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The Tantric Takeover of Turtle Island-Lessons from Tibet

April 2, 2017 by Leave a Comment

by James C. Stephens

“In the summer of 1981, the “iron bird year” of the Tibetan calendar, the god-king granted a public Kalachakra initiation for the first time outside of Asia. The date and the location (Wisconsin, USA) of the initiation were drawn directly from a prophecy of the Tibetan “religious founder”, Padmasambhava, who introduced Vajrayana to the Land of Snows from India in the eighth century:
“When the iron bird flies and the horses roll on wheels … the Dharma will come to the land of the Red Man”
(Bernbaum, 1982, p. 33). The iron birds — in the interpretation of this vision — are airplanes, the wheeled horses are automobiles, and the land of the Red Man (the American Indians) is the United States. During the ritual a falcon with a snake in its claws is supposed to have appeared in the sky. In it the participants saw the mythic bird, garuda, representing the patriarchal power which destroys the feminine in the form of a snake. [4]
Do we have here the image of a tantric wish according to which the West is already supposed to fall into the clutches of Tibetan Buddhism in the near future?”
The Shadow of the Dalai Lama-The Incarnation of the Tibetan gods
To All Concerned About the Future of Turtle Island,
This is a very important read to understand what the Tibetans are actually doing on Turtle Island. It is a well developed archetypal pattern.
Read the following article all the way through prayerfully. I am interacting with the article from Tibetan Digital Altar with bracketed comments, a few of my maps, some photos,  the map which I composed which actually takes their map and transposes it over Turtle Island and an earlier map I did of all the Buddhist temples, monasteries, tantric vases, sand mandalas, stupas, blood relic tour and Buddhist “art exhibits.”
 Here’s one map I put together of just the sand mandalas (red dots) and the tantric vases (green dots) which have been buried across the US.  (Does not include the overlay of the transposed nailed down body of the demoness (see below).
Mandalas and Tantric Vases in US
They are masters of ritual defilement. I still don’t know why so many have been blinded to this defiant act against the MOST HIGH YHWH. For years we have warned to little avail. Btw, I have since discovered that early on Tantric Buddhism was schooled by the Jesuits in organizing their monastic forces. No wonder they love working together. Such a veil has been drawn over the masses. Only YHWH can remove it. So here’s their research:
[For future reference, notice that the demoness is nailed down and her head is geomatically oriented to the northeast].
{Before you read the following, watch my overview video that I had put together a number of years ago. This will give you a perspective on what you are about to read. I just ran across the text from Digital Tibetan Altars website the other day, many years after I pieced together the other video, so you’ll see that it fills in many of the blanks and actually confirms what I had surmissed to be true.
This is taken from the site Digital Tibetan Altar. It’s not an easy read, but you get a fuller idea of the basis of their worldview. Warning. All this is basically what one would call geomancy, which deals with manipulation of the order of God, in other words it is occultic, magic in so many words:
“In our first articles on this subject, Tibetan Geomancy, and Tibetan Geomancy: Part Two, we have been exploring rudimentary themes. In the instant post, we are going to explore these themes in a bit more depth, by taking comparative notice of Chinese and Indian geomancy. Once again, “geomancy” is an uncomfortable word as applied in either case, but we use it for the sake of handiness, albeit incorrectly. We are going to begin with a quick look at what the Chinese call wu hsing, the Indians call  panchabhuta, and everybody else calls the “five elements.”
I suppose the threshold question is, who got what from where?
I doubt we can answer that question by opening books. The hermeneutical hunt for India’s first Chinese visitor, or China’s first Indian visitor, depends upon deciphering archaic allusions in Indian texts, Chinese texts, and those of the Greeks and Romans. Until we get the lexicology well in hand we will be crossing this part of history the way a small boy crosses a creek, by hopping from stone to stone. I mention this simply because we cannot claim to know whether — as it is applied to geomancy, and strictly in that sense only — the Chinese dragged five element theory back from India, or the Indians dragged it home from China. We can suspect the Chinese received it from India, and chances are we can make a convincing argument, but we cannot be absolutely certain.
In part, this is because India’s five elements and China’s five elements are rather different from one another. The Indian panchabhuta are earth, water, air, fire, and space. The Chinese wu hsing are wood, fire, earth, metal, water. They are not only different in a component sense, but as we shall see, they are regarded differently.
