Date: 11/27/2010 12:54:47 PM
Subject: [CASonline] Three GODS
 
       
 

 
Dearest Friends @ CAS,
 
 
Aung San Suu Kyi is free. She is the gentle, beautiful Burmese leader who, against every odds, held on strongly and yet ever so gracefully, for freedom and light for her people.
 
Holy Tara, bless Suu Kyi and her people. 
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As we have a few fitful hours more to go before we take to the skies, we are exhorted by a pure compulsion to talk and share these terribly intriguing matters.
 
The 3 GODS: 
1) A "Not-A-God",
2) The "God" 
3) A "Not-Quite-A-God"
 
Be enthralled by these fascinating trio.
 
Click Me!  bb & other Tara people @ CAS of 21 Taras 
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A "Not-A-God"....
 
Is what millions of people around the world make aspirations to, to be re-born with and to learn and partake of. These are not the ordinay fairy-tale frillies of heaven and cheerful worship. These are students of Buddha Amitabha who ask not to frolic with giddy luxury in the high heavens. Instead, they aspire to attain the highest, perfect state of Buddhahood, to emanate countless bodies into every realms, into the delicious and ugly, into the idyllic and suffocating places, the most terrible or wherever there are beings ripe for the holy Dharma. This is no lame quixotic thinking. The training begins in earnest this very life, beyond the sonorous chanting and quaint altar flowers.
 
One of the most effective and venerable ( at that !! ) instruments to this end is the Reverend Chin Kung. He practically fired off a renaissanace, a worthy counterpart of the Buddhist giants: Grandmaster Hsing-Yun or the Dalai Lama.
 
We are sorry we could only find the tubes in Chinese but even if only in Chinese, Most Venerable Chin Kung deserves a place, a most honoured place at that, in CASonline.
 
 
The Venerable Chin Kung
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You need to know this amazing Being: 
 
Then, Venerable speaks about "Wealth" and "Tibetan Buddhism": 
 
CASonline's "Video on Demand":
"The Story of Buddha Amitabha"
 
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The Amitayur Dhyana Sutra
Translated and compiled by Upasika chihmann
 
... Again, there are three other classes of beings who also can be born in that country.
 
They are firstly those who posses the compassionate heart, refrain from taking life and control themselves according to all the prohibitive precepts. Secondly those who read and recite the Mahayana and Vaipulya. Thirdly those who practise the "Sixfold thought" (i.e. [1] Thinking of the Buddha; [2] Thinking of the Dharma; [3] Thinking of the Sangha; [4] Thinking of the precepts; [5] Thinking of alms-givings; [6] Thinking of Nirvana) and direct such meritorious thoughts towards the desire of re-birth in that country as a fundamental preparation.....
 
When he comes to die, out of his sharp and zealous aspiration and fine progress will be able to see the Buddha Amitabha with (the Bodhisattvas) Avalokitesvara, Mahasthama and innumerable transformed Buddhas, thousands of Bhikkhus, Sravakas, and countless Devas, together with (the vision) of places made of the seven jewels. All such things will appear before him. The Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara and Mahasthama will present him with the diamond throne. Buddha Amitabha will give forth a great and magnificent splendor which will illuminate his body. The Buddha and Bodhisattvas will hold out their hands to meet him. His mind will be encouraged with the admiration by the Bodhisattvas whereupon he will be enraptured with joy and find himself riding on a diamond throne led by the Buddha.....
 
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The "God" .....
 
 
One of bb @ CAS's English professors at NTU-NIE, in her book, where she speaks her mind, while embalmed and lying in her coffin !!
 
Dr Lim boldly, with penetrative insight and characteristic humour, muses and nuances on THE "God". Her writing, with William Shakespeare's, have been inducted into Cambridge's official English literature texts and the current quoted excerpt is no puny version of the earlier. 
 
This is THE "God" whose adherents populate the fattest swaths of the human population and who are so busy slashing each other silly. These attempts include flying two aeroplanes into buildings, leading crusades into Iraq, Jerusalem and what not.
 
Buddhists are thankfully left out of this principal bloodbath although we have our little skirmishes like those within Tibet, or between the Thais and Burmese.    
 
Being an essentially peaceful enterprise, CAS prefers a slightly more academic take on THE "God", albeit an incisive one via bb's English teacher and via Robert Wright, a best-selling author on evolutionary psychology, history and religion.
 
They are chosen for being illuminating on the millenium-long-debated and suspiciously surreal existence of "GOD". They trace also its tumbling along the long road with milestones sometimes so terribilus - precautionary tales to learn and avoid like the plague.   
 
And what did they write ??!!
 
