Daniel, my poor friend.

Rage is a serious condition. I think there’s therapy for that.

Thorazine, maybe?

🙂

“Here you are not a Jew and neither am I a Zen Master”.

Beautiful, this attitude of being simply ordinary, and nothing special, is exactly what I am advocating.

Daniel Chieh, Altan, and in your worse moments you, are all trying to be “Jews” – special people, Bodhisattvas of compassion, transhumanists, reaching some higher state, etc.

Unfortunately, practicing in a Zen temple in order to achieve some special insight is striving to be a special person, as Linchi understood. Unless the result of all your striving is to finally realize ordinary life is where it has always been – as Cohen ended up realizing.

The result of the study of Zen is to be more of a jester. That is why all those old Zen stories are full of crazy old jesters. Jesters puncture the lofty airs of the pompous and self-important.

Chieh and Altan are frankly pompous and self-important, and are offended at any philosophy that laughs at that. That is what incenses them in me.

You go in an out of striving to reach sone higher state through practice and discipline and an appreciation for the ordinary and non-special.

I hope, in the end, the ordinary wins in you. But I suspect for that to happen you’ll have to overcome your tremendous resentment towards (((Odessians)), which is plainly poisoning your character and holding you back.

Good luck.

I am mildy happy for the fat, black woman. She got what she wanted and had sex with the rapper.

I feel sorry for the article writer. She must judge herself harshly.

She seems to have scoured the internet for voices, which can substitute for her own self-judgement, allowing her to continue whatever argument she has in her head, by pretending that it is an argument with the world.

I also feel like making fun of her. She is shouting arguments into the public square to convince herself that she is beautiful. I would even hope that she would be able to join in with my jokes, if given insight into the absurdity of her behaviour by them.

I doubt she would be able to though, as her image is too important to her. Remaining cool and impermeable is her defence in a confusing world. I can see how this applies to AaronB. I believe it applies to everyone to a greater or lesser degree.

Its an interesting psychological tic, you see it often:

“The Man doesn’t want you to know this MESSAGE OF LIBERATION! It makes the System MAD!”

Its quite boring after awhile, but its interesting in how it well it works as a kind of basic clickbait for the notion of the forbidden, thus the various “One weird trick that dentists don’t want you to know…”

I feel sorry for the article writer. She must judge herself harshly.

She seems to have scoured the internet for voices, which can substitute for her own self-judgement, allowing her to continue whatever argument she has in her head, by pretending that it is an argument with the world.

Exactly.

It tells more about the individual than about the world she resides in.

It tells more about the individual than about the world she resides in.

The individual cannot be extracted/divided (pun intended) from the world one resides into. This world is experienced in the mind of the individual. Therefore, the perception of the world is inherently subjective.

Also:

Classic…

An excellent discussion of Russia-China technological cooperation by Ivan Danilin and Vasily Kashin. Some highlights:
– China's appetite for tech cooperation w/ Russia noticeably grew after 2018, when the US began to ratchet up sanctions on China. /1 https://t.co/7Fekv4Q8Fd

— Artyom Lukin (@ArtyomLukin) June 8, 2021

Therefore, the perception of the world is inherently subjective.

For the individual, yes. You see this in interesting cases with some paranoid schizophrenics, who build elaborate worlds of importance where the CIA chases them and wherein secret messages are left in wisps of smoke.

I forgot where I read this, but I think it was in one of Milton H. Erickson’s books where he mentioned how one of his female clients, who was deeply disturbed and ultimately frustrated that she did not live a life outside, began to happily hallucinate that she was giving birth every day. Of course, her delusions were not concrete for anyone else in the world.

I tend to believe that’s also more generally true, and thus a lot of reasoning can be motivated reasoning; that’s part of what metrics and repeatable phenomena hope to avoid.

So we have achieved a resolution of sorts. I take back my claim that you are enraged by what I’m saying. I accept you merely think I’m pathetic, pitiful, boring, and not worth your time.

I also accept that the “system” isn’t hostile to philosophies that advocate a non-ambitious life. It’s quite likely that it is just an egotistical fantasy of mine.

Unfortunately, I do have an inflated ego, that is quite incorrigible. I’ve admitted this.

I think it’s obvious to everyone here that you are superior to me, and I am happy to accept this.

Going forward, I merely plan to offer my perspective that a simple ordinary life that is nothing special may be quite enjoyable for many people, and that it can be an alternative to Faustian striving for some.

A life of ease, without effort, and centred on contentment, appreciation, and joy, rather than striving. A life that is content to accept personal flaw and messy imperfection, and is not focused on self-improvement or future perfection.

I will also endeavor to show how many great philosophers and religious thinkers, both East and West, thought this kind of life was good.

I understand many people will prefer a life of Faustian striving towards future perfection, and I accept that people who adopt such a life develop into superior people compared to people who adopt my life, who develop into small, unassuming people. This should be stated clearly.

I am happy that people of your type find my lifestyle un-threatening, and therefore can be quite tolerant of it.

On this basis, coexistence is possible. Thank you. In the end this thread was quite helpful, and we can all move forward with our positions clarified. I apologize for my misunderstanding all of you.

I am wondering if part of our limitations as a species is not directly due to us trying to recognize repeatable patterns in the nature of Reality.
Perhaps if we could truly grasp the detailed nature of the natural phenomena we observe, and the way they are interlinked with many other aspects of Reality, then we would tend to see each phenomenon as essentially unique.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/white-house-defends-putin-summit/index.html

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1224891.shtml

Describe what you see, rather than see what you describe.

I don’t know many people who can accurately take both sides of an intensely personal argument. I liked it.

I understand many people will prefer a life of Faustian striving towards future perfection, and I accept that people who adopt such a life develop into superior people compared to people who adopt my life, who develop into small, unassuming people. This should be stated clearly.

I am essentially a Neoplatonist; such notions of superiority are something between mostly to completely meaningless.

