Two Faces of a Tibetan Idol in America

May 23, 2016 by jstephens

An Icon of Light with a Shady Side
by Tilman Müller and Janis Vougioukas
English Translation of an excellent German article in Stern Magazine published in 2009.

When visiting Germany this week, the Dalai Lama will again be lauded as a messiah. The head of Tibetans is regarded as a symbol of tolerance. But critics in his exile community fail in demanding religious freedom and democracy.

He always comes in a large convoy like a president, bodyguards surrounding him, movie stars and managers forming honour guards. Politicians in charge hurry to welcome him. The scene may be the same this week in Frankfurt [Germany], just as it was in Nuremberg last year. The Dalai Lama greeted the crowds with his lovely child-like waving of hands. But his speech in the town hall made people halt their breath, as reported by a local newspaper next day.

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He catered the elect audience saying he saw Nuremberg already on photographs when he was still a child: “very attractive with generals and weapons“ and with “Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering“.
Some of the auditors seemed to be “embarrassed”, some were “alienated for a second;” Nuremberg’s chief mayor Ulrich Maly calls it a “moment of shock“. The special guests tried to get him self afterwards out of the affair by stating that as a child he wasn’t able to foresee the Nazi catastrophe.

If the Pope had given himself room for such statements in the city of the Reichsparteitage [NSDAP party summits] and the race laws, there would have been a loud outcry in the republic [of Germany]. But the head of Tibetan Buddhists is willingly excused for such words although His Holiness has enough reason to critically think about Nazi history. He who bears the title of the “Ocean of Wisdom” always had a very close relationship to his teacher Heinrich Harrer, a famous alpinist and author (“Seven years in Tibet”). Harrer had been a snappy Nazi who for a long time tried to hide the fact that he used to hold the rank of SS-Oberscharführer [Senior Squad Leader of the Schutz-Staffel (SS) or Protective Echelon of Adolf Hitler]. The Tibetan court used to have close ties with the NS-regime.

SS-expeditions were welcomed to Lhasa with full mark of respect. Until today, His Holiness never distanced himself from these inglorious relationships. But this is not the only dark chapter in his story of success.

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The Dalai Lama smiles away all doubts. Almost everywhere he receives the same god-like veneration. In the West he appears as the super idol of the new age but in the Himalayans he governs like a medieval potentate. A gentle do-gooder who can show a surprisingly intolerant yes dictator-like behaviour. His people’s sad fate, suppressed by Beijing and expulsed, hides the inner problems of the Dalai Lama-regime.

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Here [in Germany] people attracted by him fill stadiums like coming to see a pop star. In Nuremberg 7,000 people listened to him, in Hamburg two years ago 30.000 and Frankfurt Commerzbank-Arena expects 40.000 visitors these days. The tickets range from € 10 to € 230 and usually are booked one year in advance. In conjunction with his huge events, there came up a unique spiritual supermarket. 728 German and 908 English books from and about the Dalai Lama are listed with amazon, 13,200 videos at youtube, almost 8 million entries in google. The son of Tibetan peasants is the most popular of all living noble laureates.

Members of all religions and also atheists come like pilgrims to his one-man-shows. “We had direct eye-contact”, a young woman in the German city of Moenchengladbach shouted out over-happily and immediately promised to stop smoking henceforth. “He makes me feel good”, a woman in Boston says in excitement and puts it into a nutshell, “it’s his aura, this simpleness”.

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Just in Europe and the US, the birthplaces of the Age of Enlightenment, this Buddhist messiah formed new strongholds of his religion and he also finds favour with the usually critical-thinking generation of 68 [the left wing student protest movement in Europe] In 1971, Stern Magazine [The magazine where this article was published] celebrated him as the “saint on the mountain”, Spiegel Magazine romanticised him to be a “god to touch” two years ago.

The head of the powerful German publishing house Springer, Mathias Döpfner, ex-porn queen Dolly Buster, German football star Mehmet Scholl, former economy minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff, and the inventor of the famous Love Parade Dr. Motte venerate Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.

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Where does that huge excitement come from? Christianity is loosing prestige and believers. That left a vacuum giving Buddhism a space to develop in the west as some kind of wellness-religion. And the peaceful calmness of the Dalai Lama makes you feel comfortable in the rough daily rat-race. His positive charisma seems to ban all fear of crisis. On top of this, there arose a Tibet romanticism in the West transfiguring the snow land on the roof of the world where the Dalai Lama had been born in 1935 in a hut with juniper rain-pipes.

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The Asia expert Orville Schell, president of the New York Center of Sino-American Relations, explained the development of the Tibet-Myth from its remote position for centuries in innumerable works. The lack of knowledge gave birth to fantasies. It all started back in 1933 with James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon”, first published in German titled “Irgendwo in Tibet – Somewhere in Tibet”. The action was set in the sunshine paradise Shangri-La where no one had to work and everyone is living in eternal peace. The dream factory of Hollywood later on could use all these fantasies, creating a symbiosis of Tibet and pop culture, and created a monument for Tenzin Gyatso with the movie “Kundun”. “Because Tibet has always been so inaccessible, it existed in western imagination rather as a dream than as reality. It was supposed to be a country we could project our post-modern longings to”, Schell says.

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“I am for you whatever you want me to be for you”, the Dalai Lama says and in that way, alpinist Reinhold Messner regards him as “a fighter for environment protection”. German movie director and Oscar prize winner Florian Henckel von Donnermarck appreciates that “he makes happiness one of his religion’s core principals.” Actress Uma Thurman expects absolution for making the bloodthirsty violent movie “Kill Bill”: “The Dalai Lama would die laughing” if watching the movie. And the Dalai Lama takes part in that game, he is open to all directions at one’s will.

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He is a perfect tool for presidents and heads of government as even George W. Bush looks peaceful when being with him. The hyper active Nicolas Sarkozy looks gentle, and boring Roland Koch [prime minister of the German state of Hessen] at least seems to have some esprit. Especially with conservative and right-wing politicians this game of mutual instrumentalisation works especially well. The Dalai Lama had strong sympathy for the Austrian right-wing Jörg Haider and visited him several times in his Austrian state of Kaernten.

Buddhist tantric vase buried in Westminster Abby by the Dalai Lama.

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Although the head of Tibetans is already 74, he is touring the West so intensively only for a relatively short time now. In June 1979, he visited Mont Pèlerin at Lake Geneva giving his first public teaching to a greater audience in the west. “There was not much interest regarding the Dalai Lama and we couldn’t even get police protection for him,” one of the then organizers, today living in Switzerland, tells us.

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In the meanwhile, the Dalai Lama became popular to the world but isn’t it anymore to all the monasteries. “There had been a break in our community about ten years ago,” a former companion says. In the first line it was about a protective saint the brotherhood is not allowed to worship anymore. But basically this religious quarrel is a struggle for power with intrigues, slandering, and intimidation continued until today. Out of fear of repression the confidant of the Dalai Lama asks to stay anonymous. The “Tibetan Community of Switzerland”, an organisation strongly devoted to the Dalai Lama called on all Tibetans in Switzerland having passed their 18th birthday to “immediately” stop the worship of the Tibetan protective deity Dorje Shugden and to sign an 8-point-agreement: “Those few Tibetans publicly and for no reason criticising the Dalai Lama are regarded to be Chinese collaborators by us.”

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This strategy of “either being with me or against me” and the rigid tone absolutely don’t fit to the gentle manner in which the “Übervater” [super-father] is usually presenting himself to the West. His royal court in Dharamsala still follows the feudalist structure of the old Tibet and is ruled by oracles and rituals that do not have much in common with western tolerance and transparency. The Dalai Lama’s sudden prohibition of the protective deity Shugden who had been worshipped since the 17th century and is one out of hundreds of saints in the Tibetan Buddhist canon in 1996 deeply alienated many religious Tibetans. For them it is incomprehensible and outsiders hardly can grasp how rigorous it is enforced. About one third of the 130,000 exile Tibetans are supposed to have worshipped Shugden before the ban. Today there are only a few thousand to openly show their connection to the cult. There are no independent estimations regarding the 5 million Tibetans inside China.

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The journalist Beat Regli in 1998 for the first time showed emotional pictures of that imminent conflict in the Indian exile communities in Swiss television [Schweizer Fernsehen, SF – Dalai Lama and Dorje Shugden]. Highly aged monks regretted crying that they didn’t already die before the prohibition of Shugden. A desperate family whose house had been set alight is presented as well as wanted posters denouncing Shugden followers and a Dalai Lama uncompromisingly defending his ban. “Wrong, wrong” he sounds off in a cold and sharp way nobody in the west has ever expected from the ever smiling noble laureate.

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In Dharamsala this quarrel is continuing to the present day. Monks not following the Dalai Lama’s order report of massive discrimination. Relatives and friends are put under pressure and vendors put posters on their shop’s doors saying “No Entrance” for Shugden-believers.

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In southern Indian city of Mundgod, Ganden Shartse monastery last year celebrated the inauguration of a new prayer hall. “It was supposed to become a great feast” one monk present at the time remembers. He is afraid to say his name. The Dalai Lama himself came and with him a number of other high ranking dignitaries. But almost everything talked about in the speeches and lectures was the old controversial topic of Dorje Shugden. Shortly afterwards the monks are said to have been told to sign a declaration stating they were no longer praticing Shugden. The monastery’s administration even erected a man-high wall through the monastic yard.

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In the meanwhile the dispute was handed over to the court. Dorje Shugden Society filed a complaint at New Delhi’s High Court in order to check whether this “religious discrimination” is acceptable under Indian law. A decision is expected for the end of this year. Dalai Lama says Shugden worship is harmful to his life and to the “cause of Tibet” with no further statements available. His opposition suspects that Shugden, who is also exhorted as an oracle, was prohibited for being a concurrence to the Dalai Lama’s state oracle.

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The Tibetan Governement-in Exile (TGE) nevertheless rejects all accusations. “There are only very few of those people left and they are completely financed by PRC. They are the only ones still talking about this topic,” TGE’s prime minister Samdhong Rinpoche says. Being paid by the Chinese is the worst accusation for any Tibetan.

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The Tibetan refugee’s capital is situated in the small town of Mc Leod Ganj, next to the district capital Dharamsala and twelve hours by bus from New Delhi. The Dalai Lama and members of his closest staff moved into the former residence of the British administration in 1960 with thousands of devotees following him. Among many Indians of that region, Mc Leod Ganj is known as “Little Lhasa”. It is a tiny place with two dusty one way roads winding up the mountain.

About 600,000 enlightenment-tourists come here every year. Loud music flows from cafés and bars into the valley and little stands with religious kitsch stand side by side along the roads, one of them even offering “monk’s fashion”. Young Tibetans here wear Jeans and T-Shirts whereas the western tourists usually dress like actors in biblical movies. Little Lhasa has become the “Ballermann” [an area with lots of clubs, bars, and discotheques in Palma de Mallorca famous among German tourists to the Spanish island] for spiritual seekers.

The small government district is a short way down the hill with tiny ministries, a parliament, and a library. The Dalai Lama again and again underlines that Tibetans in exile have built up a democratic system. There is a parliament with 43 to 46 seats. All sessions are recorded on DVD and then sent into the refugee settlements. On a theoretical basis the parliament may decide against the Dalai Lama. “But this never happened,” says the parliament’s president Penpa Tsering. “Everyone has great confidence into His Holiness. He sees the Tibetan question from many different angles, receives lots of information and is very, very logical.”

For a long time, His Holiness’ family members held high positions. Since 2001 the prime minister is elected directly. In 2006’s elections, he received more than 90% of the votes and thus was confirmed in office. The main goal of Little Lhasa’s political structure is to confirm the Dalai Lama’s decisions and to solidify his power. Parties are absolutely irrelevant and the separation of state and church is not mentioned in the exile Tibetan Charta although it avows itself to the “ideals of democracy” in nice sounding words.