Wu hsing theory seems to arise in China somewhere between 350 BCEand 270 BCE, during the lifetime of the scholar Tsou Yen. You can get some argument about that, pushing the date back to before 400 BCE, but the later dates are substantially established. Of Tsou Yen, the great Cambridge historian Joseph Needham writes:
“If he was not the sole originator of Five-Element theory, he systematized and stabilised ideas on the subject which had been floating about, especially in the eastern seaboard States of Chhi and Yen, for not more than a century at most before his time.”
So, what did Tsou Yen understand as wu hsing? The character wu is simple: it is the cardinal number five. The character hsing demands elaboration. In antiquity, hsing was a pictograph representing a cross-roads or confluence of courses. It is a radical character which at its root has come to mean motility: to do, to act, to walk, to travel. It can also be taken to mean process, conduct, behavior, or way, which definitions should be enough to sketch the sort of thoughts and images Chinese philosophers have grouped behind this radial.
Taking its pictographic sense together with the common denominator of its usage over many centuries, I have always translated hsing as “course” when used in the context here discussed. Thus, for me, the wu hsing are the “five courses.”
For the rest of the world, “five elements” is the preferred translation, to be taken in either one of two ways. “Elements,” as in elemental or fundamental, and having an active sense, or “elements” as on passive substances, the latter idea being a product of component symbolisms. Use of the term “five elements” is so pervasive one can hardly expect to root it out. One occasionally also sees “five agents,” “five forces,” “five processes,” “five qualities,” or “five properties,” which are just variations on the same theme. There is also an earlier concept, the wu cai, or five materials upon which all human existence depends, and some have suggested this is the origin of the wu hsing.
No matter how we translate the term, what we are really talking about are five basic categories or taxonomic indica under which mutually dependent phenomena having related characteristics can be classed, each evolving to the next in cyclic order.
Before delving into the issue of order, I want to stop and take notice of the panchabhuta, or the pancha mahabhutas. “Pancha” simply means five. The Sanskrit word “bhuta” can have several meanings, but the root meanings are truth, reality, natures, that which anything consists of, i.e. elemental, or that which is self-evident. So, in the sense of the mahabhutas, “great” or “gross” bhutas, we are seeing five self-evident natures that all things consist of.
The mahabhutas are recognized in the Vedic age. Just exactly where, I cannot say, because I simply have not studied the matter. They obviously predate the wu hsing, which fall in the Maurya Empire according to Indian reckoning, by a considerable margin. Almost certainly, the concept arises from the Vedic nature deities.
What the early Chinese know as feng shui, the Indians approach as vastushastra, or the science of vastu. This is said to have originated with the Sthapatya Veda, which is a part of Atharva Veda. This would date it to somewhere around the  classical Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit, at the end of second millennium BCE. The term itself could be translated as the “science of abiding,” or the “science of dwellings,” and actually forms the basis of architecture. The idea is quite probably intertwined with the concept of “lord architect of the world” Viśvákarma, and the relations between his five children. Later, it comes to be associated with Brahma, and a number of other gods. It really does not have anything to do with “geomancy” at all — neither does feng shui for that matter — but, since the late twentieth century, that is a word we have connected with the practice.
In the initial stages, vastu is concerned with the effect of light on man-made structures: with the efficient use of sunlight. However, at a very early date in its development — and again, I do not know exactly when: although certainly prior to Buddhism — it comes to be founded on the fundamental concept of balance — or properly speaking, harmony — between structures and the mahabhutas. I should probably mention that this is with narrow reference to construction. Classical vastu does not entertain the notion of “improving” structures that already exist.
Earlier, we mentioned order. In Chinese practice, the five elements are believed to relate to one another in particular orders. These orders are origination order, which expresses how the elements arise; mutual production order, which expresses how they act to produce each other; mutual destruction order, which expresses how they act to overcome one another; controlling order, which expresses how they interact with each other; masking order, which is another expression of interaction, and common, or “modern” order, which is simply a means of listing them.
[JCS: Sounds like the New World Order doesn’t it?]