"My GAWD !!"
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THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES GOT STRAIGHTFORWARD guidance from Scripture on how to handle people who didn't worship Israel's god, Yahweh. ( ** Another name of "God" ).
"You shall annihilate them... - just as the Lord your God has commanded." ......
 
The Bible isn't the only scripture with such vacillations between belligerence and tolerance. Muslims, who like Christians and Jews worship the God who revealed himself to Abraham, are counseled in one part of the Koran to "kill the polytheists wherever you find them.".......
 
A close look at the Bible shows how this worldview helped move Israel from the polytheism of Solomon's time toward monotheism.....
 
Paving the way for this eventual triumph of monotheism was a series of prophets who cried out for exclusive devotion to Yahweh..........
  
Muhammad's preaching career started in Mecca around 613 C.E., and he seems to have had hopes of drawing Jews and Christians into a common faith. In the Koran - which Muslims consider the word of God spoken by Muhammad - the Prophet's followers are told to say to fellow Abrahamics, "Our God and your God is one."
 
Muhammad's ecumenical mission seems to have failed. Certainly, he sensed rejection from Christians and Jews. A Koranic verse captures his disillusionment. "O believers! Take not the Jews or Christians as friends. They are but one of another's friends." Once you're convinced that non-zero-sum collaboration isn't in the cards, the bonhomie dries up.
 
In his new, zero-sum mode, Muhammad changed the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. According to Islamic tradition, he expelled three tribes of Jews from Medina - and killed the adult males in the three tribe, which was suspected of collaboration with Meccans in a battle against Medina.
 
Still, in the end, Christians and Jews get a favored place in Islamic tradition as "people of the Book." The Koran repeatedly says they're eligible for salvation.
 
Within years of Muhammad's death in 632, Islamic leaders started conquering lands far and wide. This imperial expansion gave birth to the doctrine of jihad, which mandates battle against unbelievers with the aim of conversion..........
 
God spent enough time in benevolent mode to leave the Scriptures littered with odes to tolerance and understanding, verses that modern believers can focus on, should they choose .........
 
And in a Koranic verse dated by scholars to the final years of Muhammad's life, God tells humankind that He has "made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another."
 
We can quit asking whether if Islam - or Judaism or any other religion - is a religion of peace. The answer is no. And yes. It says so in the Bible, and in the Koran.
 
( TIME JUNE 15 2009 - Robert Wright )
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'Dog' has drawn up three articles of impeachment against God:
 
Article One: God's Omnipotence.
God is supposedly all-powerful, yet he is helpless to prevent certain disasters that bring great suffering to his children. Never mind the man-made disasters of war and corruption and environmental pollution - we will take responsibility for that. But surely he, as an all-powerful god, has command over the destructive forces of nature which have killed millions of his children, and continue to do so. Every year hundreds of thousands die from earthquakes,hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, storms, droughts which wreak incredible havoc, taking away lives, destroying homes and crops, bringing unspeakable hardship to those who already live hard lives......
From the moment a child is born with Huntington gene, the death sentence is already pronounced on him. What about the gene for Alzheimer's Disease? For deformities causing babies to come into the world without eyes, without limbs, with brains outside their skulls, intestines outside their bodies? If God has made man in his image, as he claims, then he should do proper editing work. Otherwise his Omnipotence is a lie and a mockery.
 
Article Two: God's omniscience.
If God is all-knowing, having knowledge of all that was, that is and that will be in creation for all time..... it means God knows beforehand all mankind's sufferings and hardships, whether caused by nature or by man himself. He has foreknowledge of all wars, all the acts of violence and rapine in war, of all murders, all acts of brutality against little children. He has foreknowledge of the Holocaust and the Killing Fields. From the beginning of time He had seen the two planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers, the burning debris, the falling bodies, the deaths of 3000 people and the devastated lives of their families. If God knows and permits all these events to happen, then does not his omniscience make him culpable?  
 
Article Three: God's Omnibenevolence. If God is all-caring and all-loving, why has he permitted so much evil and suffering in the world?
.... Why has God done nothing to ease the pain of his children, as a loving father on earth would, even to the point of taking the pain on himself? If God shows any benevolence at all, why is it a discriminatory kind?
.....He chooses to ignore one group and direct his benevolence to the other. On other occasions, he may reverse the preference. Overall,there is no pattern of consistency, only randomness, as if he wants the unpredictability to protect him against the charge of favoritism. Such a skewed omnibenevolence is worse than no benevolence.
 
.... I may even be tempted, as a last attempt at gentle bantering, to ask God .. the same question which that most noted of atheists Bertrand Russell had said he would ask, "God, why did You make it so difficult for me to belive in You?" 
 
( Unhurried Thoughts At My Funeral - Catherine Lim )
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A "Not-Quite-A-God".....
 
CASonline's "Video on Demand": 
 
"The truth about Shugden"
 
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