In 1990, the independent Tibetan newspaper “mang-tso” (democracy) was published for the first time and quickly became the most important piece of media for Little Lhasa’s refugee community. “We wrote on election fraud, corruption, and everything else existent in every other country as well,” says Jamyang Norbu, then editor-in-chief. “Mang-tso” was uncomfortable and its editors didn’t allow themselves to be intimidated when some of them received death threats and the paper boys were threatened in the streets. In 1996, the situation got even worse, shortly after the newspaper published an article on the Aum sect which was responsible for poisonous gas attacks on Tokyo’s metro in 1995 killing 12 and leaving hundreds injured. The terrorist sect’s leader, Shoko Asahara on several occasions met the Dalai Lama. Even weeks after the first assault, Dalai Lama called him a “friend, yet not a perfect one.” Only later he went on distance to the sect. “Reporters Without Boarders” then said that due to that article “the religious authorities immediately put ‘mang-tso’ under pressure.” It had to close down; that was the end of “democracy”.

Criticism or public debates are not welcomed in Little Lhasa. Dalai Lama prefers to ask gods and demons for advice. His Holiness’ official state oracle is called Thubten Ngodup, born in 1958. He is living in Nechung monastery right behind the parliament.

For centuries now, the Dalai Lamas seek oracle advice in all important religious and political decisions. After his predecessor had died, Thubten Ngodup became the Dalai Lama’s official fortune-teller in 1987. It is said that he became aware his qualification in various dreams and visions for the first time. Another hint for his supernatural skills was his oftentimes bleeding nose.
Whenever the Dalai Lama has a question, Thubten Nodup would put on his 40-kg ritual garment. Incense would be burnt and his assistants would put a huge crown on his head. Then the oracle would start dancing to the music of horns and cymbals until he would enter a trance murmuring words only well-trained ears can understand. Dalai Lama strongly believes in his predictions. Looking back he found out that “the oracle was always right,” he once said.

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This is not what democracy looks like and yet there is not much criticism regarding his way of governing for reasons of solidarity with a suppressed people facing the super power China. Drawn out of his country, the Tibetan head has to see the cruel injustice happening there and the old culture slowly being destroyed.

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The communist leaders in Beijing try to defame the Dalai Lama by calling him “wolf in monk’s robes” or “devil with a human face and a beast’s heart”. At the same time, Chinese security forces suppress even the slightest move towards freedom on the Tibetan plateau. So one doesn’t have to wonder for most Westeners stepping on the side of the weak.

But Tibet never was the paradise it is in western imagination. When the Chinese marched into it in 1950, it was stuck up in the medieval era with monks and aristocrats sharing the power. Most people were slaves, serfs, or under debt bondage. The system was protected by a brutal religious police with whips and bars and many monasteries had their own prisons. Even the Dalai Lama’s friend Heinrich Harrer was shocked: “The monks’ rule in Tibet is unique and may only be compared to a strong dictatorship. They are suspicious of any influence from the outside that may endanger their power. They are intelligent enough not to believe in their unlimited power but they will immediately punish anyone who dares to doubt it.” Harrer reports of a man who stole a golden butter lamp from a temple. At first his hand were publicly amputated and then “his mutilated body was sewn into a wet yak skin. They let it dry and then threw it down a ravine.”

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After the occupation, the Chinese presented themselves as the Tibetan people’s liberators and destroyed the monasteries. And they built up a new system of suppression. They oftentimes point out that despite of his peace messages the Dalai Lama supports the armed resistance in his homeland, himself being supported by “foreign imperialists”. In deed the Dalai Lama’s two elder brothers built up connections with the US intelligence agency. During several years, CIA trained about 300 Tibetans in guerrilla war techniques at Camp Hale in the Rocky Mountains. In a full moon night in October 1957, the first Tibetan elite soldiers jumped out of a B-17 without nationality marking over Tibet. For the case of being caught by the Chinese, each of them carried a small container of cyanite.
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These Tibetan agents also protected the Dalai Lama’s flight to India permanently being in contact with the CIA via Morse messaging. Later on, the US financed the formation of a Tibetan rebel army in the Nepalese kingdom of Mustang. The programmes were stopped when the US intensified their trading with China in the early 1970s.

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Regarding Buddhism rather as an esoteric cult than as a religion, many of the Dalai Lama’s followers are astonished when hearing of their idol working hand in hand with the US intelligence agencies. Or when they hear that Buddhism spread in Asia as with much bloodshed as Islam did in Arabia or as the Christian crusades. Again and again Tibetan monasteries had brutal fights against each other. Buddhism is not necessarily more tolerant than other religions. In an interview with “Playboy” magazine, Dalai Lama called homosexual practices “misconduct”. The teachings also condemn “having oral or anal sex with your wife or another female partner”. Similar passages had been deleted from his “Ethics for a New Millennium” on his publisher’s advice.

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Dalai Lama is in favour of harmony. But he will have to face the confrontation as there is growing criticism in his own exile community. “His Holiness is living in a bubble without contact to the outside world,” says Lhasang Tsering, a long term activist. He is now running a bookstore in Little Lhasa. “Religion and politics should finally be separated.”

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This is also what Jamyang Norbu is stipulating. “Dalai Lama is not a bad person”, says “mang-tso’s” former editor-in-chief. “But he begins to be a hindrance to our development. We don’t have democracy. Many things today are even worse than in 1959. Then we had three political powers: Dalai Lama, the monasteries, and the nobility.” Today the only leading figure left is the Dalai Lama.

Filed Under: JCS Tagged With: 14th Dalai Lama, Adolf Hitler, American Idol, Aum Sect, B-17, Beat Regli, Beijing, Brad Pitt, Buddha, Buddhism, Camp Hale, Christ, Christianity, CIA, Connie Kang, Dalai Lama, David Aikman, Democracy, devil, Dharamsala, Dorje Shugden, Dr. Motte, feudalist, Frankfurt, Ganden Shartse, Geneva, George W. Bush, Germany, Hermann Goering, Hollywood, Irgendwo in Tibet, Janis Vougiouskas, Jesus Christ, Jörg Haider, Julia Duin, Kill Bill, Lhasa, Lost Horizon, love parade, Marxism, Mc Leod Ganj, Mehmet Scholl, Messiah, Nazi, Ncolas Sarkozy, Nechung Oracle, New York, New York Center of Sino-American Relations, Nobel Laureates, Nobel Peace Prize, NSDAP, Nuremberg, Ocean of Wisdom, oracles, Orville Schell, Pope, porn queen, Reichsparteitage, Reinhold Messner, religious freedom, Roland Koch, Samdhong Rinpoche, Schutz-Staffel, Seven Years in Tibet, Shoko Asahara, Shugden, Shugden Dorje, SS, SS Oberscharfuhrer, Stern, Stern magazine, super father, Tenzin Gyatso, TGE, Thubten Ngodup, Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan Idol, Tibetan romanticism, Tibetans, Tillman Muller, Tolerance, Ulrich Maly, Uma Thurman, XIV Dalai Lama

European Press Critically Exams the Dalai Lama and Kalachakra Rituals While the American Press Naps in Washington, D.C.

May 23, 2016 by jstephens

Comments on a Press Release

Monday, July 11, 2011

I just ran across a press release that gives some vital information on the Kalachakra Initiation that is occurring in Washington, DC. Here it is. It provides very critical insights on what appears to be happening in Washington, DC. Hope you find it of assistance.

‘The Kalachakra Initiation in Washington DC is the one of the largest and most spectacular events Tibetan Buddhism ever has performed in the West. Nearly all high ranked Lamas are present from around the globe including the young Karmapa, who seemingly is being billed by the D. L. as his spiritual successor. So estimate that 100.000 participants will be attending the Kalachakra ceremonies over the ten day period (July 6-16,2011) including some high ranking political figures.’ Although the Dalai Lama recently resigned from his position as King of the Tibetan-Government-in-Exile and boasts of “separation of Church and State, he has already had political meetings with US top politicians including Speaker of the House John Boehner, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA), and several other representatives.

Because of the complexity and potential consequences of the initiation, it is imperative that this issue be discussed into an open and critical debate. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find journalists that are not Tibet-o-philes blogging at the ceremony. While they provide interesting observations, the difficult analytical work of the investigative journalist is missing. Take a look below at the list of hard hitting European articles. What a difference. Where are the Aikman’s and Woodwards? JCS

Trimondi Online European Magazine (English)

Press release of the Critical Forum Kalachakra.

The Kalachakra-Tantra

A Ritual of Peace or a Totalitarian Temptation?

From July 6 through 16, 2011 the XIV Dalai Lama will offer a Kalachakra-Tantra-Ritual in the heart of the U.S. capital, Washington, DC. In Sanskrit, Kalachakra means “The Wheel of Time.” The Kalachakra Tantra, as well the sacred text used in its ritualistic performance, is considered to be “the pinnacle of all Buddhist systems.”

Included in the Kalchakra Tantra are: the construction of a so-called Sand Mandala, which symbolizes the cosmos, an apocalyptic prophecy known as the Shambhala Myth, and several top-secret initiations.

This complicated mystical ritual is presented by the Dalai Lama and the organizers of the event as a dignified and uplifting contribution to world peace, which fosters compassion with all living beings, inter-religious dialog, interracial tolerance, ecological awareness, sexual equality, inner peace, spiritual development, and bliss for the third millennium (Kalachakra for World Peace). One of the Dalai Lama’s mottos for the whole performance is: “Because we all share this small planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature.”

But are the Kalachakra Tantra and the Shambhala Myth truly pacifist? Do they really encourage harmony and cooperation among people? Do they make any real contribution to freedom and justice, equality of gender, religious tolerance or ethnic reconciliation? Are they a comprehensive, politically humanist, democratic and non-violent contribution to world peace?

Andrei Znamenski, Associate Professor of History at Alabama State University and author of an exciting book about the Shambhala Myth in Bolshevist Russia (Red_Shambhala – Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia) came to another conclusion:

“It might be shocking for many readers, but let me start by saying that the Kalachakra Tantra has nothing to do with peace, compassion, and freedom. In Tantric Buddhism it was a misogynistic quest performed by male initiates to accumulate sacred power of particular Buddhist deities (the lower seven initiations are open for all) and, through blending male and female fluids (top secret initiations that involved sexuality), to eventually turn themselves into superhuman androgynous beings. Moreover, part of the Kalachakra teaching was a militant Shambhala prophecy, a call for a Buddhist holy war against enemies of Buddhism.”
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Andrei Znamenski is not alone in this assessment. The Kalachakra Tantra and Tibetan Buddhism are coming more and more into focus by critics. (See: Critical Links to Lamaism) In their groundbreaking work The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, German cultural philosophers, Victor and Victoria Trimondi, not only provide surprising, previously ignored research but also undertake a well-founded interpretation of Lamaism, rendering the Tibetan-Buddhist worldview understandable for Western readers through a comparison with European religious traditions.

The text pays particular attention to an extensive analysis of the Kalachakra Tantra and its political, ideological, and spiritual implications. (The book appeared in 1999 through the reputable German publishing house Patmos Verlag. The English version is online. It became the standard work on the critical examination of Lamaism and the metapolitics of the Dalai Lama.

In the eighties Victor Trimondi did support the Tibetan religious leader, organized several international congresses and other events with him and featured books about him in his own publishing house, the Dianus-Trikont-Verlag.) In their book the two authors describe in detail the secret rituals of sexual magic in the higher initiations of the Kalachakra Tantra (The Public and the Secret Initiations); they have shown the religious-political intention of the Tantra to establish a world-wide Buddhocracy with a sacred world-ruler (The ADI Buddha); they discuss the intolerance of the Tantra vis-à-vis the monotheist religions, its militant and aggressive warrior-ideology, and its vision of a religious end-time battle against Islam (The Aggressive Myth of Shambhala); and they show how the Tantra is interpreted by the Dalai Lama spokesman Robert Thurman as a symbolic and meta-political instrument to conquer western culture by Lamaism (The Buddhocratic Conquest of the West ).

The Trimondis came to very similar conclusions as their American colleague Andrei Znamenski and other critical authors on the topic: “The teachings of the Buddha have so many treasures and wonderful insights, but the philosophy, the vision and the practices of the Kalachakra Tantra are neither compatible with fundamentals of Buddha’s teachings nor with basic principles of Western Enlightenment. Therein are included an apocalyptic war of religion, the aggressive application of super-weapons, radical transgressions of a humanistic moral code, the dissolution of the ego and the soul of the participants of the ritual, the totalitarian subjugation under the will of the guru, the idea of an imperial and global lama-state (Buddhocracy), and the concept of an absolutist world ruler, the Chakravartin.