I merely see beauty in hidden order and seek to evoke that into the material universe. To strive for beauty seems a truly happy and divine thing. To lose oneself into the fabric of the eternal and to identify with it, even for a moment, is both all-encompassing and completely annihilating of the self.

I have two questions. 1) Is the Ukrainian nation-statehood so weak that its fate hinges on NS2 not going forward. 2) Does Zelensky not understand that, for Washington, its rivalry with China is far more crucial than the Russia-Ukraine conflict?https://t.co/GIervgOX5u

— Artyom Lukin (@ArtyomLukin) June 7, 2021

First time in years, #NATO didn’t invite #Georgia and #Ukraine to attend the upcoming summit.

— Ani Chkhikvadze (@achkhikvadze) June 7, 2021

Putin knows the West does not want to confront both China and Russia.

He knows that Nixon and Kissinger worked hard to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and China.

He also knows that the West will talk to him, sooner than later.

— Onye Nkuzi (@cchukudebelu) March 23, 2021

I hope, in the end, the ordinary wins in you. But I suspect for that to happen you’ll have to overcome your tremendous resentment towards (((Odessians)), which is plainly poisoning your character and holding you back.

As I have already written once, I am the type of “antisemitic ” person that gets perfectly well with Jews. In fact, if it was not for the (decisive ?) role they played in the Russian revolution and the Perestroika, I wouldn’t have anything at all against the Jewish people.

But facts are what they are, the peculiar egotism, which is common to Abraham’s children, has driven them into a kind of Karmic track that breeds resentment among the other normal, non-Abrahamic ethnic groups. This Karma ends up producing violence and suffering, including for the innocent people who are guilty by association.

Jews should really become aware of this problem of theirs and correct it through sincere altruism and honest abnegation. It will help healing them and bringing them closer to the peaceful and happy state that all normal people enjoy.

You perhaps are moving forward to that due to your interest in Zen and Taoism. I wish you good luck in overcoming the Jewish “shadow” in your psyche and reaching towards your Buddha Nature.

And yes, Leonard Cohen is a great example to follow.

He was a fine gentleman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg

Meant to press “thanks”.

Not that I disagree – I do significantly agree with your vision and appreciate it’s beauty.

Only, my particular version of Ch’an says that this vision of beauty and non-self “already” exists, and that to strive for it is to lose it (as Linchi says). But we substantially agree on the content of the vision.

Anyways, it would be churlish and mean-spirited of me to respond to your generous comment to me with more quibbling, so I will leave off and emphasize that I find your vision moving and beautiful.

Thanks.

Jurgen Trittin, a member of the foreign policy committee of the Bundestag from the Greens faction, suggested that Europe should consider seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs who “have enriched themselves through corruption”.

https://kapital-rus.ru/articles/article/germaniya_predlojila_arestovat_aktivy_rossiiskih_oligarhov/

for where your treasure is, there will be also your heart…

https://biblehub.com/matthew/6-21.htm

So what you want to say, is take the Gilad Atzmon pill?

I feel that someone motivated by deep compassion would suffer a lot. They would appear to those around them as a blank canvas, perfect for putting our most extreme qualities onto.

In this way, their presence, might bring out those people’s most extreme qualities, which is generally dangerous and hurtful all around.

Well how to put this shortly? Buddhas are beyond all suffering, they innately know that all phenomena are conditional and fleeting, subject to age, decay, etc, therefore there is no fear in the mind of the Buddha, nor grasping, but a deep knowledge that anyone can be liberated from suffering and pain. It is we who think that there is no existence beyond our mundane life, it is we who live in fear. In Buddhism just compassion is not enough, but union of compassion and wisdom. Compassion without deeds is nothing else than spineless sentimentalism, wisdom without results, is nothing else than intellectual masturbation.

Is “imagination” where your pride goes into overdrive, and “clairvoyance” what you see when you drop that?

I dont understand what you are trying to describe? Imagination is when our mind is simulating sensory stimuli, clairvoyance is when people claim to perceive things beyond their senses. Aren’t you a native English speaker, you should know at least what imagination means?

Maybe those spiritual phenomena deserve love and acceptance too?

Even if it were so, it does not mean that such phenomena are necessarily trustworthy.

Being a Buddha is infitely blissful and fulfilling.

Not really, just be nice to your fellow human beings. There is no bad Karma that cannot be healed through good deeds. This is true for all human beings, Jews or otherwise. From the point of Buddha Nature, a Jew is not different from a Gentile. And, as Aaron perfectly understands, a sage is no different from a fool.

This comment was a reply to AK comment # 215.

I don’t know enough about Leonard Cohen, to say if he was a good or bad man, or something, but what I can say is that no matter if you are in China, Tibet, Sri Lanka or Burma, that it is universally agreed by all Buddhists outside of Japan that one should never ever trust a monk who is not keeping his monastic vows, that trusting some one who wears Buddha’s Kasaya without following Vinaya/monastic code, is a sure way to negative states of existence. This fake monk who was Cohen’s teacher was a married man, in other words he was just a charlatan.

For clarification lay teachers are not forbidden in Buddhism, but wearing monk’s clothing without living like a monk is strictly forbidden by Buddha.

From the world of passions,
I return to the world beyond passions,
A moment of pause.
If the rain is to fall, let it fall;
If the wind is to blow, let it blow.

https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/sex-zen-and-poetry-the-life-of-ikkyu-sojun

Only the EU is strong enough to plug the gaps in Russia’s economy. The US is too far away and left it too late. The time to venture into Russia and buy small assets to make big businesses was the 1990’s. Mostly the Europeans did that. Nestle sells more dog food than Mars. Mondelez only sells chocolate in Russia because it bought Cadbury Schweppes. GM hardly tried. Ford is in retreat. VW/Skoda is well entrenched. in Deripaska’s factories, Renault run Lada. There are more Airbuses with Rolls Royce engines than Boeings with GE engines. US business stayed out of Russia in the 1990’s (unlike political and financial advisors) and it shows. Tough to find its way back in. US dominance in food is not only irrelevant now, Russia is becoming a challenger. Russian language and cultural barriers (home delivery to the 7th floor of a controlled access stairway) has created an ecological niche for Russian IT.