In Tibetan practice, these orders are expressed as “affinities,” so we see concepts like “mother” (in early Sino-Tibetan practice “father”) “filial,” “friend,” and “enemy.” All of these various orders are common enough in the literature that I am not eager to reproduce them here. Still, I know my readers well enough to realize you will complain if I do not.

[1] Mutual Production Order

  • Wood produces Fire
  • Fire Produces Earth
  • Earth produces Metal
  • Metal produces Water
  • Water produces Wood

[2] Mutual Destruction Order

  • Wood destroys Earth
  • Earth destroys Water
  • Water destroys Fire
  • Fire destroys Metal
  • Metal destroys Wood

[3] Controlling Order

  • Wood destroys Earth, Metal controls Wood
  • Metal destroys Wood, Fire controls Metal
  • Fire destroys Metal, Water controls Fire
  • Water destroys Fire, Earth controls Water
  • Earth destroys Water, Wood controls Earth

[4] Masking Order

  • Wood destroys Earth, Fire produces Earth and masks
  • Metal destroys Wood, Water produces Wood and mask
  • Fire destroys Metal, Earth produces Metal and masks
  • Water destroys Fire, Wood produces Fire and masks
  • Earth destroys Water, Metal produces Water and masks

So, from these, the Tibetans deduced their systems of water being the mother of wood, wood being the son of water, water being the friend of earth,  earth being the enemy of water, and so forth. How this might come about is interesting. Originally, filial concepts were attached to the trigrams. We had a father, a mother, eldest son, middle son, youngest son, eldest daughter, second daughter, youngest daughter. Those on the father’s side are yang, those on the mother’s side are yin. So, as applied to the elements, this becomes parent, child, enemy and friend.

[1] Mother

  • Mother of Wood is Water
  • Mother of Water is Metal
  • Mother of Metal is Earth
  • Mother of Earth is Fire
  • Mother of Fire is Wood

[2] Child

  • Child of Wood is Fire
  • Child of Fire is Earth
  • Child of Earth is Metal
  • Child of Metal is Water
  • Child of Water is Wood

[3] Enemy

  • Enemy of Wood is Metal
  • Enemy of Metal is Fire
  • Enemy of Fire is Water
  • Enemy of Water is Earth
  • Enemy of Earth is Wood

[4] Friend

  • Friend of Wood is Earth
  • Friend of Earth is Water
  • Friend of Water is Fire
  • Friend of Fire is Metal
  • Friend of Metal is Wood
The importance of the elements in Chinese practice is with exclusive reference to these orders. The importance of the elements in Indian practice is with reference to appreciation of individual potency. The Chinese believe in movement, whereas the Indians seem to be following set rules. One source gives the following example:

“Energy is primarily considered as emanating from the northeast corner and many site and building characteristics are derived from this. Sites sloping down towards north or east from higher levels of south and west are considered good. Open spaces in site and openings in the building are to be more in the north and east than in the south and the west. No obstacles are to be present in the north and the east. Levels and height of buildings are to be higher in the south and west when compared to the north and east. The southwest corner is to be the highest, followed by southeast, then by northwest and finally by northeast. The triangle formed by joining the southwest, southeast and the northwest corner of the site is attributed to the moon and the triangle formed by joining the northeast, northwest and southeast corner of the site is attributed to the sun. The former are prescribed to be heavier and higher and the latter light and lower. Sites having a longer east-west axis are considered better. The diagonal connecting southwest and northeast is to be longer than the diagonal connecting southeast and northwest. An extended northeast corner is considered beneficial.”

