Month: April 2023

Is U.S Constitution and Supreme Court Outdated for Constructive Change ? – an Exploration of Public Trust and Social Contract

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Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, one of our greatest intellectual treasures, was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He is boasted John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, amonst others his best friends. He had always said USA is a country founded by rich white wealthy men, FOR rich white wealthy men, the country they wanted was a nirvana for the small percentage of the wealthy, it was never built for majority of the poor. The United States of Amnesia-Gore Vidal (2013) [Documentary] What an amazing, brilliant man who lived life fully; and saw the whole picture.

Written by 55 of the richest white men of early America, and signed by only 39 of them, the constitution is the sacred text of American nationalism. Many Americans have opinions on the constitution but have no idea what’s in it. The book We the Elites: Why the US Constitution Serves the Few – a class analysis of the US Constitution, (Pluto Press, 2022) is an adroit collection of essays exposing the constitution for what it really is – a rulebook to protect capitalism for the elites. Author Robert Ovetz’s reading of the constitution shows that the system isn’t broken. Far from it. It works as it was designed. The misplaced faith of social movements in the constitution as a framework for achieving justice actually obstructs social change – incessant lengthy election cycles, staggered terms, and legislative sessions have kept social movements trapped in a redundant loop. This stymies progress on issues like labor rights, public health, and climate change, projecting the American people and the rest of the world towards destruction.

In this Democracy At Work program – Economic Update: Why The US Constitution Is An Obstacle To Change, Prof. Wolff presents updates on the US banking crisis, plant closing injustice, growing child labor in the US, Biden’s budget’s tax “proposals,” and a new book that shows US homelessness is an economic problem. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Prof. Robert Ovetz on how and why the US Constitution blocks social change.

One of the premises within the US political parties is that private capital is to be left to those who are entrepreneurs, and not to go after the profit making. If businesses start being created under a democratic process brought on by the labor that produces the goods and services that creates those profits, the only response to stop would be outright fascism (we already operate under that in way already). Power that be always talk about free enterprise, until that freedom goes from the few to the masses.

The Homelessness is a Housing Problem discussion a very pressing issue offering a case in point about the homeless is an economic issue. Gregg Colburn, an assistant professor of real estate in the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments. Ph.D. in Public Affairs, … and Clayton Page Aldern, a writer and data scientist. They team up to seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city—including mental illness, drug use, poverty, weather, generosity of public assistance, and low-income mobility—and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country. Instead, housing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a far more convincing account. With rigor and clarity, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem explores U.S. cities’ diverse experiences with housing precarity and offers policy solutions for unique regional contexts.

In the book Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people Hardcover – January 17, 2023, the non-fiction, award winning author, Tracy Kidder has given new insight into a difficult and disturbing feature of contemporary America: an ever increasing homeless population.  Kidder shadowed Dr. James O’Connell as he treated the homeless of Boston in clinics and from a mobile unit on the streets at night. The powerful story of an inspiring doctor who made a difference, by helping to create a program to care for Boston’s homeless community. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. It all started when Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling.

Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor Paperback – Illustrated, August 6, 2019 is written by Virginia Eubanks is an American political scientist, professor, and author studying technology and social justice.  Eubanks launched a powerful investigative look at data-based discrimination and how technology affects civil and human rights and economic equity. The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years―because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect.

Author aruges that since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems―rather than humans―control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values.

Eubanks offers historical context about the role of the poorhouse in earlier American societies to explain how, through technology, we’ve built a digital poorhouse that is just as abusive and stigmatizing. This is a critical read for anyone who is trying to understand poverty in America and why well-intended technology is only going to be used to exacerbate existing social inequities. “Automating Inequality” is ethnography at its best, on par with Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” or Matt Desmond’s “Evicted.” This book details how algorithmic technologies are upending basic government programs supporting the unhoused in accessing shelter, providing access to welfare, and managing child services programs. 

With so many school shooting, another topic at the center of debates is Gun control. As a Buddhist, I am strongly against the use of weapon for the danger of violating the precepts of not killing – one of the very important precepts in the Buddha’s teaching. But after these several years of research into American social political and economic system, I can understand why there are also strong arguments about keeping the gun for self protection. Just like Marijuana, Fentanyl and many other additictive drugs, the government did not spend any resources to prevent the usage in the first place – another case of resources misallocation.

One of these arguments came from John R. Lott, Jr., an American economist, political commentator, and gun rights advocate, on his battle with disinformation over gun control! In this book, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched “studies” have twisted the facts on gun control Paperback – July 3, 2020 John brings together an impressive array of data and statistical analysis to argue that much of what we hear in the mainstream media — and from politicians — about gun violence and gun control is incorrect and biased. He has a point – well, several actually. This book should be read by anyone concerned about gun violence and, most importantly, by anyone who writes about gun violence. The book might not change many opinions, as positions in the gun violence and control argument are set pretty hard…but perhaps even those with the firmest-held beliefs will be forced to reflect and think carefully about some of John’s data, analysis and conclusions. They should, if they are truly interested in the truth.

Another book The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America Hardcover – June 1, 2021 Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti-gun” book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans.