How to prove it? Human Rights meh.

Whatever, I don’t know if you remember, though I remind you of it again and again, that I have no other motivation with you, than telling to others that you are not a Buddhist and not a member of any Buddhist community, nor does any traditional Buddhist school agree with your line of thinking. Though there are times when you blabber half truths, but as you Americans say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Therefore my posture is purely defensive one. Still if some one wants to follow AaronBuddhism it’s their choice. Maybe world would be better so, I don’t know, I just know that it’s not Buddhism nor Chan Buddhism.

I don’t get where you get this Bodhisattva non-sense, I have never ever claimed to be a Bodhisattva. Anyway to me it’s clear who is here full of spite and contempt.

Ikkyu was a degenerate demon. So he really doesnt matter, he is a non-Buddhist to all Buddhist schools outside of Japan.

Please show me from what book you found that Bodhidharma is saying that sex is basically immaterial. Seems fake.

Chögyam Trungpa is an extremely controversial figure, but he had given up his monastic vows, therefore when he was partying, drinking and doing coke, he was not anymore a monk.

Et tu Bashi?

Well, if nothing else, he appears to have demonstrated at least the ability to withdraw, at least for awhile.

Despite his dislike for establishment, he became an abbot in 1474 of Daitokuji and managed to ease the conflicts between Daitokuji and Myoshinji schools of Zen. But his feelings about being an abbot remained mixed as his bitter poems from this period shows. He leaves the position shortly after taking it and returned to his previous lifestyle…

Definitely seems to have struggled.

Fools dont justify their opinions by associating them with exotic religions and philosophies. Such behaviour is too pretentious for fools or jesters.

Hermes/Mercury is one of my favorite gods of Greco-Roman pantheon. Btw planet Mercury’s name is Budha in Sanskrit…

Please show me from what book you found that Bodhidharma is saying that sex is basically immaterial. Seems fake.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-zen-teaching-of-bodhidharma_bodhidharma/383293/

And I have always said, that I don’t pretend to represent “Buddhism”. I don’t even claim to represent Ch’an. I fully admit Ch’an has a “striving” school (although for the purpose of achieving the “realization” that one already has Buddha-nature (is perfect), and “seeing into ones nature” (that one is not an independent entity).

So what are you fighting with me about?

I don’t get where you get this Bodhisattva non-sense, I have never ever claimed to be a Bodhisattva

I apologize if I have misunderstood you – but didn’t you say the goal of your brand of Buddhism is to become a Bodhisattva, develop your compassion, work on yourself- i.e, some form of personal development, self-improvement, and reaching a superior state?

but a deep knowledge that anyone can be liberated from suffering and pain

It hurts that people suffer now.

Aren’t you a native English speaker, you should know at least what imagination means?

Translating distinctions, which exist in my mind, through language, to see if the same distinctions exist in your mind, requires me to experiment and appropriate the definition of certain words.

I have tried my best to be clear in the above paragraph. Sorry if I was unsuccessful.

Even if it were so, it does not mean that such phenomena are necessarily trustworthy.

The more you understand something, the more trustworthy it is.

Thanks for entertaining my statements and questions. I have an idiosyncratic view on things. Probably like most villagers did, with their own superstitions and beliefs.

He was the Emperor’s illegitimate son relegated to the life of a monk. Although he had a Satori experience, so it was probably worth it. But he was first and foremost a great poet.

About sexuality and Japanese Buddhism, one has to remember that in Shinto, sex is regarded as being of a sacred nature. Perhaps, this is why medieval Japanese people were not of the most prudish kind.

Anyway, I agree with Altan that Vinaya is important. But Buddha Nature does not increase if someone is withholding from sex and it does not decrease if someone lives a dissolute life. It is probably easier to see one’s original nature if one is not overly attached to pleasures of the flesh, but if someone is instead obsessed with “pure vs impure”, then it is perhaps not really better.

I think that Bodhidharma was absolutely right when he said that as long as we don’t see our original nature, we are mortals, once we see it we are Enlightened, even if we still sleep with beautiful geishas as Ykkyu did, or write profoundly moving love poems to a blind nun lover as did Ryokan:

Have you forgotten me
or lost the path here?
i wait for you
all day, every day
but you do not appear.

This feeling of profound love and devotion for his lover did not prevent him from also writing:

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.

Zen is not a Haram/Halal binary spiritual doctrine. If Reality is one, Mind is one, then why doing so much hair splitting ?

Only place where that Bodhidharma citation is found is in reddit and in that dubious book. Who were the translators, which Sutras were translated? Your site does not tell anything, except the name of the publisher, who are not famous about their accurate translations of Buddhist scriptures.

Pema Chodron was a member of new religion, so called Shambhala Buddhism, which was established by previously mentioned Chögyam Trungpa.

Sogyal Rinpoche was not a monk, and I have never ever claimed that Buddhist authorities are incorruptible.

But cherry on the cake, or biggest bullshit among your waste is this:

The Hevajra Tantra, for example, states that “at one time the Lord dwelt in the vagina (bhaga) of Vajrayogini− the heart of the Body, Speech and Mind of all Buddhas”. Both Hevajra and Vajrayogini are male figures with great initiatory powers, and this first line of the mantra suggests that it is in the female genitals where mantras are preached and where initiations and realizations take place.

Really Bashi you have reached a new low, Vajrayogini is a Female Buddha, not a male, the article you linked is so shitty that even the gender of someone like Vajrayogini is mistaken. Congratulations, you made me angry, you succeeded in what Aaron could not succeed!