The sexual rites in the higher initiations of this occult ritual have to be designated as a manipulation of erotic love and a misuse of female energy to produce spiritual and worldly power of men and monks. So the equality of the sexes, democratic decision making, and ecumenical movements are in themselves foreign to the nature of the Kalachakra Tantra.”

The two German cultural philosophers created the Critical Forum Kalachakra to open a wide-ranging debate over the hidden “dark sides” of the Tantra, and published many other articles, including a pamphlet, Eight Questions to the 14th Dalai Lama on the Topic of the Kalachakra.

During the public Kalachakra Initiation in Graz/Austria directed by the Dalai Lama (2002), the German-speaking media picked up these critiques from the Trimondis and other authors to discuss the controversial ritual.

The Austrian state TV & Radio ORF broadcasted a feature called, “Critique of the ‘Peace Ritual’ of the Dalai Lama in Graz.” ‘Peace Ritual’ has been written in quotations marks to emphasize the ambivalence of the term in this context.

Der Standard (The “New York Times” of Vienna) published a cover article with the title, “A Warrior Ritual of the Dalai Lama: The Kalachakra,”

The conservative German Weekly Der Rheinische Merkur wrote: “Extremely wild warriors: what is hidden behind the Kalachakra – Thousands have attended the peace ritual of the Dalai Lama. But the ‘Religion of Happiness’ has also its dark sides.”

Georg Schmid, Prof. for Religious Studies at the University Zürich (Switzerland) called attention to the fact that the Kalachakra Tantra was the product of the religious war between Buddhists and militant Moslems in India around the turn of the first millennium. It was under this influence that the Tantra changed fundamental Buddhist principles. “In this time,” said Professor Schmid, “Buddhism had adopted the law of its enemies and had developed a Buddhist concept of a holy war, a forthcoming apocalyptic conflict between friend and foe of the Buddha-way and a future Buddhist world dominium.”

Alexander Berzin, a designated Kalachakra expert of the Dalai Lama [JCS comments Berzin is the Dalai Lama’s apologist. So what’s needed are several different perspectives], also confirms that the Tantra proclaims a holy war: “A careful examination of the Buddhist texts, particularly The Kalachakra Tantra literature, reveals both external and internal levels of battle that could easily be called ‘holy wars.’ An unbiased study of Islam reveals the same. In both religions, leaders may exploit the external dimensions of holy war for political, economic, or personal gain by using it to rouse their troops to battle. Historical examples regarding Islam are well known; but one must not be rosy-eyed about Buddhism.”

In the meantime, dozens of books, articles, and discussion groups in German and French have carried forward these criticisms and have expanded them–without sparing the person of the Dalai Lama.

A lot of the critical voices came also from the Buddhist camp. See, for example, comments to an article about the Kalachakra Initiation 2011 in the Huffington Post.

The latest high point of this critical wave in Germany was a cover story in Germany’s biggest magazine “Stern” (2009): The two faces of the Dalai Lama – The soft Tibetan and his undemocratic Regime (trans. in English). This article was written by Tilman Müller, the same journalist who uncovered ten years before–with his Austrian colleague Gerald Lehner–the Nazi past of the Dalai Lama’s teacher, Heinrich Harrer: Dalai Lama’s friend: Hitlers Champion (trans. in English). Their sensational discovery caused a protest movement in the Jewish community against the film adaptation of Harrer’s autobiographical book Seven Years in Tibet, with Brad Pitt as Harrer.

Very accurately the historian Andrei Znamenskis calls the Kalachakra Tantra “a totalitarian temptation.” In his book Red Shambhala he recounts the story of political and spiritual seekers from West and East who used the Tibetan Buddhist prophecies of the Kalachakra Tantra (the Shambhala Myth) to promote their spiritual, social, and geopolitical agendas and schemes. Red Shambhala proves that people in the Left were no strangers to the occult, and they were equally mesmerized by the Tantra. But even more mesmerized have been people of the far Right.

In their second book, Hitler-Buddha-Krishna – An unholy alliance from the Third Reich to the present day (2002) which received international attention, Victor and Victoria Trimondi show how influential Fascists and Nazis used the philosophies, mythologies, visions, and dogmas as well as the religious practices and texts of the spiritual traditions of Asia for glorifying war, and for the deification of the “Führer” and the white race. Some of them have been electrified by the Kalachakra Tantra and the Shambhala-Myth.

The Trimondis uncover how the Nazi-Orientalists who prepared the SS Tibet Expedition of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler have been interested in the ritual, and how members of the SS Ahnenerbe (the brain trust of the SS) wanted to spare the Kalachakra Temple in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) during the siege and barrage of the city by the Deutsche Wehrmacht (1941 – 1944). The Shambhala Myth of the Kalachakra Tantra and its militant ideologies are a topic in the occult literature of the international Neo-Fascist and Neo-Nazi scene. One example is Miguel Serrano, the recently deceased leader of the Chilean National Socialists.

Another is Ernesto Mila, former chief of the Spanish National-Socialists, who writes about the Kalachakra-Ritual in his article, The envoys of Hitler in Tibet: “The Kalachakra Tantra and its initiation is not a normal ritual. . . . It is the ‘supreme initiation,’ that ‘assured the renaissance in Shambhala’ at the moment of the last battle against the powers of evil. . . . It is the initiation which is appropriate for the warrior caste.”

Another example is the accredited expert on the Orient (and Hitler admirer) Jean Marquès-Rivière who after WW II was convicted in absentia and given the death sentence for turning Jews and Free Masons over to the Gestapo and SS in France. He was the author of a Kalachakra interpretation once popular with some fascist elements. He wrote in his book that the Dalai Lama personally gave a ring to him with the Kalachakra Emblem to demonstrate that he is part of the inner circle of Shambhala adepts. (Kalachakra: Initiation Tantrique du Dalai Lama) Last but not least, the Japanese Doomsday Guru, Shoko Asahara must be mentioned. He intended a Shambalization of our planet by means of nuclear terror. Asahara was responsible for poisonous gas attacks on Tokyo’s metro in 1995, killing 12 and leaving hundreds injured. The terrorist sect’s leader met the Dalai Lama on several occasions. Even weeks after the first assault, the Dalai Lama called him a “friend, yet not a perfect one.” Only later did the Dalai Lama distance himself from the sect leader. (The Doomsday Guru Shoko Asahara and XIV Dalai Lama).

So the “totalitarian temptation” which streams out from the Kalachakra Tantra for all sorts of political and religious fanatics makes it absolutely necessary that the text, commentaries, and the ritual itself are discussed and disputed openly and honestly, especially at this time when the ritual is performed in a place where the power of the world is concentrated: Washington DC. The organizers are very conscious of this political acupuncture point when they write, “The Kalachakra for World Peace 2011 will unfold in a world capital where local actions deeply and globally affect the lives of so many.”

A statement from the Capital Area Tibetan Association, which is putting on the event, also stressed the significance of having it in Washington: “If there is a seed of spirituality in this very city, that seed when it grows is bound to have an effect.” The ritual is to be carried out in the Verizon Center approximately mid-way between the White House and the US Capitol Buildings, just a short stroll from the National Mall.

A Washington Post article states, “Many still see huge significance in his [the Dalai Lama’s] picking the capital of the world’s superpower as the place for a ritual about how to reconcile disunity. Some believe the Kalachakra’s hopeful explanation about how to deal with differences literally will spread through meditators to area bigwigs coping with national debt, wars, environmental disasters and terrorism.”

The article cites Clark Strand, former editor of Tricycle, a Buddhist magazine: “The most significant thing about this is the time and place, 10 years after 9/11, and in a place where big decisions are being made about the planet.”

Yes,10 years after 9/11! But what did happen exactly ten years before 9/11? In 1991 in New York City a so-called Kalachakra Sand Mandala was constructed, then destroyed by the Dalai Lama, and the sand was poured into the water near the World Trade Center. Two years later in 1993 another Wheel of Time (Kalachakra) Sand Mandala was built by Tibetan Monks in the lobby of Tower One. For over thirty days, many of the World Trade Center workers and visitors were invited to participate during the construction of this Mandala. Although these coincidences may be accidental, they prove that these two Kalachakra events were not a remedy for “national debt, wars, environmental disasters and terrorism.” If they did have any magical effect at all, it was to produce exactly the opposite.

You will find a résumé of the most problematic contents of the Kalachakra Tantra with original citations under: Critical Forum Kalachakra. The English site of the “Trimondi Online Magazine” under: www.trimondi.de/EN/front.html and the book “The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism” under: www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Index.htm Critical Forum Kalachakra.

Filed Under: JCS Tagged With: 9-11, Adi Buddha, Aikman, Alabama State University, Alexander Berzin, Andrei Znamenski, apocalytic, Austrian State TV and Radio ORF, Berzin, Boehner, Brad Pitt, Buddha, buddha way, Buddhist holy war, Buddhocratic, Capital Area Tibetan Association, Chilean National Socialists, Critical Forum, Dalai Lama, democratic, Der Rheinische, Der Rheinische Merkur, Der Standard, DL, Eight Questions, Eight Questions for the Dalai Lama, Ernesto Mila, Fascists, Free masons, Freemasonry, Geopolitics, George Schmid, Gerald Lehner, Gestapo, Heart of Asia, Heinrech Harrer, Hitler, holy war, Huffington Post, humanist, Hypocrite, India, Islam, James C. Stephens, James Stephens, Jewish, Jews, July 2011, Kalachakra, Kalachakra Ceremony DC, Kalachakra-Tantra, Karmapa, Krishna, Lama, Lamaism, Magic, Miguel Serrano, Moslem, National Debt, national mall, Nazi, nazis, Neo-Nazi, New York Times, Obama, pacifist, passifist, Patmos Verlag, peace, Peace ritual, peacenik, Pelosi, Politics, reconciliation, Red Shambhala, republican, Robert Therman, Robert Thurman, sand mandala, secret, Secret initiations, Secret Service, Separation of Church and State, September 11, Seven Years in Tibet, Sexuality, Shadow of the Buddha, Shadow of the Dalai Lama, Shambhala, Shambhala myth, Shambhala warrior, Shoko Asahara, Spanish National Socialists, SS, Stern, Tantra, Tantrique du Dalai Lama, Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama, the Kalachakra Ring, Third Reich, Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan monks, time god, Tower One, Tricycle, Tricycle Buddhist magazine, Trimondi, Trimondi Online, Twin Towers, University of Zurich, US Capitol, Verizon Center, Victor, Victor Trimondi, Victoria Trimondi, Vienna, Warrior, Warrior ritual, Washington Post, Wheel of Time, Wheel of Time sand mandala, White House, Woodward, World Peace Prayer, World Trade Center, worldview, Worldviews, worldviews101.com, Znamenski

Confession of an Unfaithful Bride

April 20, 2016 by jstephens Leave a Comment

1. Confession of an unfaithful Bride:

Failure of the Church in the United States of America to maintain its historic roots as a Free Church purchased by the blood of martyrs under the direct authority of the LORD Jesus Christ of Nazareth after 178 years, when in 1954 Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson sponsored a bill establishing the 501 (c) 3 in order to silence the Church selling our eternal inheritance for temporal government favor. The US Government as any temporal power is subject to moral corruption and now actively supports Tibetan Buddhism, and sponsors the Dalai Lama as an instrument of its global political agenda. He was the first Buddhist leader to open the US Senate in prayer and as God-King of Tibet met with every President since Franklin D. Roosevelt. He consults the Nechung Oracle on a regular basis who has met with many leaders in Washington, DC. Leviticus 19:31. The Dalai Lama was the key speaker at the Second Anniversary of September 11, 2001 at the National Cathedral and awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the country’s highest civilian honor. Joel 2:12-17; Rev. 18:1-8.

2. Sad Consideration of the Apostasy of the Church.

In 1993, the Roman Catholic and Tibetan monastics secretly met in Chicago at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Since then, Catholic Universities, Cathedrals, and Centers have sponsored conferences with the Dalai Lama and or the building of sand mandalas in the United States opening the door to idolatry and the ritual spiritual defilement of the land. They have been joined by Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, Moravian, Presbyterian, and other denominations in hosting Tibetan Buddhist lamas who have built sand mandalas in their chapels, hosted the Buddhist Blood Relics, or conducted Tibetan Buddhist healing rituals which directly violate the commandment “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Exodus 20:3; 2 Chronicles 36:14; Revelation 3:16-19; 17:1-18.