These are the exact conditions followed when building Tibetan temples, even to the present day.In expression of their approach, Indian practitioners developed the Purusha Mandala, which is superimposed on the landscape, and used to orient construction from the ground up.
The “houses” of the Purusha Mandala are fixed. They are represented by a square — symbolizing the earth — imposed on the body of a being. The head is always in the northeast.
[JCS: Here I have turned the Purusha Mandala to match magnetic north in order that one may compare the nailed down demoness I have superimposed over the Map of the United States. You must look carefully, but underneath the transparency are Buddhist temples, centers, monasteries and stupas. It has become more obvious over the years that these religious centers have not been placed in a happenstance manner. As a matter of fact, tantric vases have been buried in every state capital, the US Capitol, major rivers, lakes, mountain peaks, national parks and sacred places across the US. The US is the first country they have totally completed]. 
hindu-mandala-pattern
Do you recall how I had earlier pointed out that the Dalai Lama’s American Headquarters is in upper state New York?
WomentiedDown​Where tantric vases have been buried on Turtle Island.
08 01 2016 Peace Vase Map of Turtle Island Alaska Canada USA Hawaii Mexico
[JCS: Therefore the Dalai Lama’s American Headquarters is in Upper State New York at the Namgyal Monastery which is near Ithaca and has been named the new site for the Dalai Lama Center not unlike the Presidential libraries, but for the Dalai Lama. 
mayor-of-ithaca-welcomes-the-construction-of-a-presidential-like-library-center-for-the-study-of-all-the-dalai-lamas-in-ny
“Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick announced that the Dalai Lama selected the town of Ithaca from dozens of cities to be the site of an international center for Buddhism. The cultural center — called “His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s Library and Museum” — will be built on South Hill. Myrick says that the library and museum will contain “the writings, teachings, and artifacts of all 14 Dalai Lamas,” referring to the monks who have served as the spiritual leaders of Tibetan Buddhism for centuries.”
The “being” is said to be  formless spirit who blocked heaven from earth, and had to be subdued by Brahma and the other gods. So, each geomantic house is ruled by a particular god, with Brahma in the center. Thus:

  • North is ruled by Kubera, the lord of wealth.
  • South is ruled by Yama, the lord of death.
  • East is ruled by Indra, the solar deity.
  • West is ruled by Varuna, the lord of water.
  • Northeast is ruled by Shiva.
  • Southeast is ruled by Agni, the deity of fire.
  • Northwest is ruled by Vayu, lord of the winds.
  • Southwest is ruled by Niruthi, lord of ancestors.
  • The center is ruled by Brahma.

Apart from its mythological structure, this mandala is actually the framework for an exquisitely detailed set of mathematical rules, having nothing to with elements, but everything to do with hard measurement.

[JCS: Btw, Kathmandu Valley in Nepal is laid out according to a giant mandala].

In parts one and two of our little survey of Tibetan geomancy, we have been discussing Queen Kon-jo. When Wengchen Kon-jo comes to Tibet from China, in 641 CE, her geomantic masterpiece — or metaphor — is the siting of Lhasa’s central temple, Jokhang.

The story is that Kon-jo determined Tibet’s landforms resembled a demoness lying on her back, so various smaller temples and stupas had to be constructed before Jokhang could be successfully completed.

When we examine this approach in contrast with the Purusha Mandala, it certainly becomes suggestive, doesn’t it?

Chinese and Indian approaches were tossed into Tibet’s cultural grinder, with the eventual result that spirits of the earth were now being dredged up and subdued according to a moving position.

The concept of the grid is coming from India, but the concept of motion is coming from China. Basically, the grid is being laid on a site, and four corners are assigned.

The southeast corner is fire, the southwest corner is the demoness, the northwest corner is wind, and the northeast corner is power. The spirit — by this time a naga — is believed to rotate within this square according to the season, and even, as some would have it, according to the year, month, day and hour. The grid is divided into some 8,000 parts, the head of the spirit is aligned, and a “vital point” is established — usually in the spirit’s armpit — where the first disturbance of the soil is to occur.

[JCS: Notice that the demoness is literally nailed to the earth].