Vajrayogini a man? Tantra misogynistic? Who the hell among practitioners of genuine Buddhist Tantra is thinking of some western bs about is male or female having the dominant role, I just cant express how utterly confused claim this is. Females rarely getting enlightened, wtf? Oh you really are a man of a clickbait bullshit generation Bashi. Never really studying things profoundly, just if article sounds shocking it is to your tastes. Ideal consumer of western bs, a true letze mensch for whom things like Buddhism are just objects of mental consumerism.

I really would not have thought that you would link here bs articles about Buddhism. Now I need to explain Buddhist tantra here, and correct the falsehoods of your link, too much work, I’ll go to sleep, maybe next day…

Still short list of corrections

-Tantra is equal, more equal than any other forms of Buddhism

-Many Tantric lineages were established by women

-Tantra with sex is exceedingly rare and should be practiced only between two loving monogamous partners

-Tantra or Vajrayana is 99% about other things than sex

“Male or female–there is no great difference. But if she develops the mind bent on enlightenment, to be a woman is better.” -Padmasambhava, the so called second Buddha and extremely important figure for Tantric Buddhism.

If Reality is one, Mind is one, then why doing so much hair splitting

So far, rocks haven’t been as nutritious as meat, but I’ll let you know when that changes for me.

🙂

This is of course true, but it doesn’t mean that Reality is not fundamentally one.

Only place where that Bodhidharma citation is found is in reddit and in that dubious book. Who were the translators, which Sutras were translated?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pine_(author)

Red Pine is an excellent translator of the Chinese texts. In the book a page of Chinese characters faces a page of English translation. This recension was form a Chinese text that Red Pine has accessed in a Taiwanese Ch’an monastery.

http://www.buddhism.org/Sutras/2/Sutras19.htm

I have read another recession of the same texts plus additional early Ch’an found in Dunhuang, some of the these texts offer interpretations of the Cittamatra that are more extremes than the one found in the Bloodstream Sermon.

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Bodhidharma_Anthology.html?hl=fr&id=M6UwDwAAQBAJ

Finally, the first version that I read was the French one translated by Bernard Faure from a Japanese translation made from a Chinese text:

Bernard Faire has also written an interesting book about Red Thread Zen:

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Red_Thread.html?hl=fr&id=W03rYFlgPCYC

That’s probably the whole point: something impossible to prove is impossible to disprove as well.

They’re all intertwined – it’s one system. Putin is the one balancing the different clans, but anyway they all have moneys placed in the West. Roldugin’s cellos and all…

Do you have a meditative practice, incidentally?

Its one thing that I would recommend to anyone reading this post, even if it is only for a few minutes. It is a beautiful thing, and there’s innumerable scientific papers demonstrating its benefits even from a purely material standpoint.

What comes along with Great International Bifurcation is Domestic Balkanization.

Armstrong looked into the future and see only a new system entirely different from capitalism (his 309-year cycle basically means fundamental shifts in economic systems)

Yet he’s too married with his models to see past capital flows, confidence in the material world, and struggles between narrow ideological outlooks.

NATOids' wedgy tactics on the Internet:
To Russians: China is a threat to you! They want to take back Siberia!
To Chinese: Your government is a vassal to the Soviets and now Putin! Seeseepee sold out Outer Manchuria and Outer Mongolia! Overthrow Xi and take those lands back!

— Sweet Summer 4K144Hz Genocide Denying Shunü 🥭 (@ShunuSweet) June 9, 2021

Only the EU is strong enough to plug the gaps in China’s economy. The US is too far away and left it too late. The time to venture into China and buy small assets to make big businesses was the 1990’s. Mostly the Europeans did that.

European businesses are increasing investment in China and moving supply chains onshore after the quick recovery from the pandemic last year made China an even more important source of growth and profits.

Nearly 60% of European companies plan to expand their China operations in 2021, up from 51% last year, according to an annual survey by the European Chamber of Commerce released Tuesday. About half of the 585 respondents reported profit margins in China higher than their global average, a jump from the 38% recorded a year earlier.

“The resilience of China’s market provided much-needed shelter for European companies amidst the storm of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the survey report. China’s quick containment of the virus and successful reopening of its economy early last year made it the main global growth driver in 2020, throwing a lifeline to European companies from French luxury giant LVMH SE to German car maker BMW AG.

A total of 73% of the survey respondents reported a profit last year, with another 14% breaking even. That was about the same level as in previous years despite the pandemic, showing how quickly the domestic market bounced back. Some 68% of the survey respondents were optimistic about the business outlook in their sector over the next two years, up from 48% last year.

Businesses are also expanding in China to further separate their operations in the country from the rest of the world, in order to avoid supply chain disruptions due to geopolitical tensions, according to the chamber’s report.

A quarter of the surveyed companies are “onshoring” their supply chains by moving production lines into China or switching to suppliers with local production, according to the chamber. Only 9% of firms said they were considering moving any current or planned investment out, the lowest level on record.

“The main point is to develop supply chain as much as possible here, as far as it’s possible, to provide what’s needed for the market here,” said Charlotte Roule, a board member of the chamber.

Companies are exposed to the threat of decoupling between China and other economies, with many reliant on imports for critical components or inputs that could be disrupted by restrictions or bans by other nations. A third of firms say that there are simply no viable alternatives to some of the equipment or components they import from abroad into China, leaving them exposed to production disruptions. Another 40% said that any alternative would be either more expensive or be of lower quality.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-08/european-companies-plan-to-invest-more-in-china-after-pandemic

Putin proved that he is not beholden to the West with Crimea.

The West needed a scarecrow. In the future it’ll be the “viral Chinese dragon” that will play this role, but in 2014 the best contender for the role of the credible geopolitical baddie was the “rabid Russian bear”. And the annexation of Crimea was used to prove that “Russia is back at it again “.