3. Repentance: Failure of the Church Gatekeepers.

Over the last twenty five years, the Dalai Lama has been funded as a modern Balaam to speak in venues to vast numbers of students and adults in institutions which were initially founded to train pastors and missionaries to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. We have failed to honor the fathers and mothers of the faith and have not attended to our duty to do the work of God in our generation and have failed as stewards to faithfully present an unadulterated Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Tibetan Buddhist world. Concurrently, the enemy has planted tantric vases in every state Capital, every high place, National Park, sacred sites, rivers, and lakes in the United States, including conducting the highest Tibetan occult ritual the Kalachakra Ceremony in the US Capitol. Leviticus 18:24, 25.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 501 (c)3, 501 c 3, Balaam, Baptist Moravian, blood, Buddhism, Buddhist Blood Relic Tour, Catholic Universities, Chronicles, Church in the United States, commandments, Congressional Gold Medal, Dalai Lama, defilement, Episcopalian, Exodus, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Free Church, God-King of Tibet, Gospel, idolatry, Jesus Christ, Joel, Kalachakra, LBJ, Leviticus, LORD Jesus Christ, Martyrs, Methodist, Moravian, National Cathedral, National Parks, Nazareth, Nechung Oracle, Parliament of the World's Religions, Presbyterian, Revelation, Roman Catholic, Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan Lamas, Tibetan monastics, US Capitol, US Senate, Yeshua Ha'Moshiach

WVS101FYI Sri Lanka

January 4, 2016 by jstephens Leave a Comment

FYI. Ran across two links on Sri Lanka that may be of interest on their inter-religious situation.

https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/buddhist-extremists-in-sri-lanka-and-burma-on-the-warpath/

Dilemmas and Aspirations of Postcolonial Buddhists and Christians in Sri Lanka

Here’s the blog’s address:

https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/dilemmas-and-aspirations-of-ostcolonial-buddhists-and-christians-in-sri-lanka/

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bodu Bala Sena, Buddhist extremists, Christians, Postcolonial Buddhists, Sri Lanka

The Maitreya Project~False Prophets Will Arise To Decieve

January 3, 2016 by jstephens Leave a Comment

Note:

(Since this article was published May 2011, the Maitreya Project has been relocated, rescheduled to be built in Bodhgaya, India, the original site chosen for the project. It has not yet been built and has been downsized substantially from it’s original design).

“For false Christ’s and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

-Matthew 24:24

Maitreya Buddha Statue to be built in Bodhgaya, India.

Background. The promise of a future Messiah is almost universal as a redemptive motif in the world’s great religions. For millions of Christians, we await the second coming of Jesus Christ in His glorious and resurrected form. In Islam it is the 12^th Imam whose advent prior to a prophesied Islamic Armageddon is the present preoccupation of President Ahminejab of Iran. Among Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhists, Maitreya is looked upon as the future “Buddha to whom one could turn in hope” who will descend from the Tushita heaven to earth to reign in human form as did Sakyamuni at the end of the age.

Maitreya was the object of devotion of the Maitreya Cult in the early centuries AD in Northwest India. Lewis Lancaster suggests that “the eschatological telos of the Maitreya cult was articulated relatively late in East Asia.” In Japan centering on Mount Fuji, the utopian cult of Maitreya saw him as “a divine figure whose chief function was to lead the distressed back to the “way of the eternal mother.” In Korea, he was seen as warrior, guardian, symbol of fertility, and “the spirit of possession in ecstatic religious experience,” and “the heralder of a new world.” Other royalty who claimed to be the incarnations of Maitreya included Empress Wu of China (r.684-704) and King Alaungpaya of Burma(r 1752-1760). Buddha Mi-Lo of China who one sees in Chinese restaurants and temples represented by a fat, joyful countenance with many children, considered the Oriental Santa Claus, is also widely considered “an incognito appearance of the next historical Buddha, Maitreya.”[i] Some believe the central statue of the main stupa at Borobudur in Indonesia was none other than Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future.

In Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Buddha Maitreya is included in the pantheon along with Hevajra (a Tantric deity from the 12^th and 13^th centuries A.D.), Garuda (a Hindu mythological being with a bird’s head), Lokesvara and Laksmi. Strangely many of “the titles all continue with the word mahanatha, ‘the great savior.’” It was not unusual to hear “Come, Maitreya, come!” As Christians we know our heart cry for centuries has been the certain hope of the Messiah’s return, “Maranatha, Come quickly, LORD Jesus.” Other translations are, “Our LORD has come!”, “Our LORD is coming!” or “Our LORD come!” “Most expositors still regard the Jerusalem church as the most likely source of the phrase. (Colin Brown) The Apostle Paul encourages believers to live in the hope of His coming. “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and ‘the dead in Christ shall rise first.” (I Thess. 4:16-18). We are not to grieve as the heathen “who have no hope.”

In Thailand, there is a prophecy about the coming of Maitreya Buddha which has been the source of much controversy within Buddhist as well as Christian circles. John R. Davis in Poles Apart? Contextualizing the Gospel spoke of a document which according to an assistant professor at Chiengmai University was “written in the local language of the Old Kingdom located at the present Chiengmai.” The professor reading the document concluded that it was written “before the present Thailand was established. Therefore it is impossible that the writer of this document was influenced by Christianity.” The Thai Pastor wrote:

“This unpublished document which I received from my father was a copy of the Buddhist Scriptures placed at Pra-sing Temple at Chiengmai. In one section of this document which is part of Buddha’s prophecy, a certain old Brahman asked the Buddha about how to be saved from sin. The Buddha answered that regardless of how many laws you have kept, or even if you pray five times a day, you shall not be saved. Buddha continues saying that sin is too great to be washed away; even though I become a hermit, for more than eight ‘A-song-kai’ or am reborn for another ten times, I shall not be saved. The Brahman asked what Mettay’s character is. The Buddha answered that in his hands and feet are wounds, his side has wound which was pierced and his forehead is full of scars from wounds. He is the gold ship to carry you to heaven where you will find the “Tri-pra’ (the Crystal Triune god). Thus, give up following the old way. A spirit from heaven will come and dwell in your heart by which you will overcome your enemies from both four and eight directions.”

Whether the sutra is the actual recorded saying of the Buddha, or as some Buddhists claim, a conspiracy to Buddhaize Christianity, it reveals the longing of humanity’s heart for a Messiah. “At the scene of the Buddha’s death, Buddha is reported to have said,

“I am not the first Buddha who came upon earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time another Buddha will arise in this world, a holy one, a supremely enlightened one, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals. He will proclaim a religious life, wholly perfect and pure; such as I now proclaim… He will be known as Mettaya, which means “he whose name is kindness.”

It is this messianic hope that is the basis of the construction of the Maitreya Project and also the image that the present XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet taps into. He publicly claims to be the incarnation of Avalokitsevara, the patron deity of Tibet whose assignment it is to protect the Buddhist Dharma in the interim between Sakyamuni and prepare for the coming of Maitreya. He often says that his religion is kindness. To millions of his followers he is the living Buddha of this age. One Catholic in California attending his talk at Loyola Marymount, a Catholic University echoes the public opinion, ‘he is the closest thing in our present day to what one would call a hero.’ Just recently, Maria Schwarzenegger, a professed Catholic and the First Lady of California journeyed to Dharamsala, India with her Governor husband’s permission and invited the Dalai Lama to speak at the California Women’s Conference who just led 13,000 women in a meditation in Long Beach, California September 2006.

For us as Christians the impending construction of this ‘Buddhist Mecca’ represents one of the greatest global spiritual challenges to Christianity in the new millennium. How do we approach this? Stanley Mooneyham at one time Director of World Vision International (according to Davis) just prior to fall of Cambodia‘ centered in on Christ as the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies of Mettaya (Maitreya) which are also known in China, Thailand, and Cambodia.’ Some have even gone as far as replacing the word Jesus Christ with Mettreya “the Buddha of the end-of-all-times of this world that will make everything new.” [ii] Sadly, contextualization and syncretism are becoming almost interchangeable as terms, leaving Christians and Buddhists confused and divided. In a conversation with Videsh, a Thai Buddhist monk, he stated that while he was actually interested in considering becoming a Christian, he had problems with symbols like that of the Christian cross emerging out of the Lotus. He said, “Let the Cross stand alone for Christ and the Lotus for Buddhism.” God has stated that ‘He will not share His glory with another or give His praise to graven images.’ Should we not stand expressly upon the doctrines and iconic images that have been the expressions of the historic Christian faith?

Buddhism’s doctrine of assimilation may one day be found to be to blame for the confusion about the future coming Maitreya. Dr. John M.L. Young believed that Buddhism was changed early on by an encounter with Nestorian Christianity in China wherein a Buddhist, impressed by the claims of Christianity, nonetheless rejected the faith, but incorporated elements that he found attractive such as heaven, the idea of grace, and deity. Therefore, an unlikely departure from the Buddha’s early teachings which did not hold to a belief in an Almighty God of Creation were introduced by giving Amitabha, the authority as the “gracious Buddha of the Western Paradise and Infinite Light” to bestow upon his followers the grace of chanting the Nembutsu once to enter into heaven, which was still lower than nirvana however. Would it be possible that they also liked the glorious idea of the return of the Messiah, now the Mahanatha, Come Maitreya Come? theme “borrowed” from the Christian faith, not unlike they did from the Hindus, the God of the sun, the god of the moon, other Hindu gods, the Taoist, the Shinto gods, in China, Korea and Japan, or Tibet for that matter? What does it matter when you don’t have an Almighty, Holy God to fear?

Imagine living prior to the construction of the Islamic pilgrimage site in Mecca. That’s the moment we find ourselves in this day. Over 5,000,000 Moslems make a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca every year. And they must be Moslems. In the case of the Maitreya project, all will be welcome. When one thinks of the principality the “Prince of Greece” contending for the kingdom of Greece, we might ask, “Who is the principality contending for the control of Uttar Pradesh?” Over 300,000 people live in proximity to the 750 acre site for the Maitreya Project in Kushinagar. The site was first imagined by a Tibetan Buddhist Lama Thubten Yeshe, “who first expressed his wish to build a huge Maitreya statue” in Bodhgaya in 1982.” [iii] Then in 1995, Lama Zopa Rinpoche hoped for a statue about 171 feet high. Then a Taiwanese architect Mr. C.Y. Lee said it was far too small and so now the Maitreya Project led by Peter Kedge will incorporate a 152.4 meter (500 foot) tall nickel-aluminum bronze statue of Maitreya Buddha seated on a Lion Throne built to last 1,000 years. In comparison, the Statue of Liberty in New York would only come up to Maitreya’s knee.

The interior of the statue will house over 1,330,000 Buddhist objects of worship (idols) including the relics from the blood relic tour which is traversing the world raising $200,000,000 for the project. The land will be further defiled by over 100,000 stupas. Strangely, the say, “They’re keen to develop the tree of life within this center.” (Mandala Magazine Special Report on the Maitreya Project Nov/Dec 2000). Why did they pick this term is a question worth pondering. The Dutch monk Marcel Bertels who is the director of the Maitreya Project said, “The Hindus in general have very similar explanations in their scriptures such as the Bhavagad Gita in relation to the benefits of the holy objects, so they support the project wholeheartedly.” Sadly, in America when we objected to the Buddhist relics being shown in a Presbyterian Church on biblical grounds, the Pastor vigorously disagreed. A Catholic priest in Los Angeles, off the record said, “I would worship the relics of any holy person, Buddhist or Christian.” We asked them the same question our LORD Jesus asked, “How can you serve two masters?”

Originally, the project was to be built in Bodh Gaya on a 40 acres located in the state of Bihar, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment and finished by 2005. Because of environmental and political considerations, it was moved to Uttar Pradesh to a site of 750 acres in Kushinagar, the site of the Buddha’s death. It is said that he died from dysentery after consuming the flesh of a wild boar. So in some ways one might say they picked the cremation ground for the site of the Maitreya Project.