It is right about here that we begin to think about the difference between gross and subtle elements, and their lasting — if not thoroughly troublesome — metaphor, the relationship between seen and unseen: the relationship between men and spirits.

[JCS: Notice that in the demoness’ right side a hole is dug into the earth and a tantric vase is buried in the earth. This looks precisely like one of the 6,000 ritual vases made in Bhutan that are being buried all over the world.
Buddhist tantric vase buried in Westminster Abby by the Dalai Lama.

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

The Dalai Lama even placed one in Westminster Cathedral. One is also buried in Washington, DC near the National Christmas Tree and Washington Monument or Baal’s shaft].

Of spirits, in Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian practice, one could write an almost endless number of volumes.

At the very least, maybe we will get around to a few paragraphs in a future post.[JCS: So why the Kalachakra in Washington, DC?  
Answer:  http://www.worldviews101.com/?p=1895
US Map Work on Tantric Buddhist sand mandalas, stupas, vases, and blood relic tours
 
by James C. Stephens

Over the years I have compiled maps on the locations where Tibetan sand mandalas have been constructed by traveling teams of Tibetan lamas from various monasteries and tour groups. Some have been financed by Richard Gere, others are by invitation from the US Federal, State and local governments, universities. Churches have also invited them in to be built as well as museums, festivals, wherever they find receptive sponsors.

At the Seventh International Conference on Buddhist Christian Dialogue held at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, one session held off campus at Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights focused on the “Mandalization of US Politics.”  Sand mandalas involve a ritual of territorial possession and are highly organized metaphysically and have even involved their enemies blood mingled with the sand according to Dalton in his well documented and researched book, Taming of Demons which focuses on the altars of blood Tibetan Buddhists were actively building whose documents were discovered in the Dunhuang Caves in China on the Silk Road.
Here are some links to the maps that I have worked on over the years, which do not include some of my earlier renditions that I tracked by hand on a map of the United States of the first flurry of 300 sand mandalas financed by the Richard Gere Foundation’s Mystical Arts and Sacred Dance tour of the Drepung Monks way back when. Some of the maps also include the Heart Shrine Relic Tour of Buddhist blood and relics, the burying of tantric vases under the program called Siddhartha’s intent out of Bhutan.
All of these are leading to a culmination of their dark spiritual work to the Maitreya Project being built in Bodh Gaya, India where the Dalai Lama will preside over the Kalachakra initiation beginning in January 2017.
1)This map was put together at the last election in 2012 where many mandalas were built in State Capital Buildings and in Universities where the Presidential debates took place. Unfortunately, both political parties are involved at the highest levels in opening doors to the Tibetan practices that they accept as cultural, without any proper understanding of the deeper spiritual implications of the defilement of the land by idolatry disguised as art. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uhd_FaOxAtBqvRXPch_3cxks1J0&usp=sharing
2. Here is a link to the present 2016 Mystical Tour of the Tibetan Monks in the US. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QF3h9aBLimSL_iJ3xCyvrR4UgiE&usp=sharing
3. Tibetan Buddhist influences in Washington, DC. Sites of influence of the XIV Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhist influences in Washington DC and surrounding region, including but not limited to sand mandalas, tantric vases, Blood relic tour, initiation ceremonies have been conducted, White House visits and award ceremonies, where the Nechung Oracle has visited, etc. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-SkgQ6PAbG_vDBXvFlSFRpOQBOw&usp=sharing
4. Tibetan Buddhist Activities and rituals in St. Louis, the site of the Second US Presidential Debate also the home to Urbana Student Mission Conference every three years. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1K6oph438NapyircXeBFuBFChjWA&usp=sharing
5. Sand Mandalas and Tantric Vase locations in the USA. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1r3IcJqYiLJO4zlSVaP5UEq13Gmw&usp=sharing 
7.  Tantric Vases planted in US.  Bhutanese Vajrayana Buddhists established Siddhartha’s Intent and created over 6,000 Tantric Vases they euphemistically call Peace Vases.            https://drive.google.com/open?id=1A-hbBt5LVVX-eYztVtmgqflEin0&usp=sharing
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An Open Letter to the 2016 US Conference of Mayors Regarding the Keynote Speaker the XIV Dalai Lama