The West uses this scarecrow to distract its middle class from the accumulation of the social problems, the loss of economic competitiveness, the slow but inevitable downgrade in living standards, the degradation of culture and spiritual sphere, the interethnic friction due to immigration etc. The “muh evil Russkyi ” and the “muh vile Chink” are also of course used to chant the beauties and advantages of the “Western democracy ” (bwahahaha) and “Western human rights ” (trololol). The propaganda on the telly is pointing fingers and telling to the petit bourgeois: “look how bad it is out there, count your blessings and be thankful you are here “.

And of course MIC is shoveling hundreds of billions by inflating the geostrategic significance of the “muh terrible Putter” (the Kremlin dwarf). NATO bureaucratic machine is oiled with cash, all kinds of (idiotic) think tanks are also enjoying the gravy train. The elites fill their pockets and the pork barrel rolls.

But thing is – it’s all Kabuki theater. It’s all fake and gay on both sides. Борьба нанайских мальчиков…

Dmitry Ponomaryov (RedDvl) and his group of “unlicensed conspirologists” has made an interesting analysis of how the “Крым наш” played out and there are credible elements that strongly point to a “rigged match ” which was fully approved by the global elites. Ukrainian government did not lift a finger to keep Crimea, quite the opposite. Turchinov gave orders to give it up to the accursed Moskaly. His actions are tantamount to a state treason, but he was promoted instead. And he is a well known asset of the Western influence groups and secret services in Ukrainian politicum. So basically, they gave their blessing to the annexation, which helped designing Russia as a “malevolent power ” for now close to a decade and revive the “muh NATO solidarity ” (and more importantly money spending).

Do not get distracted Tolik, they’re all the same, whether East or West, they are scum.

What will happen when China is “politely asked” to compensate the global losses that occurred because of the “Chinese virus ” ?

Cause me thinks it’s in the plans…

😉

It will be in tens of trillions, like the Weimar war reparations that triggered the hyperinflation.

This, or WWIII.

So China now gets to demand compensation for the raiding of the Summer Palace, Opium war, Japan’s occupation during WWII, theft of Hong Kong and Macau, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

[MORE]

The forecast is based on no “nth waves” and gradual but certain reopening after everyone marches onto vaccine clinics. Even if those were realized, Schwab will order massive restrictions on output for the “Climate” (Guardian had coverage on this suggesting locking down once every 2 years).

Knock a few %s away from countries that lock down heavily again, maybe 10%, and 1-2% from those who don’t. That means another year of negative growth for those countries in black on the map (nice job to the mappers), much of Europe and the US. India and Russia, maybe flat, China (they just locked down parts of Guangzhou because of a handful of cases) as anemic as last year.

We’re still closer to the top of the roller coaster than the other end, because everyone is restless.

(Wise people stopped praising Sweden after EU pressure led to soft lockdowns, and Taiwan after their first serious spike and belated lockdown. Praise Belarus and Florida for their decisive leaders not bending to outside pressure)

broke: China is wholly responsible for starting WWIII
woke: WWIII is just the latest war orchestrated the Bankers and part of their conspiracy to enslave the world
bespoke: We’re ending up in a world war again because the system needs war to ensure overall stability, both power centres see the time for the rebalancing of power (Thucydides’ Trap), and the nature of state organization is geared towards that end.

Impossible to win at the negotiating table what is unwinnable on the battlefield.

Who's the most influential actor in the world?
Fascinating that the country that gives the highest score to the EU (22%) is…the UK!#transatlantictrends survey results from GMFhttps://t.co/zdwXGb1D4W pic.twitter.com/BrELPN1Ina

— Ulrike Franke (@RikeFranke) June 7, 2021

Surprised by the Polish result.

Polish joke:

One day a Polish man bought an antique lamp and accidentally rubbed it, releasing a genie. “You’ll get three wishes,” says the genie, “One for each day.” The Polish man nodded and said: “I wish Poland will be invaded by China.” The genie thought it was strange but granted his wish.

The very next day the genie asked the Pole for another wish. To his surprise, the Pole said that he wanted Poland to get invaded by China again. He granted his wish.

On the third day the genie asked the Pole for his wish but again the Pole asked for Poland to be invaded by China. “If you don’t mind me asking,” inquired the genie, “you could have asked for anything! Money, women, power. Why the hell would you want your country to get invaded by China???”

The Pole chuckled and replied.

Yeah, this joke was once told to me by a Polish colleague who candidly acknowledged that (some ?) Poles have a complex when it comes to think of Russia and Russians. He was a bit surprised (and perhaps a little disappointed) when I told him that most Russians are completely neutral when it comes to Poles / Poland and have no more concern for Poland than they have for Vanuatu.

A very nice guy, we really got along fine.

Another Polish joke seen today:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3YzViVXwAMcZan?format=jpg&

The president of Poland said that no one will be permitted to sow discord between Polish and Belarusian peoples, because they are both citizens of the same Rzeczpospolita.

Many LOLs ensued.

I often write about the sad realities in some of the Russian hinterland- “glubinka ” regions, here is a glimpse of what is going on in the small villages of Kostroma area. Andrey Pavlichenkov, the owner of “Terem” in Chukhloma, wrote about these problems in his FB not so long ago:

https://www.rbth.com/special_projects/discovering_russia_1/2016/07/01/the-terem-at-astashovo-grand-dacha-in-the-chukhloma-forests_608137

Bodha ji is ancestral to Soma Vansh or Lunar Dynasty of Sri Krishna & Bharat Samrat Ji as well.

Interestingly many Western tribes are identified with the sons of Raja Yayayti.

Anu, Pakshu, Parsu etc

😉

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

Well, a rock could theoretically be as nutritious as meat… if we had the capability to digest it.