They will be building a number of hotels, temples, lecture halls, meditation halls, a university, monastery, nunnery, international hospital, pilgrim housing and food establishments to meet the requirements of those visiting the site. Millions of dollars are being raised from Buddhists all over the world who believe that they will accumulate great merit from giving to the Project. Last year the Dalai Lama met with CEO’s in Sun Valley, Idaho that represented trillions of dollars worth of assets; among them one of his disciples, Steve Wynn, the Nevada gambling scion who supports the Dalai Lama fiscally. Besides his well-known Hollywood following such as Richard Gere and Sharon Stone to name a few, his list of wealthy contributors continues to grow, including the US government who provides full secret service protection at its citizen’s expense, not to mention the CIA stipend that supposedly was paid to him personally in the past. As Avalokitsevara, the XIV Dalai Lama continues to bless Tantric masters and Sherab Pal, the emanation of the invincible conqueror Maitreya”[iv] to establish a Tantric throne for the Adi Buddha, the universal religious emperor. They also have promoted the benefits of the Maitreya Project to the Indian government on the basis of its affect on the local economy in terms of “health, education, long-term employment, technology, trade, tourism, agriculture, and other infrastructure services” (pg. 44).

Why does the Maitreya Project as a stronghold need to be dealt with in prayer by God’s people?

The Maitreya Project is one of the darkest provocations against God in this age. One is reminded of another King of old. “Thus Ahab did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him.” (I Kings 16:33) He forsaked God and His commandments and followed after the Baals.

The Dalai Lama prayed in Pasadena and wherever he goes, “This ground anointed with incense and strewn with flowers, adorned with Mt. Meru, the four continents, sun and moon, I offer visualized as a Buddha realm. May all migrators enjoy this completely pure realm.” BUT, this is evil that this false priest brings on the nations. He has been given authority that does not belong to him. This land is not the Buddha’s realm. It has been purchased with a price by the blood of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

“Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, “all this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship me, all will be Yours.”

And Jesus answered and said to him, “Get behind Me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God and Him only you shall serve.” (Luke 4:5-8) The point being that there is only ONE GOD, the LORD JESUS CHRIST of Nazareth who came in the flesh, was crucified for our sins, died, was buried, and resurrected on the Third Day and now sits on the Throne in heaven at the right hand of Father God awaiting the Day of Judgment.

“Thus says the LORD God of Israel, ‘Tell the man who sent you to me, thus says the LORD, ‘Behold I bring evil on this place and on its inhabitants, even all the words of the book which the King of Judah has read. Because they have forsaken Me, and have burned incense to other gods that they might provoke Me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore My wrath burns against this place, and it shall not be quenched.” (II Kings 22:15-17).

Righteousness and Justice are the foundation of His throne (Psalm 97: 2).

He has declared that “all be put to shame who serve carved images, who boast of idols” Ps. 97: 7.

It is expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments to make any graven images.

God is coming to judge the earth, its inhabitants and all their works. “He shall judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with His truth.” (Psalm 96:13) We are called to encourage all men, women and children to turn to Jesus Christ as the only way in this last hour, compelling them to forsake their idols, and enter into the ark of Jesus Christ’s salvation.

“The prohibition against serving other gods and the prohibition against making idols are linked already in the Decalogue(Exodus 20:3f; Deut. 5:7f).”

“Idols are abominations, behind which stand demonic powers (daimona), with which one cannot come into contact without moving God to wrath (Deu. 32:16f;21).[v]

The punishment for making idols and worshipping them is severe. Pray against the completion of the Maitreya Project, that more human beings may not be seduced into the way of idolatry by the construction of what would become a modern wonder of the world not unlike the Colossus of Rhodes. “Judgment sprouts like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field” (Hosea 10:4).

Pray the LORD of the Harvest thrust laborers into the fields to bring in a harvest of Buddhist souls before the completion of this abomination and the spread of the defilement of idolatry around the globe. Millions are slated to visit this after its opening in 2010. They will come from all over the world where they worship Maitreya, an anti-Christ. They will come from Israel, Thailand, Burma, China, Tibet, Korea, Japan, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Russia, Europe, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Africa, and South America. It will be a sad day for India and the world.

Remember, “Israel often succumbed to the temptation to open the doors to these powers, especially in when the rise of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires gave the impression that their gods were more powerful than the God of Israel (Isaiah 36:19f). Jer. 44:15-19 and Ezekiel 8 give graphic and terrible pictures of how widely heathen idol worship had spread in Israel in their day. The prophetic image to Israel was that the misfortune which had overtaken the people was God’s punishment for falling away from Yahweh and compromising with the heathen cultures (Is. 10:11; Jer 9:13-16; Ez. 8:17f). The call to repentance combined a demand for right behavior towards one’s neighbor (Amos 5:14;f; Hosea 4:1ff; Isa 1:15ff) with the demand to turn away from false gods (Hos. 14:8, Ez. 8:10; 1 Chron 16:26; II Chron. 25:15/Hosea 8:4f, 13:2; Jer.14:22; Hab2:18f) (Colin Brown, pg. 284).

Christians must be warned not to be snared and led astray by idolatry (I Cor. 5:10f;10:7-10,14-22).

Warn the Jews who are following after the Dalai Lama in India and Tibetan Buddhism. “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” (Deu. 6:5)

“You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you (for the LORD your God is a jealous God among you), lest the anger of the LORD your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth.” (Deu. 6:14).

Tibetan Buddhism is built on the Tantric subjugation of women and is evidenced by the Maitreya Buddha sitting on a Lion Throne and his feet on top of the Lotus, symbolic of the woman’s vagina.

An encouragement to the Body of Christ of the power of prayer. As a former Buddhist member of the Nichiren Shoshu Sect, I went on pilgrimage to the Sho-Hondo, the head temple Daisekiji near Mt. Fuji that was built to last 10,000 years at the cost of $100,000,000 in 1972. Over 12,000 Buddhists made pilgrimage there on a daily basis from around the world. The 500 priests were divided as to where the power for the idol came from. 250 believed the idol had the power, whereas 250 believed it came from something like a Christian god. Division entered the ranks of the priesthood and the eleven million member powerful lay organization, the Soka Gakkai led by Daisaku Ikeda. The High priest excommunicated all the members and paid $30,000,000 and bulldozed the $100,000,000 temple which is no more. God will not share His glory with another or give His praise to idols.

A sister wrote, “Remember the God who Reigns. Memorize biblical promises of victory: Exodus 14:13-14, 23:20-22; Deuteronomy 31:6; Joshua 1:9; 2 Chronicles 20:15, 17, 22; 1 Corinthians 15:57; Romans 8:37. Remember, these Scripture swords are the offensive part of your armor. Affirm them whenever you face spiritual battles, and you will experience the triumph of the God who reigns.”

Remember we are seated in heavenly places far above ALL principalities and powers seated with our LORD Jesus Christ. Remind the enemy of his fate and that one day all that he has done will be brought to remembrance at the great White Throne of Judgment. Till then let us pray for one another that we prosper in the harvest of souls, stand strong in the face of persecution, remaining faithful, holding fast to the promises of the ONE who said I will never leave you nor forsake you, and growing in His likeness.

May God bring millions of Buddhists to a saving knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ, and bless and preserve you and your families in the labors you undertake for His glory.

In Christ’s refuge and strength,

James C. Stephens

U.S.A.

[i] Sponberg, Alan and Helen Hardacre. Maitreya: The Future Buddha. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1988. Jaini, Padmanabh S. “Stages in the Bodhisattva Career of Tathagata Maitreya.”

[ii] Davis, John R. Poles Apart? Contextualizing the Gospel. Kanok Bannasan, Bangkok: Thailand, 1993, pg. 120-121.

[iii] Mandala Magazine, Nov/Dec 2000. Special Issue on the Maitreya Project. “Maitreya Project: Bodhgaya’s Beacon of Love” pg. 42-

[iv] Empowerment Ceremony lead by the XIV Dalai Lama in Pasadena of the “Self-Generation Sadhana of the Thousand Armed Avalokitsevara written by the 7^th Dalai Lama Gyalwa Kelsang Gyaltso.”

[v] Brown, Colin. Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. II, pg. 284.

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High Holy Days and Sand Mandala at Pico Union Project

September 20, 2015 by jstephens Leave a Comment

Note: I wrote this letter to Craig Taubman at Pico Union Project hoping to get a response on my concerns about his invitation to Tibetan lamas to build a sand mandala during the High Holy Days. I also expressed my objections to the questionable interfaith model he is building and desires to see reproduced across the nation.

Sincerely,

James Stephens
September 20, 2015
___________________________________

September 17, 2015

Dear Craig,

My name is James Stephens. I came across your website recently and was quite interested in your efforts to restore Sinai Synagogue, the historic site of Los Angeles’ first Synagogue. At the same time, I was quite dismayed to hear that you had invited Tibetan Buddhist lamas to build a sand mandala in the midst of the High Holy Days.

Why might you ask? As a former devout Buddhist of fourteen years and now a follower of Yeshua Ha’Moshiach and a Torah observant believer, I found myself grieved knowing much about the intent of the lama’s ritual having thoroughly studied it for over 25 years.

First of all, I do believe in the command to love one’s neighbor as thyself. To genuinely love one’s neighbor, one must be truthful. You have children. You know that they venture into areas which can cause them great harm. We tell them, “Don’t touch the oven. You’ll get burned. It’s hot.” As they grow older, they make their own decisions and often reap the blessings or pay the consequences for their poor choices.

I love the lyrics composed by Paul Simon, “Fools,” said I, “you do not know, Silence like a cancer grows/ Hear my words that I might teach you/Take my arms that I might reach you” /But my words like silent raindrops fell/ And echoed in the wells of silence./ And the people bowed and prayed/to the Neon god they made/and the sign flashed out its warning/in the words that it was forming/and the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls/And tenement halls/And whispered in the sound of silence.”

Etched over the arch of one of the entries to LA City Hall the words of King Solomon remind us like those prophets, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34). Matthew Henry commenting on this wisdom said, “An upright man will venture the displeasure of the greatest to bring truth to light.”

Personally, I know little about your life story except that which I gleaned after visiting your site. I did read that you like to hear others stories. As a former Buddhist and graduate of a Buddhist institution, married to a Messianic Jewish wife whose father was a holocaust survivor, I clearly recognize the barriers that exist between human beings because of their ethnic and religious make-up. I also recognize that it takes courage and time to get to know one’s neighbor, neighbors that often come from very different backgrounds.

In 1993, I attended the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in order to get a face to face perspective on other’s beliefs and a sense of who they were, what their story was. For ten days, I intently listened and asked questions about their beliefs. While talking with a Burmese Buddhist monk, we quickly cleared the air about the use of politically correct religious speech and agreed that it was often harmful to genuine understanding. We agreed that Buddhism and Christianity both held to exclusive religious points of view and were diametrically opposed to one another. With clear boundaries established, we could respect one another and talk about our fundamental issues as human beings.

One Buddhist monk at Wat Thai Temple in North Hollywood invited me inside the temple and asked me to “tell him the story of creation.” He even asked me to read the Scriptures to him in between his interaction with worshippers in his context.

During the Ten Days of Awe, I pulled out an old sermon entitled, “The Necessity of Self-Examination” by Jonathan Edwards, one of America’s greatest theologians. It was based upon his meditations on Psalm 139 verses 23-24. “Search me O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” I love King David, a man of God’s own heart, a shepherd boy who listened intently to God, and as any human is capable of, ended up making some very tragic choices. His adultery and pre-meditated murder of his loyal commander Uriah was the first time I wept reading the Bible. I was grieved. Our spiritual leaders are supposed to hold to the highest standards, and here he falls. He confesses, “Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight.”

Edwards shines the looking glass on our hearts and observes, “Many are very careful that they do not proceed in mistakes, where their temporal interest is concerned. They will be strictly careful that they be not led on blindfold in the bargains which they make: in their traffic one with another, they are careful to have their eyes about them and to see that they go safely in these cases; and why not, where the interest of their soul is concerned?”

“Good fences make good neighbors.” Old proverbs are the currency of years of experience. When the young King Rehoboam went his own way, neglecting the counsel of his elders and just listening to those in his new inner circle, he went astray. He did not finish well. One quote of Rabbi David Wolpe resonated with me when I read Ellul’s Jewels, “Our darkness and sins are part of us, stitched into our soul.” Jeremiah the prophet wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10).