April 2, 2017 by Leave a Comment

An Open Letter to the 2016 US Conference of Mayors

Regarding the Keynote address by the XIV Dalai Lama on June 26, 2016

Site: Indianapolis, Indiana

Date: June 24-28, 2016

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

by James C. Stephens

In 1996, the XIV Dalai Lama, recognized at that time as the god-king of Tibet, was awarded the key to the City of Pasadena.  Concerned about the series of events, Dr. Arthur Glasser, Dean Emeritus of Fuller School of Intercultural Studies and I attended the Dalai Lama’s acceptance speech at Pasadena City Hall.

In an interview, aired on CBN, I asked Dr. Glasser how one should address the visit of the Dalai Lama. He replied, “He is a foreign personage of prominence, we should be respectful of him, but to offer him the key to the city, Christians would tend to react. They would say, ‘the key, the authority, what sort of authority is going to be understood by the Dalai Lama?”

Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, and the Dalai Lama being awarded the US Congressional Gold Medal in the US Capitol Rotunda.

Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, and the Dalai Lama being awarded the US Congressional Gold Medal in the US Capitol Rotunda.

As a former Buddhist youth leader and graduate of a Buddhist Study Academy, I had an intimate knowledge of the practice of Buddhism (1970-1984).  In 1981, prior to a Buddhist pilgrimage I had an accident in a train station in Japan.  For the following three years, I investigated other religious paths and practices and made a decision to become a follower of Jesus Christ, believing Him to be my Savior and Messiah.  In the ensuing years, I have studied Christianity as zealously as I had Buddhism, and came to deeply respect the historic Christian faith as originally delivered to the Jewish Apostles.

At the same time, I have continued to watch with concern, the deterioration of Christianity in the West and the funding of various religious traditions in America that have taken root through Government support.  I have closely watched the Dalai Lama and his work in the US and have seriously investigated his worldview, one which he carefully disguises in his public personae as a man of peace.  Formerly a paid agent of the CIA, his work continues to be heavily supported by the US Government as a key speaker at major universities, corporate venues, coliseums, and government halls.  It was also quite disconcerting that he was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Second Anniversary of 9-11 at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. He now has become a leading spokesman for climate change.

While I understand that his story is quite engaging, have seen movies about his life, read many of his books, heard him speak,   I find myself questioning the American public’s naiveté in writing him a spiritual blank check and elevating him,  in a sense,  to the position of “the pluralist pope” by providing a public platform to introduce his curriculum of secular ethics to our public school system.

As leaders of your respective cities, I urge you to pursue a candid and intelligent survey of the available external evidence of my concerns, which I believe will satisfy a reasonable mind.  While, I agree with Dr. Glasser that we should treat dignitaries from other countries with respect, our mandate as gatekeepers requires us to carefully weigh any proposal or ideas arising from those who are invited into our house, in this case, the US Council of Mayors.

In the early nineties, while teaching in the UK, I spoke to the Director of the London Buddhist Society who proudly showed me the loophole in the 1988 Religious Reform Act which opened the door in the UK to teach all religions and introduced a new curriculum overriding centuries of public policy wherein Christianity had been taught in their school system for hundreds of years.  Fast forward to 2016, and Sadiq Khan the new Mayor of London is a Muslim and all of Europe is in the throes of great religious turmoil as a result of the refugee crisis. The Dalai Lama recently shocked others when he stated, “There are now too many (refugees),” he said. “Europe, for example Germany, cannot become an Arab land,” he added with a laugh. “Germany is Germany. From a moral point of view too, I think that the refugees should only be admitted temporarily. The goal should be that they return and help rebuild their countries.” (India Times, June 01, 2016 by Kunal Anand).