“no”

cue a lot of westoids reenacting Jonestown out of butthurt :^)

Indeed.

https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-642-11274-4_903

Perhaps the future transhuman cyborg Daniel Chieh will happily munch on asteroids in the Oort Cloud, while remembering our Unz discussions with much nostalgia…

“No” would not be a popular choice for an answer. The whole world has been affected by Covid and China would lose much charisma points if it ignored the global opinion which might broadly agree that compensation is morally justified.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/g7-calls-fresh-probe-covid-origins-targets-chinas-use-forced-labor

Et voilà!

Right as expected…

They’re gonna try carpet nuking China anyway. China might as well rug ’em preemptively.

No easy way outta this – if they pay, the demands will become more insane. If they don’t, the demands get more insane.

The only way to negotiate with the West is to have them in front of the exit end of a gun barrel

And the show goes on:

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-06-08/china-denounces-vile-provocation-of-us-senators-in-taiwan

Its unlikely that anything complex will be able to run off rocks due to their inconsistent purity(even obsidian, for example, is glass but has a lot of impurities that make casting it all but impossible), but never say never.

New Jacques Vallee interview on Theories of Everything show.

It is two and a half hours and I watched the whole thing; the most salient bits:

1. The main topic is Vallee’s new book which is centered on a Close Encounter Third Kind case study which has received almost no coverage before. A presumed alien craft landed in distress in New Mexico in 1945 and surviving aliens were briefly observed by two very young ranch hands. The Army quickly cleaned up. There are modern interviews with surviving witnesses including one of the eyewitnesses of the aliens. It was an egg or bell or avocado shaped craft that was hauled off by an eighteen wheel rig. The aliens were noticeably not human. Short. Very skinny. Funny looking in other respects. Perhaps mantis-like is the relevant jargon used by the UFO people. Two arms and two legs, mouth, nose, two eyes. The weirdest thing is they did not appear to walk, but seemed to will themselves in lateral motion without normal human-style leg movements.

2. Vallee is bound by security arrangements but he did all of this work exterior to those and thoroughly answered all questions about his book and this case.

3. He is now 81 years old but very sharp. To be still on his game after over two hours (there was one glitch at around the 2:20 mark) doing the bulk of the thinking and speaking with two younger guys is pretty great.

4. He endorses the integrity and authenticity of Mellon and Elizondo. You Can’t Have Everything!

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko on China, February 1979:

"You, the West, may be in a euphoric mood now about China but the time will come when you will all be shedding tears" pic.twitter.com/TTb5eSJhVa

— Alexei Arora (@AlexeiArora) June 7, 2021

Iran and Russia signed a visa waiver agreement geared toward tourists on Monday. The Islamic Republic’s Tourism Minister Ali Asghar Mounesan met with his Russian counterpart Zarina Doguzova in Moscow to sign the deal. The agreement allows tourists in groups of five to 50 people to enter the other country on a single visa as opposed to all the potential visitors obtaining individual visas.

so they think. the phrase that comes to my mind is, ‘the return of the repressed’

putting off the consequences as long as possible rarely produces a desirable outcome

Are you joking or not?

The more likely scenario will be astronomic reparations, then a conventional war by the US and Pacificist bloc to partition and enact industrial-scale ethnic cleansing + genocide. Basically 1919 + 1945 Germany, only that COVID is treated as the act of provocation.

Which is not surprising considering that our side (from Unz to Martin Armstrong) points to America/WEF’s role in releasing the virus, and the sole use of false flags is to trigger a war.

Indeed, but I do not claim my selections “represent Buddhism”. I have always made quite limited claims. I have been clear that I am talking about one particular sect within Buddhism, and that I am even only speaking of certain particular masters within that sect. So a sect within a sect. My selections don’t even represent the whole of Ch’an, just an influential sect.

To me it seems that you are trying to represent the Linji lineage of the Chan, which is the biggest surviving Chan lineage in existence, or which particular masters of particular sect you are speaking of?

For someone who claims to be outside of the norms, you are quite repetitive, this has happened already a quite few times, that first you boisterously make big claims about something in Buddhism/Chan/Tao is and then later you start apologizing and belittling yourself. In my opinion this is very formulaic behaviour.

I apologize if I have misunderstood you – but didn’t you say the goal of your brand of Buddhism is to become a Bodhisattva, develop your compassion, work on yourself- i.e, some form of personal development, self-improvement, and reaching a superior state?

In my brand of Buddhism depending on one’s level of motivation, one can choose, so it has always been in all traditional schools of Buddhism, though in Mahayana beings are categorised into three groups according to their motivation, when in Theravada its morelike non-pious and pious layperson, and monastic community. Vast majority of Asian Buddhists are simply put just trying to have a fortunate or good rebirth in next life.

But most glaring contradiction in both you and Bashibuzuk is that you both often blabber how true Chan is outside of scriptures and books, etc, which is true, but for you both Buddhism is from books, all your knowledge of it is purely out of books, I just can’t fathom how people don’t notice such huge paradoxes in their thinking, then especially you have a gall to say that I am too scripture based in my thinking, even though this living tradition would be part of me and my life even if I would have never even read a one book in my life. So joke’s on you guys!

Emptying countryside with decaying infrastructure is a reality in many other countries too, even in Scandinavia.

There were couple threads in Dharmawheel about this translator who uses the name Red Pine, and his use of words is often quite puzzling, like as an example he translates such a major concept like Samskhara with word ‘memory’. From Yogachara point of view it does not make much sense to say that “sex is basically immaterial,” likewise the death is basically immaterial, so what?

Maybe Sher Singh is right, maybe you are not part of Dharmic gang, disparaging some teachings and praising others is not right behaviour, if you would know something about real practice in Chinese monastwries, and not just a book knowledge, you would know that Chan is just one set of trainings or instructions, in Buddhism we can practice very diversely and take various kinds of Dharma empowerments and transmissions. Pure Land, secret Mantra, Chan, Yoga etc. It is very common for Chan masters to practice also the so called “esoteric” or Mantrayana/Vajrayana practices, which you are actively slandering.