When I was at the Parliament, there were many experimental exercises in Interfaith worship. Exercises that I as a former Buddhist knew intimately and now as a follower of Yeshua Ha’Moshiach (Jesus Christ) could not embrace. I witnessed persons from other faiths who chose not to be involved as well because of their religious convictions. They were respectful, but they also were in a temporary venue which had established certain ground rules. Unfortunately, even then participants were encouraged to sign “The Declaration of a Global Ethic” which read that “we embrace the practices of all the world’s religions.” From my extensive past experience of all sorts of religious practices, I could not sign it as a follower of Yeshua Ha’Moshiach.

All ground is not holy ground. When a Tibetan Buddhist builds a sand mandala, they conduct rituals to bind demons from entering them and subjugate all other gods under their dominion. It is a religious portal, a palace, home to 722 deities depending on the type of mandala. Deities we would call fallen angels. In the dissolution ceremony the sand that is given to others carries with it the incantations of the Lamas. In the past, the sand mandalas were constructed with the blood of human sacrifices. According to John Huntington from Ohio State University and curator of the Himalayan Art Collection, “the most efficacious skull used in the mandalas were the skull of a sixteen year old virgin.” These are not my opinions, but are based upon interviews with Lamas at Pacific Asia Museum who construct the mandalas and from extensive reading of Buddhist documents as well. To the public the mandalas are intriguing works of art. Is what I say true?

As a watchman, someone who has knowledge of various practices, it is my duty to warn others, especially leaders, lest the blood be on my own hands (Ezekiel 33). I do not want to displease Hashem in anyway. Tibetans are often cheerful and amiable people. I have hosted Tibetan Christians in our home and have also been asked by Tibetan Buddhists for the Scriptures and even went as far as I delivering a copy to Kopan Gompa, a Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Kathmandu, Nepal.

You were quoted as saying that you wanted to create, “neutral ground in which to work on interfaith connections and collaboration between Jews, Christians, Muslims and others without any limitation or ground rules.” That sounds like a prescription for a dangerous fall. One must ask oneself, “What am I seeking to accomplish when I assimilate other religion’s practices into my daily life?” While God has given man free will, Is it just to take others on your own personal quest? It is certain that teachers bear greater judgment.

Boundaries are critical. When an epidemic is being treated, the one treating the disease must be careful lest he become a victim. You were quoted in an article for JTA as saying, “You can’t expect the world to love each other if you can’t model it in your houses of worship. At such point in time that our houses of worship become more open, on that day, God will be one and God’s name will be one. It’s only at that point that it can happen.”

My opinion is not what is important here in response. God said through His prophet Isaiah, “I am the LORD, that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols” (Isaiah 42:8). “God does not tolerate rivals (Nahum 1:2) Jamieson-Faucet and Brown comment, “We are jealous only of those we love: a husband, of a wife; a king of his subject’s loyalty. God is jealous of men because He loves them. God will not bear a rival in His claims on them.”

The most important question to be answered is “What does the LORD require of me? “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8; Jeremiah 7:5-7; Leviticus 19:33-34). You were quoted as saying, “Let people model it in their own houses of worship.” My question is, “Why bring into one place every religious practice and belief?” The LORD said, “When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, be very careful not to imitate the detestable customs of the nations living there” (Deuteronomy 18:9). King Solomon said, “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is death.” Even then, being the wisest man on earth, did he not fall because he took on so many wives and accommodated their religious practices, building high places and idols for each of them to practice their faith? It may be that it is time to remember what Moses was given by Adonai on Mount Sinai, the original gathering place lest we replace Him with our own modern day version of the Golden Calf.

“For they went and served other gods and worshipped them, gods that they did not know and that He had not given to them. And the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.” (Deuteronomy 29:26).

“Cursed is the one who makes a carved or molded image, an abomination to the LORD, the work of the hands of a craftsman, and set it up in secret. And all the people shall say, Amen.” (Deuteronomy 27:15).

And yet if we repent, He waits for us to return to Him and promises,

“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 28:1-2).

2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill.

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15 Thou shalt not steal.

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Buddhist, Burmese Buddhism, David Wolpe, Declaration of the Global Ethic, idols, Jeremiah, Jew, Jewish, Jonathan Edwards, King David, King Rehoboam, King Solomon, Los Angeles, Messianic Jew, Mount Sinai Synagogue, Mt. Sinai, Parliament of the World's Religions, Paul Simon, Pico Union Project, Proverbs, Psalm 139, Repentance, sand mandala, Ten Commandments, Teshuvah, Thai Buddhism, Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan Lamas, Torah, World Parliament of Religions, Yeshua Ha'Moshiach

Shoplifting at Nordstrom

September 9, 2015 by jstephens Leave a Comment

The other day, I was trying on some clothing at Nordstrom’s Rack and noticed their warning sign about shoplifting. I think it’s interesting that they begin with “Don’t steal” which is an abbreviated form of the eighth commandment “You shall not steal” found in Exodus 20:15. They follow that with “It’s bad karma” an assimilated concept of karma that Buddhists would define as “action driven by intention which leads to future consequences” which yield good or bad fruit in this life or the next depending on the deed. In the Judaeo-Christian faith, which holds to the fact that we have just one life and then comes the judgment, the Apostle Paul, said “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” (Galatians 6:7-8;Leviticus 25:3-5). The Nordstrom’s sign ends by stating, “Plus, shoplifters will be prosecuted.” Evidently, whoever put together this warning is weak on their understanding of the Buddhist concept of Karma and simply can’t wait til karma catches up with the thief. If they really believed in their religion/philosophy wouldn’t they just say, “It’s bad karma to take articles without paying for them?” So, they lean on the Law that tries and prosecutes the shoplifter in this life. I guess they just can’t wait. It affects their bottom line.

When you analyze the sign, it’s quite a confusing and mixed bag of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism. An example of the collision and intermingling of religious language and terminology. And if we in Christian circles think we can get away with using pop terms, we need to think again. I recall sitting in a large well known evangelical church where the college pastor, commenting on how great their summer camp was saying, “I thought I died and went to Nirvana.” Language has meaning, a fact that is not lost on those who are attempting to hijack true love and introduce their own abominations to the mainstream who often simply haven’t a clue.

Filed Under: Religious Language Tagged With: assimilation, Buddhism, Christianity, Do not steal, Hinduism, Judaism, Karma, Nirvana, Nordstroms, reaping and sowing., Shoplifting, Ten Commandments, The rack, True love

Virgin Skulls and the Forbidden Stitch

August 20, 2014 by jstephens

Virgin Skulls and the Forbidden Stitch

by James C. Stephens

Note: This repost of an article written in 2005 has been slightly modified.

Currently Buddhism is being marketed to such a high degree that even Buddhists parody the Madison Avenue hype surrounding the Buddhist boom. Buddha books are big business, while magazines are a lucrative cottage industry supported by pages and pages of advertisements marketing everything from retreats, national conferences, the reincarnation of tea, salad dressings, Buddha beads, sneakers to smiling Tibetan lamas opening Toshiba laptops on the “rooftop of the world.”

Huge billboards along LA freeways featured the smiling image of the Dalai Lama advertising Apple’s “Think Different,” while the “Simpson’s,” a primetime cartoon program parodying American culture, focused on little Lisa’s conversion to Tibetan Buddhism on their Christmas special.

Three years ago, a consortium of art museums, scholars, performers, artists, and cultural communities and critics met at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in New York to begin planning a major collaborative art project called The Buddhism Project. By the spring of 2000, the West Coast component decided to independently pursue its own goals and established Awake: Art, Buddhism, and the Dimensions of Consciousness.

Its stated objective is to “explore the relationships between Buddhist practice and art practice in America” and will reveal through a planned series of exhibits, film festivals, and lectures “the threads of Buddhist influence that run through the fabric of contemporary culture and the potential for satisfying aesthetic experience engendered by an open, aware state of mind.”

Awake initiated a curriculum development committee to develop meditation materials based exclusively on Buddhist art and practice to introduce it into the ninth grade classrooms. Signs that this program is finding its way into Los Angeles Unified School District unfolded on November 4, as the LA County Museum of Art Teacher and School Program, held a training session entitled, “Images of Compassion: Buddhist Art and Practice” which explained:

The meanings of Buddhist symbols and gestures are explored, as well as how the art was used in meditation, the primary practice of all types of Buddhism.

A special curriculum guide, “Visual Arts for Meditation,” has been developed for junior high, high school and comparative religion teachers. A training session for these materials will occur during the program….

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, Rubin Foundation, Awake is now comprised of fifty institutions and individuals, many who openly are Buddhist practitioners, artists and priests, who will be seriously promoting a pro-Buddhist agenda at over 60 major exhibitions across America from January 2003 until 2005.

Why Now? Imagine living two years prior to the opening of Mecca, the Islamic holy site where six million devout Muslims annually make a pilgrimage once in their lifetime. In 2005, the $200,000,000 Maitreya Project, the Buddhist equivalent to Mecca is slated to be completed in Bodh Gaya, India in the state of Bihar (still in process). The statue of Maitreya (Future Messiah) Buddha is 500′ tall (reduced to 125’) and will house over two million Buddhist idols.

Many new temples, schools, hospitals, hotels, and facilities are being constructed for this arising global Buddhist center where millions of Buddhists and spiritual seekers will make a pilgrimage to where the Siddhartha Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment. Awake and The Buddhism Project have undoubtedly been scheduled to dovetail to assist in raising awareness and funds for the Maitreya Project which will be completed in 2005.

One of the major platforms is the San Francisco-Los Angeles Corridor where over 28 exhibits will be staged at museums and universities. The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art [1] at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art beginning October 5, 2003 and running through January 4, 2004 is designed to “offer a clear experience of providing a vivid guide through the stages of meditation.”

Christopher Knight, art critic for the LA Times reviewed the opening of the “Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art” exhibit in a tongue in cheek art review, entitled: “Overstating the religious?” which opened on October 5, 2003.

He keenly pointed out,

“Interested in becoming a Buddhist? You’re in luck. Now through Jan. 4, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is offering general instruction in Vajrayana Buddhism…Why is a county art museum offering a public course of religious study? Beats me. But that’s the novel-and inappropriate—organizing principle behind the otherwise impressive new exhibition “The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art…”

FORBIDDEN STITCH LAW

In the opening gallery, one passes by a nondescript religious silk wall hanging of several flower vases and an assortment of mountain scenes. The Exhibit’s curator Professor John Huntington (Ohio State University) revealed that he had some irreconcilable difficulties in its creation as it was stitched by twelve to twenty-one year old girls recruited for the job.

He went on to ask, ‘Why only until twenty-one? Because by then they had gone blind in making them.’ This spurred me onto further research which revealed that the Forbidden Stitch law had been passed in China to prevent this abusive practice in the silk trade. The stitches were so fine, that it produced blindness in the girls.

Today, in India and China there are over fifteen million indentured children working extremely long hours under cruel circumstances in the silk, rug and other industries, which severely damage their health, akin to the abusive child labor practices found in the west during the industrial revolution. The tragedy is that today we buy some of these discounted products in Wal-Mart and other stores and thus perpetuate abusive institutions.

COPULATING DEITIES & THE LA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

In the main gallery, a sand mandala dedicated to two obscure copulating deities was built for the first time in the western hemisphere by a group of Tibetan Lamas from a monastery in Long Beach. Based upon ancient Tibetan rituals invoking the presence of Tibetan deities and goddesses, this sand painting acts as a portal to the demonic realm and establishes territorial authority wherever it is built.