The stability of a nation depends upon its religious statecraft, but also upon religious freedom and freedom of conscience.  Engraved on the North entrance of Los Angeles City Hall, the words of Israel’s King Solomon, the wisest King in history ring true,

“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.”

Samuel P. Huntington, Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University warned in his 1993 essay on The Clash of Civilizations, “What ultimately counts for people is not political ideology or economic interest. Faith and family, blood and belief are what people identify with and what they will fight and die for.”   While it is the duty of Christians in pluralist societies to cooperate with people of other faiths in seeking a just ordering of society, we are also required to hold to our original founding principles that made America a land in which refugees were welcomed to her shores.  It is a very simple question of hospitality, you are welcome to stay in our home, but there are a few rules you must follow. A guest is no longer a guest, when they begin to tell you how to run your own household. A lesson we all must remember as most of us are guests (immigrants) to Turtle Island.  The First Nations know that the land belongs to the Creator and not to any one man and if violated will vomit those out which defile her.

Charles Bridges (1794-1869), one of the leaders of the Evangelical party in the Church in England called its leader’s decisions into question when they began to chase after the traditions of men which had not proven to provide steady counsel to direct the affairs of state.  He stated, “The Bible exhibits a divinely appointed remedy commensurate with man’s infinite distress, and accepted of God in its power and prevalence. Who can doubt the excellency of the things that are written, so rich in counsel and knowledge—‘words fit for a prince to speak, and the best man in the world to hear? Such a minute and practical standard for relative life and social obligation!”

Over the last several years, the Dalai Lama has been developing a secular curriculum of ethics that he desires to be introduced into the curriculum of our nation’s schools.  His talks on “Beyond Religion” that seemingly appeal to the secularist mindset are touted to teach compassion and ethics without religion.  As Mayors, many struggle with the pluralist mix of religious and “none’s” in their cities.  However, embracing an untried curriculum with a questionable agenda designed by scholars from a progressive, Buddhist socialist background albeit supposedly stripped of any religious intent, still presents a major challenge to the prevailing foundations of the United States of America.

“If the foundations be destroyed, how can the righteous stand?”  Who now becomes the interpreter of what is right and what is wrong in a nation that has abandoned the faith of her fathers?  Some may argue, “Oh, but it’s for those who are not religious” and the like.  However, our laws and justice system were founded on Judeo-Christian principles as any astute legal mind will attest.  New curriculum proposals are serious changes of course that pack within them, unforeseen consequences. Making quick friends will bring lasting regrets.  This is not limited to any one foreign guest or leader in our nation, as our internal issues and crisis require more than a new Band-Aid. Our moral crisis is severe and it is not time to switch boats in midstream.  While the Dalai Lama as a foreign personage may provide key insight into our shortcomings providing a valuable outsider’s point of view, it does not mean that the solution he holds out with the other hand is an acceptable alternative.

The prophets of Troy, warned the city fathers not to trust Greeks bearing gifts.  The prophets out rightly said, “Burn the Trojan Horse.”   The City fathers instead accepted the gift and you know the rest of the old story.  Not unlike King Hezekiah that showed his enemy all his treasure stores unwisely, only later to have the City sacked.  It didn’t happen overnight, but set in motion a process whose seeds of destruction were carefully planted over time.

Yes, peace and compassion and mindfulness at first may sound wonderful. Who would reject them?  A wise man however, remembers “caveat emptor,” buyer beware.  The seller of his wares may call into doubt the integrity of the country’s foundation, promoting vain imaginations of how peace can be won by just calling a city a city of compassion. One may clean the outside of the cup, but inside it’s full of dead man’s bones.  As a young Buddhist, I recall marching in a Buddhist Brass Band dressed up in Santa Claus uniforms and playing Christian hymns  for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Christmas party.  Marketing Buddhism as American as Mom and Apple Pie; strategies cooked up by Madison Fifth Avenue Ad executives.