Both you and Aaron are just running away from something, and maybe Buddhism to you guys is nothing else than a highly individualistic project to build a religion in your own image, maybe Christianity and Judaism betrayed your expectations or something, maybe you guys are too full of pride. Aaron is a Jew, but you Bashi are a Russian, and Russians are a Christian people, my advice To you is to repent and pray forgiveness from Christ. He’ll take care of you.

https://www.news24.com/news24/dalai-lama-against-conversion-20001231

“I believe that the French, who are Christian by culture and ancestry, should remain Christian. It is better to stick to your own traditional values…. It is only if, after mature reflection, you believe that Buddhism could offer you more than Christianity that you should become a Buddhist.”

-H.H. Dalai Lama

But in the end freedom of religion and conscience is more important than even the Buddhism itself, ha ha! So do as you like, this is just my advice, and you are free to choose as you like. At least don’t slander Tantra anymore I humbly ask, such behaviour is more suitable for non-Dharmic people.

To me it seems that you are trying to represent the Linji lineage of the Chan, which is the biggest surviving Chan lineage in existence, or which particular masters of particular sect you are speaking of?

Not exactly. For instance, if I quoted to you Jesus’ words from his Sermon On the Mount, I wouldn’t necessarily be claiming to represent any Christian tradition. That’s because you have to distinguish between a religious figures own words and the traditions, rituals, and practices that later grow up around him and form a ‘religion’.

Generally there is a clear relationship between the two, if often distorted, but frequently the religion bears little relation to it’s supposed founders words. For instance, American protestant Christianity with it’s gospel of prosperity and military intervention bears almost no relation to Jesus’ actual message.

I don’t claim to represent any lineage or religion.

The writers within the Ch’an tradition that inspire me are primarily the Third Patriarchs Song, the Sixth Patriarch, Huang Po, Wansong, parts of Linchi, the Japanese Bankei, various poets, and probably some others I’m forgetting and have yet to discover.

I am also inspired by Indian Tantric writers like Tilopa and Saraha, who have a substantially similar message.

In my brand of Buddhism depending on one’s level of motivation, one can choose,

Right, I seem to remember that. Striving to become a Bodhisattva or a Buddha is trying to become a superior person of some sort, however benevolent or refined the ideal. However you slice it, this seems rather self-important.

This is a problem in any spiritual tradition that bids you eliminate the ego or work on humility or charity or self-abnegation. Trying to develop these qualities increases ones ego and self-importance.

In the Ch’an writers I admire, one neither develops ones ego nor works to eliminate it, but merely accepts things as they are. It is precisely trying to become something special that clouds ones vision, and precisely seeking Enlightenment that pushes it away.

Of course, trying to become superior or develop certain moral qualities is a perfectly legitimate choice if that is what you want, only there are other religious traditions that counsel a “wise passivity” and acceptance. We all must choose, after we are aware of all the possibilities.

But most glaring contradiction in both you and Bashibuzuk is that you both often blabber how true Chan is outside of scriptures and books, etc, which is true, but for you both Buddhism is from books, all your knowledge of it is purely out of books, I just can’t fathom how people don’t notice such huge paradoxes in their thinking, then especially you have a gall to say that I am too scripture based in my thinking, even though this living tradition would be part of me and my life even if I would have never even read a one book in my life. So joke’s on you guys!

It’s been said that it’s hugely ironic that the Zen sect which is supposed to be beyond words has generated one of the worlds greatest body of written work from any religion 🙂

I never accused you of relying too much on scriptures. Bashi I think is the one to do that. To be fair, he has also accused me of using far too many words as well!

There is a lot of truth to what you say, but the status of words in Ch’an is somewhat peculiar; they do not impart any positive teaching, but only seek to “liberate” one from the prison of words; views, opinions, dogmas, beliefs, concepts, etc.

So basically we are using words as a medicine against words. It is merely a medicine. Once the thicket of concepts is cleared away, one simply experiences life in a direct fashion.

Ch’an is not a religion in the Western sense but a “way of liberation”. This is an important distinction. In the West, it is assumed you start off inadequate and have to build yourself up into something adequate. In a “way of liberation”, the assumption is that your original nature is perfect, and your frustrations are caused by late accretions you must “liberate” yourself from.

The degree to which ones needs words to free oneself from the prison of words is highly individual. Some people may need none or very little. Growing up in a highly literary culture myself, I need a rather stronger dose of the medicine.

Finally, Ch’an has produced so much writing also because while being the simplest message in the world, human tendencies go against it and the message tends to be repeatedly distorted. So it has to be restated and reformulated each generation, in language that makes sense to that generation. While exceedingly simple, humans struggle with the “middle way” of “neither rejecting nor clinging to”, the “still center” – it is much easier to either cling or reject something. So this attitude ends up being somewhat slippery and subtle, despite being so simple.

disparaging some teachings and praising others is not right behaviour,

I was not disparaging anything. I was just playing mirror to your comments about Ikkyu and Sasaki Roshi. Funny how you don’t notice it. You are usually very sharp, but you also come blindsided sometimes, which is okay we are all human and therefore imperfect in one way or other.

Chungyam Trungpa understood that and worked accordingly, and so did Ikkyu Sojun and countless other teachers, not only in Buddhism but in all other religious traditions as well. Different people have different spiritual needs because they are simply different. Thank goodness it is not a Haram/Halal situation and you are not some Wahhabi-Salafi type defining right from wrong. It is all shades of gray and your mind is just as deluded as mine is.

And it’s okay. Let’s don’t make a fuss over it, when the right conditions arise it will all stop. Let’s wait for the Mind to take care of itself, it doesn’t need our ego doing the 心猿意馬 thing. We’re both just wasting time here because of our bad habits.