In a very unusual and secretive spontaneous event, another sand mandala invoking the Diamond Realm and establishing a seat for the universal Buddhist emperor was built in LACMA West on December 11-14, 2003. The Southern Asian Art Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art invited “Most Rev. Badri Ratna Bajracharya, ‘Living National Treasure’ of Nepal along with eleven other priests and one laywoman from Buddhist temples from the Kathmandu Valley. They wrote,

For the first time in history, Buddhist priests from the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal will present their magnificent ritual practices outside of their homeland. These priests are the last surviving legacy of the Vajrayana tradition of South Asia.” [2]

According to Alexander v. Rospatt (Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig, Germany) who presented a paper at the 1998 “Conference on Buddhist Heritage of Nepal Mandala”, that the Vajrayana mandalas that are built by the Tantric Newars function to establish the seat of the Adi-Buddha, the universal religious emperor and his diamond realm. [3]

After four days of invocations to Buddhist deities and constructing the sand mandala which contained eight great Hindu gods, the nine great terrifying ones, the four great kings, and ten protectors,…and eight great water spirits” [4] it was discreetly swept up and was dispersed in Malibu by an American Chinese Buddhist. [5]

KALACHAKRA SAND MANDALA AND TOWER ONE

In the final gallery of the Circle of Bliss Exhibit, there were several religious wall hangings dedicated to the Wheel of Time God (Kalachakra). This cosmography of the Kalachakra which Tibetan Buddhists profess brings peace, was one and the same that was built in Tower One previous to 9-11 in 1994 by Ngawang Chojor, a member of the order of the Namgyal, the Dalai Lama’s personal monastery. Even the Trimondi’s who are the authors of The Shadow of the Dalai Lama have linked the building of this mandala to destruction. [i]

If our previous experience of watching busloads of children attend the Shi-Tro Mandala at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena during the Cosmos Exhibit is any measuring stick, we anticipate that the exhibit will be attended by busloads of children from the Los Angeles Unified School District over the Exhibits scheduled stay at LACMA.

NECHUNG ORACLE

This fall beginning on October 19, Pacific Asia Museum will host a showing of The White Beryl Sutra which the Tibetan Shaman chants when channeling spirits for giving guidance to Tibetan lamas or the Dalai Lama who consults the Nechung Oracle to this day is inhabited by demonic spirits.

At Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, California on Sunday October 12, 2003 Tibet! Treasures from the Roof of the World will open displaying for the first time in Western history, “rare and sacred treasures of Tibet” from the Dalai Lama’s summer and winter palaces. “They are objects that are at the center of myths and legends in the 1,000 room Potala Palace, which was built in the 1600’s by the fifth Dalai Lama.” [6]After the exhibit closes in May 2004, it will embark on a national tour.

SAMPLING OF PAST BUDDHIST EVENTS IN SO. CALIFORNIA

The following sampling gives one a taste of what is coming this fall (2003) in So Cal:

Salvation: Images of the Buddhist Deity of Compassion @ LACMA Aug. 14, 2003-July 5, 2004 (Disturbing: This is Avalokitsevara-the Patron Deity of Tibet whom Buddhists believe is in the Dalai Lama).

Drawing on Faith: Ink Paintings for Korean Buddhist Icons @ LACMA Aug. 25, 2003-Jan. 11, 2004.

From the Verandah: Art, Buddhism and Presence @ UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History Oct. 5, 2003-December 28, 2003 Collaborative project with UCLA Hammer Museum and Japanese American Cultural and Community Center.

The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art [7] at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art beginning October 5, 2003 and running through January 4, 2004 (begins on Yom Kippur)

Tibet!Treasures from the Roof of the World @ Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, CA from October 12 through May 2004.

The White Beryl Sutra @ Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, CA from Oct. 19, 2003.

Chieh Jen Chen Artist Residency @ Otis College of Art and Design in L.A.-Fall 2003.

The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia @ UCLA Fowler Museum Fall 2003.

The Great Gesture (Mahamudra): Confluence of Brancusi’s Art and Buddhist Poetry @ LACMA October 2003.

FIRST INTERNATIONAL BUDDHIST FILM FESTIVAL 2003

First International Buddhist Film Festival @ LACMA, Nov. 20-24, 2003.

My interest in the power of media and its negative influence led me to reading The Religion of the Force, which talked about the movie “The Empire Strikes Back,” which Director Irving Kirschner said was designed to introduce Zen Buddhism to Children. Yoda, the Jedi’s teacher was none other than the proverbial Zen master. The latest movie about Tina Turner’s life “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” blatantly touts Buddhism as the way to true happiness. Indeed, today’s celebrities are America’s gurus. If you are not teaching your children, the media is. [ii]

What will be our answer to the blatant idolatry that is being funded by your tax dollars in museums and universities across the nation? Prayer is a given. What should be our response? We are called to protect our children from the onslaught in the schools. The Awake Project is also developing a curriculum on meditation based exclusively on Buddhist art and practices for introduction into the ninth grade.

Studies have shown that there are presently over 1600 Buddhist temples, centers and monasteries in America, many of them Tibetan. [8] In the twelve years between 1985 and 1997, “more Buddhist meditation centers were established than the total number founded in the first eighty-five years of the twentieth century.” [iii]

THE SHAMBHALA PROJECT & COMMUNIST THINKING

A key component of their religious agenda is the establishment of Shambhala, a global Buddhist empire, illuminated in the Kalachakra initiation. While researching the life of Agvan Dorzhiev, tutor to the XIII Dalai Lama and Lhasa’s emissary to Russia’s Tsar, John Snelling uncovered the “Shambhala Project,” Dorzhiev’s vision of a great Buddhist empire. “Many Kalachakra devotees, including the present Dalai Lama believe that it is an actual place.” [iv]

Dorzhiev “skillfully” negotiated the political support of the Bolshevik regime in his religious vision by stating that “Buddhist doctrine is largely compatible with current Communist thinking.” [v]

The “Shambhala Project” incorporated Geshe Wangyal, a key Tibetan Buddhist leader from Kalmykia (a Tibetan Buddhist Republic in the former USSR). Fleeing the “full brunt of Stalin’s wrath” in 1952, Kalmyk refugees were the first group of Tibetan Buddhists to see Lady Liberty. After resettling in New Jersey, they established a Tibetan Buddhist temple and “in 1955, the eminent Kalmyk Lama Geshe Wangyal (1901-83) came to minister there. [vi]

HOLLYWOOD, BUDDHISM’S PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT

How is it that wherever the Dalai Lama ventures, that the seemingly Teflon mystique of “Shangri-La” follows him? Originally the myth seems to have found its voice through the writings of James Hilton, the author of Lost Horizons and Lowell Thomas’s radio programs about his adventures in Tibet. [vii] Movie Director, Frank Capra perpetuated the myth of “Shangri-La,” a mysterious hidden kingdom through “Lost Horizons” (1937).

Rarely though does the Dalai Lama speak of his country’s historical problems with feudalism or his political contacts with Neo-Socialists. In Tricycle, a quarterly Buddhist magazine, Alex McKay explores the Nazi expedition to Tibet in 1939 involving five members of Hitler’s Secret Service. Their anthropological studies sought to confirm evidence of Hitler’s “idea of racial perfection that would justify their views on world history and German supremacy.” [viii] This became a source of embarrassment to the producers of “Seven Years in Tibet” which quickly glossed over Heinrech Harrer’s SS connection to Adolf Hitler.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of Moody Bible Church in Chicago, shared his concern about Tibet’s connection with Nazi Germany in Hitler’s Cross, a startling exposé.

He wrote,

Karl Haushofer became Hitler’s mentor. Haushofer had made several trips to India and was well versed in eastern occultism. He also lived in Japan for a time where he was initiated into an esoteric Buddhist sect called the “Green Dragon.” Through these contacts a colony of Tibetan lamas settled in Berlin, and when the Russians took the city in 1945, they found a thousand Tibetan corpses in German uniforms. Haushofer, more than any other, challenged Hitler with the vision of world conquest.

The newer contacts of the Dalai Lama with Neo-Nazis are equally troubling. On several occasions he has met with Chilean diplomat Miguel Serrano, the leader of the National Socialist Party of Chile who is the “ideologist of esoteric Hitlerism.” Serrano was a student of ‘Julius Evola (1898-1974) WWII Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s chief ideologist, who was heavily influenced by Tibetan Tantricism.’ [x]

The remarkable tenure of the Dalai Lama as God-King for life surpasses every President we’ve had since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although most nations do not officially recognize Tibet as a sovereign nation, they still allow the Dalai Lama the liberty to speak from his platform as a religious leader, even though they have little knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism’s global agenda or its worldview. As a religious and political foreign guest, the Dalai Lama has mastered the Buddhist art of “skillful means” (Upaya) and utilizes his position to propagate Tibetan Buddhism believing “the end, justifies the means.”

A MODERN TROJAN HORSE?

“They that do not study history are doomed to repeat it.” Victor and Victoria Trimondi, two radical German Buddhists who were instrumental in inviting the Dalai Lama to Germany wrote,

“Only the worst villain could disagree with what he has said and written.” After responding to his encouragement to convert to Tibetan Buddhism, they uncovered an extreme “metaphysical exploitation of women,” a vile connection between magic and politics, and “the foundation for an absolutistic system in which spiritual and worldly power are united in one person, the Dalai Lama.” [xi]

Their findings were released in February 1999 in The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics, an expose of 800 pages of carefully researched and reasoned arguments. The Trimondi’s take you on a painful spiritual journey that dismantles the West’s idealized image of Tibet and takes off the pacifist mask of the Dalai Lama, revealing a pantheon of warring deities and a skillful God-King who still acknowledges the guidance of the Nechung Oracle [9] in all his important State decisions.

A deity war is being waged today against the 20,000 followers of Shugden Dorje, whose worship was outlawed by the Dalai Lama and is being enforced by house-to-house searches in India.

A BUDDHIST WAR AGAINST MONOTHEISTS

They warn that the ‘Kalachakra Initiation is consciously devoted to the manipulation of believers and introduces “an aggressive military ethos” aiming at “the establishment of a global Buddhocracy” following a Buddhist war in 2327 waged against the followers of Mohammed, Abraham, and Jesus.’ [xii]

In light of Tibet’s historical takeover of Bön, one might be tempted to seriously ask, “Do we as Americans understand the Buddhist worldview that is motivating Tibetans to systematically build sand mandalas across America? Or are they simply sharing their art and culture to raise money to build prayer halls in Asia?”

In October 1998, two groups of Tantric Buddhist monks began a tour across America and Canada to construct 100 sand mandalas which were predominantly financed by Gere Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Their professed goal beyond raising funds simply was “to spread their knowledge to everyone who wants to learn about their traditions.” [xiii]

In one of Karl Gustav Jung’s last works, “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth,” he remarked that mandalas are the “pre-eminent symbol for our time” and appear in “situations of psychic confusion and perplexity.” [xiv] He went on to associate the psychological experience of the UFO phenomena with the “rotundum, the symbol of wholeness and the archetype that expresses itself in mandala form.” [xv]

In the blockbuster movie, “Independence Day” you may recall the terror of citizens across the globe who helplessly observed alien ships attack earth in a global Armageddon. A review of the movie discloses alien ships assuming the form of giant air born mandalas, symbolically opening up as lotus flowers (euphemistic Tantric symbol for vagina in Buddhism) usurping power from giant buildings (phallic symbolism) that penetrated the skies. Prior to the White House’s destruction by an alien ship, a split second shot of a small framed picture of the Dalai Lama and the President is revealed in the Oval Office.

According to the Trimondi’s, “the Kalachakra sand mandala is a means of occult possession of the territory in which it is created” [xvi] including the waters where it is dispersed, reminding one of their original strategy of conquest in Tibet. Some Buddhists theorize it brings peace, while other Buddhist scholars speculate it brings destruction in its wake. One such mandala was sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution as part of a $6,500,000 Summer 2000 Folk Life Festival featuring “Tibet Land Beyond the Snows” on the Capitol Mall in Washington, DC. Over 2,500,000 visitors attended the exhibit replete with Tibetan temple, prayer monument, prayer wheels, pornographic Tantric idols and chanting lamas.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

In the overcrowded marketplace of ideas, where every guru, priest, and religious leader is being promoted as the solution to the world’s problems, “buyers beware” is a watchword to be taken quite seriously. Maybe my apprehension arises out of my experience as a Buddhist in the 70’s hearing all the talk about peace, compassion and kindness from leaders who in the same breathe spoke in condescending tones about the superiority of Buddhism. Critical thinking however, doesn’t need to go out the door when we are hosting, interacting or sharing our faith with those of other religious persuasions.

Christians have a duty to investigate religious systems that impact their lives and to effectively proclaim the Gospel in full understanding of the context of world history. Os Guinness, born in China, educated at Oxford, at a talk at La’bri in 1973 issued a stern warning to the Church it has yet to heed:

The swing to the East has come at a time when Christianity is weak at just those points where it would need to be strong to withstand the East. Without this strength, the Eastern religions will be to Christianity a new, dangerous Gnosticism, but this time much of the fight will be lost before many see the nature of the danger. [xvii]

I have observed Tibetan lamas in local host museums teaching young children how to make mandalas who were innocently unaware of their proximity to malevolent spirits. Even Tibetan lamas recognize dangerous demons that manifest during the construction of mandalas and perform ritual offerings to them to prevent their own possession by demonic spirits.