So, when you listen to the Dalai Lama and his fascinating story, one must ask oneself the more difficult questions as a mature leader whose constituency no doubt contains a high portion of Christians, “Why has the Dalai Lama been chosen as the keynote speaker? What is the agenda? Am I about to embrace something I have no understanding of and discard what I have known? Am I willing to implement an ideology that may be divisive to many of the people I shepherd? As the wise King Solomon said, “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end leads to destruction.”   Even the wisest king lost his way for a time and embraced many false ideologies, before coming to his senses at the end of his life. Is it not better to question your own judgment upfront and seek what your elders once taught? Why waste present possibilities and needed reformation by embracing what you only perceive to be a better way?

Doubts may arise as distance lends enchantment to the view. Carefully weigh and survey the information you hear for the destiny of your city depends upon the wisdom of its counselors.

“When warnings for instruction are not received, they are tokens of destruction. This is a truth which none almost deny, and none almost believe. Had it been believed, many desolating judgments in former ages had been prevented; nations and cities should have abode in prosperity, which are now sunk into ruin, yea, into hell.”

               -(John Owen to the UK Parliament in a day of reflection on the nation’s spiritual state).

 

Resources:

EpicycleMedia:  The Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism playlist.

https://youtu.be/5oAZMn3Vx6E?list=PL6ysZa-S0tJs_l4PCIVlIQseHTebCFiXq

“The Dalai Lama and the Anatomy of Politically Correct Buddhism” by James C. Stephens based on a chapter in InterVarsity Press’s Guide to New Religious Movements edited by Dr. Ronald Enroth, Sociology Professor at Westmont College, Santa Barbara.

http://www.worldviews101.com/?p=2420

Dalai Lama and the Kalachakra: A Wake-Up Call for the West.  Stephens’ Interview of Victor Trimondi on the Dalai Lama and 9-11 (in English and Chinese).

http://www.worldviews101.com/?s=interview.

The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism by Victor and Victoria Trimondi

This study is not for the fainthearted. If you want to live in the world of fantasy, don’t read this expose.

http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Contents.htm.

“Our study is divided into two parts. The first contain a depiction and critique of the religious foundations of Tibetan (“Tantric”) Buddhism and is entitled Ritual as Politics. The second part (Politics as Ritual) examines the power politics of the Kundun (Dalai Lama) and its historical preconditions. The relationship between political power and religion is thus central to our book.”

Critical Forum for the Investigation of the Kalachakra Tantra and the Shambhala Myth.

http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Annex.htm.

The Kalachakra-Tantra is anything but pacifist, rather, it prophesies and promotes a bloody religious war for world domination between Buddhists and non-Buddhists (Shambhala myth).

The text explicitly names the “leaders” of the three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) as opponents of Buddhism: “Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, the White-Clad one [Mani], Muhammad and Mathani [the Mahdi]”. The Kalachakra Tantra describes them as “the family of the demonic snakes” (Shri Kalachakra I. 154).

Thus, the Kalachakra Tantra is opposed to all religions of Semitic origin, and for this reason has been pressed into service by right-wing radical and anti-Semitic circles for their racist propaganda.

The Kalachakra Tantra invokes a global war between the Islamic and the non-Islamic world in which the followers of Mohammed are presented as the principal enemies of the Buddhists. The original text refers to Mecca, where the “mighty, merciless idol of the barbarians” lives as a “demonic incarnation” (Shri Kalachakra I. 154).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Two Faces of a Tibetan Idol in America

May 23, 2016 by

March 07 2014 DL WDC National Cathedral Interfaith Dialogue

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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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.

© STERN

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

May 23, 2016 by

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.

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Confession of an Unfaithful Bride

April 20, 2016 by Leave a Comment

1. Confession of an unfaithful Bride:

July 1 2014 Pope Paul and the Dalai Lama and African Bishop

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.

October 10 2012 DePaul Sand Mandala One World Religion all religions whats it going to be

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.

2011-07-07T213842Z_01_WAS207_RTRIDSP_3_USA-TIBET

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.

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High Holy Days and Sand Mandala at Pico Union Project

September 20, 2015 by Leave a Comment

March 19 2014 The Ten Commandments Photo iNote: 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.

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