So why pointing fingers on other people who are possibly more spiritually evolved than we both are ?

Are you really sure that your mind is somewhat different from Sasaki Roshi’s and more “pure” than Ikkyu Sojun’s ?

If I was there with you, I would have invited you for a couple of drinks and then asked you to tell me about your travels.

🙂

The Globalists want to balance the rise of China and they need doing it ASAP, otherwise they will lose control and there will be a Singularity with unpredictable consequences.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/06/huaweis-harmonyos-aims-at-us-tech-dominance/

Perhaps they are already too late and Nick Land is right, you can’t prevent Capital from reinforcing itself.

It was always too late.

What about free will ?

tiny isolated villages with no prospects

And who has decided that there are “no prospects ” for these villages?

stagnant populations

И за это тоже Путину спасибо…

QED. Every transhumanist is implicitly Globalist. Your heart is where your treasure is.

I always thought the issue with Schwab and them was simply the whole “supporting the dominance of select corporate entities and chosen technocrats in a false utopia that acts like a concerned force of egalitarianism in the world” rather than anything else. It’s not like he’s alone in that, though, and better that than a warmonger.

Hmm, that last part sounds pretty accurate. I thought the Neoliberals and Democrats were thirsty for Russian blood too, but after Biden slowed Nordstream to go through, I grew slightly more optimistic. Thankfully, I think the trajectory of the (not mainstream) right is a growing appreciation of China and Russia, though it might just be my social groups.

The fear and terror of the incoming Rus horde:

There’s always free will to refuse to use chemical energy, but on an aggregate level, your society will fail against a society that doesn’t refuse to chemical energy.

So, in many ways, not that much choice. Less so now that physical and intellectual distances are minimized.

Russian inventors out, Strong Independent Women (and Boeing Executives) are in.

“Our co-founders are completely divested from the company as of today, helping to resolve a primary point of the government’s concern,” said Momentus Chief Executive Officer Dawn Harms. “The focus now shifts to efficiently implementing the NSA requirements and reinforcing our operational security.”

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210609005317/en/Momentus-Finalizes-and-Signs-National-Security-Agreement

https://spacenews.com/russian-co-founders-out-of-momentus/

И за это тоже Путину спасибо…

Oh yes, decaying countryside and stagnating population in the Baltics and Balkan, Japan, Romania, Poland, Hungary and Finland is clearly because of Putin!

You are so much against of Putin that I am suspicious of your Russian heritage, in practice your words differ very little from Russophobic inhabitants of Near abroad, similarly your worldview is based on Putin being хуйло и вор, and that Russia outside of Moscow is a shitty place without future prospects.

I am myself cautiously optimistic about Biden regime, but remember that quite a few time after US presidential elections, there was a promising beginning, which quickly soured and relations got worse than ever. It happened even with Obama, do you remember the Reset?

Putin once talked about this, and said that there is a strong bureaucracy in US administration that is very hostile to Russia, no matter who is in the White House.

But maybe this time they are trying to pull Nixon’s trick, but I don’t believe that they are really contemplating such an option, US image would take a huge hit among the Russophobic limitrophes and more ideologically driven progressives of the USA and Western Europe(like German Greens), also China and USSR had already very bad relations in 1971, both countries were on the verge of war, so it was relatively easy for China to change it’s US policy to less hostile direction.

Klaus Schwab didn’t support the Iraq War and has been friendlier to Putin than about 90% of Western politicians.

Klaus Schwab is smarter than the average bear. He knows that fighting Russians head on is ill-advised, but Russians are easily seduced.

Oh yes, decaying countryside and stagnating population in the Baltics and Balkan, Japan, Romania, Poland, Hungary and Finland is clearly because of Putin

Depopulation is one of the most important aspects in the Globalist Cabal agenda. Anatoly has just written that Shwab was relatively soft on Putin. I wonder why the WEF crowd would be so gentle about the “muh evil Russkyi Putler” ?

I have written repeatedly that Putin and his regime are pegs into the Globalist machine. When Devil plays chess, he does it at the both ends of the table.

Russian elites have been seduced long time ago. Probably at the time of the Muscovy Company. And whatever the political system, the extractive character of the Russian economy remained mainly unchanged. Basically: make moneys in North Eurasia, enrich your group and send the rest to your sponsors abroad.

Did you know that the first transnational economic/political organization for Europe, the equivalent of what came later with EC / EU, free trade and parliament and all, was suggested by Khruschev in 1962? Few people are aware of that.

And even less people are aware of the fact that only around 48% of the late nineteenth century Tsarist aristocracy considered Russian as their native language.

Россия которую мы (не) потеряли. Россия против Руси…

So basically Universe evolves consciousness that ends up creating Universes that evolve consciousnesses that etc.

Siddhartha was right, it’s kinda boring…

WEF is as Globalist as Communism was. It is basically the same ideology under a different garb. The snake changes its skin, but doesn’t change its venom.

No true Nationalist would ever agree with the Globalist Cabal. You have shown your colors the first time I asked you about the Great Reset months ago. You have derided it as “conspiracy theory”. But in fact you agree with it because it leads to Transhumanism. Now you write that Uncle Shwab is great for Russia.

You write that Russian hiterland must be depopulated and Russian villages built centuries ago abandoned because they have “no perspectives “. You are certainly aware of the plan for the 15 megalopolises in RusFed about which I have commented at the Protasevich thread. You know that the smart city agenda is pushed down the throat of the RusFed sheeple by Sobyanin and his group. And yet you have no problem whatsoever with Russians ending up living under tight control in the digital concentration camps. You know that RusFed is implementing massive biometrics.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-03/moscow-metro-to-let-riders-pay-with-a-glance-by-year-end

There is nothing good for the Russians in all of this. But you like it. That is because you are not a Russian Nationalist, you are a Transhumanist and a Globalist shill (which more often than not amounts to the same anyway).