MODERN SOPHISTICATED IDOLATRY

The late Mas Toyotomi, a Japanese American who served with Japanese Evangelical Missions Society warned,

“Satan’s subtle strategy is to camouflage idolatry in such a way that even Christians do not recognize it as such. Because there is practically no preaching against idolatry in America, they are vulnerable to the temptations of modern sophisticated idolatry. [xviii]”

The watchman’s warning is clear (Ezekiel 33:4). The Tibetan Buddhist World Peace Vase Project [10] recently completed its’ first global target, America. 180 tantric vases have now been buried in every state, key National Parks, significant mountain peaks, Capital cities, lakes, and major waterways. Tibetan Tantric Lamas continue to build mandalas at Universities, museums, buildings and temples in America financed by major foundations.

In the Old Testament, God “abandoned Israel because it was filled “with idols” and “influences from the east.” The first of His commandments read:

And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have

brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt

have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing

that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water

under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for

I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon

the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And

shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my

commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain;

for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Exodus 20:1-7

Thou shalt nots

The message to Christians all across America is indeed, AWAKE from your slumber!

God warns us that He abandoned Israel because it was filled “with idols” and “influences from the east.”

Rather than serving God and loving Him, they “mingled with the nations and learned their practices” which were detestable to the Lord, so the Lord then “gave them into the hand of the nations; and those who hated them ruled over them” (Psalm 106:40b NASV).

Filed Under: XIV Dalai Lama Tagged With: Dalai Lama, Free Tibet, Jesus Christ, Kalachakra, Shadow of the Dalai Lama, Trimondi

Flame of YAHWEH-Moral Integrity in our sexuality

February 28, 2014 by jstephens

Summary of Steps toward Moral Integrity

an excerpt from Davidson’s

Flame of YAHWEH-Sexuality in the Old Testament

December 3, 2013

James C. Stephens

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

In a desire to pursue what is good and pure, and seeking to please YHWH in every aspect of my life, both public and private, I was lead to an extensive treatment on sexuality from a Judaeo-Christian perspective that wrestles on a very deep Biblical level with the issues that have confronted the human race for thousands of years. It was written by Richard M. Davidson, the J.N. Andrews Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at Andrews University. One of his extensive footnotes seemed to provide an answer to my quest to find a model to work on getting my own internal house in order. The entire work of 844 pages is encyclopedic in its scope, e.g., the bibliography in itself is 140 pages.

“The hymnic/Wisdom literature of the OT give very practical steps for availing oneself of empowering divine grace to preserve moral purity in both thought and action. Although this material is more pastoral and application-oriented than exegetical, I include it here because the theology of the hymnic/Wisdom literature is in fact oriented toward the practical, everyday life, presenting wisdom as practical advice on how to succeed in life.

Here is a summary of steps toward moral integrity that have emerged from my study of this literature:

(1) daily consecration and prayer for God to create a pure heart (Ps 51:12 [ET 51:10]);

(2) trusting in God’s keeping power by faith (Prov 3:5-6);

(3)meditation upon the character of God and focusing upon pure thoughts (Ps 16:8; Prov 23:7);

(4) avoiding situations that contain temptations to impurity (Prov 5:8);

(5) constant “watchfulness” (Prov 4:23,26) [NASB]; 8:34;

(6)earnest prayer and claiming of God’s promises (Prov 2:1-6, 16);

(7) dependence upon the abiding influence of the Holy Spirit (Ps 51:13 [ET 51:11];143:10;Prov 1:23);

(8) diligent study and internalizing of the word (Ps 119:9,11; Prov 2:1-13; 6:20-24; 7:2-3);

(9)cultivating a sense of God’s presence and the certainty of future judgment (Ps 139:7; Prov 2:18-19;5:3–4,20-22);

(10)cultivating a sense of the ennobling power of pure thoughts (Prov 22:11);

(11) cultivating intimacy and sexual satisfaction with one’s own spouse (Prov 5:15-19);

and

(12) realizing the cosmic conflict in which the enemy “stalks” victims (Prov 6:26).

The hymnic/Wisdom literature presents these twelve steps in order that the wise—the ones who follow these steps—
may experience success in the path of moral integrity.”

Flame of YAHWEH-Sexuality in the Old Testament by Richard M. Davidson, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody Massachusetts, 2007, pg. 375 footnote 138.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Dalai Lama and the Anatomy of Politically Correct Buddhism

February 23, 2014 by jstephens

By James C. Stephens

But what conception of the world is hiding behind the smiling, so apparently philanthropic and peaceable mask of the Tibetan God-King?

The ignorance that this key question exposes, particularly in the western world, can only be described as catastrophic.

(Neue Zurcher Zeitung July 15, 1999 A German Newspaper)

Nearly three thousand tickets for the Annual “Distinguished Speaker’s Series” at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium featuring the Dalai Lama had sold out within an hour. Since no seats were available, I decided in Jay Leno fashion to go down and conduct some on the street interviews of people waiting to get a glimpse of the God-King of Tibet.

As that balmy October Southern California evening arrived, the air was filled with the anticipation of an opening night in Hollywood. Black limousines carrying the Dalai Lama and his US Diplomatic Secret Service escort pulled up to the Mediterranean style auditorium. A smattering of celebrities and Tibetan lamas with shaved heads dressed in maroon robes trimmed in golden yellow mingled in the large crowd lined up to pass through the specially installed security stations.

I was standing near “Heather” a slender hippyish woman in her twenties who was observing that evening’s crowd and occasionally seeing if a passerby had any extra tickets. Nonchalantly I asked her, “So, what brings you out here this evening?”

She replied, “Oh, I hitch hiked out here this summer from the Ozarks with my boyfriend to attend the Empowerment Ceremonies with the Dalai Lama. Tonight we decided to see if we could attend his public talk on Ethics for the New Millennium.”

“Will you be disappointed if you can’t get in?” I inquired.

Without hesitation she mused, “Not really. I’ve been watching all the well-dressed people going in and decided they probably need to hear him more than I do.”

Since she was open I posed a slightly more personal question, “Hypothetically, let’s say that Jesus Christ and the Dalai Lama were to be standing here before you and you had the opportunity to choose one to follow. Who would you select?”

She paused for a moment and then said, “The Dalai Lama.” Observing my slightly baffled look, she confessed, “Well, he is the spiritual leader of our day who’s bringing everyone together. He seems to fit our times better, and although I find Jesus attractive, I don’t feel the same about most Christians.”

When asked why the Dalai Lama was so popular, she commented, “I think he is like the Wizard of Oz, reflecting people’s illusions of what they want to believe.”

At first I was taken aback, but recognized that her comments represent a growing segment of our society that wholeheartedly embraces Buddhism as their religion of choice and leaving no doubt that the Lotus is blooming in America. Studies have shown that there are presently over 1600 Buddhist temples, centers and monasteries in America, many of them Tibetan. [1] In the twelve years between 1985 and 1997, “more Buddhist meditation centers were established than the total number founded in the first eighty-five years of the twentieth century.” [i]

Currently Buddhism is being marketed to such a high degree that even Buddhists parody the Madison Avenue hype surrounding the Buddhist boom. Buddha books are big business, while magazines are a lucrative cottage industry supported by pages and pages of advertisements marketing everything from retreats, national conferences, the reincarnation of tea, salad dressings, Buddha beads, sneakers to smiling Tibetan lamas opening Toshiba laptops on the “rooftop of the world.” Huge billboards along LA freeways featured the smiling image of the Dalai Lama advertising Apple’s “Think Different,” while the “Simpson’s,” a primetime cartoon program parodying American culture focused on little Lisa’s conversion to Tibetan Buddhism on their Christmas special.

As a college student who had converted to Buddhism in 1970, like Heather, I had been enamored with the exotic religious rituals, smells of incense, chants, and ancient stories of Buddha’s life and teachings. Myths like the life of the Buddha convey powerful images to believer and non-believer alike. Ignoring those myths in global affairs can bring dire consequences, e.g., Wahabism, the radical fundamentalist Islam of Osama Bin Laden. Approaching a worldview different from our own requires freedom to think critically and a “civil public square” [ii] that embraces discussion and debate, essential components for the survival of the human race. In certain Buddhist countries, nationalism is equated with religious expression, e.g., “To be Thai is to be Buddhist, to be Buddhist Thai.” The same holds true in Tibet and other Buddhist nations where there is no separation of Church and State and constitutionally Kings are required to be Buddhist.

Filed Under: XIV Dalai Lama

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Virgin Skulls and the Forbidden Stitch

Flame of YAHWEH-Moral Integrity in our sexuality

Summary of Steps toward Moral Integrity

Flame of YAHWEH-Sexuality in the Old Testament

Here is a summary of steps toward moral integrity that have emerged from my study of this literature:

(1) daily consecration and prayer for God to create a pure heart (Ps 51:12 [ET 51:10]);

(2) trusting in God’s keeping power by faith (Prov 3:5-6);

(3)meditation upon the character of God and focusing upon pure thoughts (Ps 16:8; Prov 23:7);

(4) avoiding situations that contain temptations to impurity (Prov 5:8);

(5) constant “watchfulness” (Prov 4:23,26) [NASB]; 8:34;

(6)earnest prayer and claiming of God’s promises (Prov 2:1-6, 16);

(7) dependence upon the abiding influence of the Holy Spirit (Ps 51:13 [ET 51:11];143:10;Prov 1:23);

(8) diligent study and internalizing of the word (Ps 119:9,11; Prov 2:1-13; 6:20-24; 7:2-3);

(9)cultivating a sense of God’s presence and the certainty of future judgment (Ps 139:7; Prov 2:18-19;5:3–4,20-22);

(10)cultivating a sense of the ennobling power of pure thoughts (Prov 22:11);

(11) cultivating intimacy and sexual satisfaction with one’s own spouse (Prov 5:15-19);

and

(12) realizing the cosmic conflict in which the enemy “stalks” victims (Prov 6:26).

The hymnic/Wisdom literature presents these twelve steps in order that the wise—the ones who follow these steps—
may experience success in the path of moral integrity.”

The Dalai Lama and the Anatomy of Politically Correct Buddhism

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Comments on a Press Release

Dilemmas and Aspirations of Postcolonial Buddhists and Christians in Sri Lanka

Summary of Steps toward Moral Integrity

Flame of YAHWEH-Sexuality in the Old Testament

Here is a summary of steps toward moral integrity that have emerged from my study of this literature:

(1) daily consecration and prayer for God to create a pure heart (Ps 51:12 [ET 51:10]);

(2) trusting in God’s keeping power by faith (Prov 3:5-6);

(3)meditation upon the character of God and focusing upon pure thoughts (Ps 16:8; Prov 23:7);

(4) avoiding situations that contain temptations to impurity (Prov 5:8);

(5) constant “watchfulness” (Prov 4:23,26) [NASB]; 8:34;

(6)earnest prayer and claiming of God’s promises (Prov 2:1-6, 16);

(7) dependence upon the abiding influence of the Holy Spirit (Ps 51:13 [ET 51:11];143:10;Prov 1:23);

(8) diligent study and internalizing of the word (Ps 119:9,11; Prov 2:1-13; 6:20-24; 7:2-3);

(9)cultivating a sense of God’s presence and the certainty of future judgment (Ps 139:7; Prov 2:18-19;5:3–4,20-22);

(10)cultivating a sense of the ennobling power of pure thoughts (Prov 22:11);

(11) cultivating intimacy and sexual satisfaction with one’s own spouse (Prov 5:15-19);

and

(12) realizing the cosmic conflict in which the enemy “stalks” victims (Prov 6:26).

The hymnic/Wisdom literature presents these twelve steps in order that the wise—the ones who follow these steps— may experience success in the path of moral integrity.”

In the WorldViews101 Spotlight:

Blog Archives

Directory

eCourse Info

The hymnic/Wisdom literature presents these twelve steps in order that the wise—the ones who follow these steps—
may experience success in the path of moral integrity.”