The recent instance of a young African teen were shot when knocking someone’s door is an reflection of the deep anxiety of America. Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education Paperback – November 1, 2006 The author Danielle Allen, a professor of public policy, politics, and ethics at Harvard University, brought focus back to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 and to the famous photograph of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, being cursed by fellow “citizen” Hazel Bryan, Allen argues that we have yet to complete the transition to political friendship that this moment offered. By combining brief readings of philosophers and political theorists with personal reflections on race politics in Chicago, Allen proposes strikingly practical techniques of citizenship. These tools of political friendship, Allen contends, can help us become more trustworthy to others and overcome the fossilized distrust among us. Sacrifice is the key concept that bridges citizenship and trust, according to Allen. She uncovers the ordinary, daily sacrifices citizens make to keep democracy working—and offers methods for recognizing and reciprocating those sacrifices. Trenchant, incisive, and ultimately hopeful, Talking to Strangers is nothing less than a manifesto for a revitalized democratic citizenry.

Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism Hardcover Using both individual and aggregate level survey data, Marc Hetherington, an American political scientist, shows that the rapid decline in Americans’ political trust since the 1960s is critical to explaining this puzzle. As people lost faith in the federal government, the delivery system for most progressive policies, they supported progressive ideas much less. The 9/11 attacks increased such trust as public attention focused on security, but the effect was temporary. Specifically, Hetherington shows that, as political trust declined, so too did support for redistributive programs, such as welfare and food stamps, and race-targeted programs. While the presence of race in a policy area tends to make political trust important for whites, trust affects policy preferences in other, non-race-related policy areas as well. In the mid-1990s the public was easily swayed against comprehensive health care reform because those who felt they could afford coverage worried that a large new federal bureaucracy would make things worse for them. In demonstrating a strong link between public opinion and policy outcomes, this engagingly written book represents a substantial contribution to the study of public opinion and voting behavior, policy, and American politics generally.

Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism Hardcover – November 24, 2020. takes on the media’s misreporting on Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, Joe Biden, Silicon Valley censorship, and more. For the past four years, five-time Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson has been collecting and dissecting alarming incidents tracing the shocking devolution of what used to be the most respected news organizations on the planet. For the first time, top news executives and reporters representing every major national television news outlet—from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN to FOX and MSNBC—speak frankly, confiding in Attkisson about the death of the news as they once knew it. Their concern transcends partisan divides. We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own, personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today’s dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news. 

With loving kindness taught by the Buddha, with divine principle as our guideline, with a sincre notion that we are all equal at the soul level, everyone of us all can strive to make this World Be A Better Place ! Because in uplifting others, we uplifting our own spirit.

亚非新闻工作者日的感想：辛亥革命和民主宪政

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4 月24日是亚非新闻工作者日。近来北京长峰医院：29死惨烈火灾遭遇8小时网络静默， 4个年轻人「約死」跳崖張家界 ，胡鑫宇失踪案牵动广大网友们的心，2023三月份又有116名法轮功学员被非法判刑， 三年的疫情，联想到李文亮医生，任志强先生，铁链女的遭遇，彭帅， 三位学者，旅美经济学者秦伟平先生; 中国经济学者胡星斗教授；北京独立时事评论员吴强博士， 焦点访谈：2017北京市在寒冬驱逐“低端人口”，背后有何秘密？ 共产党用酷吏统治中国。据悉，从2019年末开始，中国公安（警方）多地拘留或传讯了十几名律师和公民运动人士，包括著名律师丁家喜、曾任大学老师的张忠顺、戴振亚等。另一名人权行动者，法学博士许志永因担心被捕，已躲藏起来， 警方也已就其下落询问过家人。此次抓捕是四年前“709”事件之后对公民运动最大规模的打压。2015年7月起，当局在中国20多个省份抓捕了上百名律师及维权人士，被称为“709”事件。多位被检控的律师曾经处理过政治敏感案件。4月10日，中国政治活动人士许志永和维权律师丁家喜涉嫌颠覆国家政权案遭重判， 许志永被判有期徒刑14年，丁家喜获刑12年。

我们看到历史在倒退，似乎又回到了封建满清时候的压迫，奴役和文字狱。 不免回想起辛亥革命。

在文明起源旧民主主义革命 — 辛亥革命 中， 袁腾飞的观点是，  第一次工业革命以后，整个世界的物质财富突然暴增了大概十倍以上，这个时候仅靠原来的帝王阶级所掌握的知识体系，已经无法管理好这个世界，必须由新的知识体系和阶层来接管。但是法国历史学家亚历克西·德·托克维尔(Alexis de Tocqueville)的经典名著《旧制度与大革命》(The Old Regime and the French Revolution) 却向人们揭示了改革可以产生红利，但改革本身绝不必然就是红利。怎样使改革之利最大化、改革之弊最小化，无疑是对执政者的执政水平与政治智慧的重大考验。

托克维尔所提出的自由与民主的矛盾问题，中国固然也需要面对，但中国需要面对的更大的矛盾，乃是当年严复就为之苦恼的富强与自由的矛盾问题。“中华民族的伟大复兴”已被提上政治日程，这是近代以来无数中国人的梦想，不过中国革命追求的社会主义事业还禀有一种更高的使命，那就是建设一种有利于人的自由全面发展的新制度，这无疑与托克维尔所期盼的有助于塑造卓越人性的自由技艺有相通之处。这恰恰是社会主义政治哲学与改革事业面临的最大难题之一。

辛亥革命为20世纪中国的历史性进步打开了闸门。20世纪中国发生翻天覆地的变化，而这样的变化之所以能够发生，是由辛亥革命拉开的序幕、开启的闸门。革命后不久，虽然出现了军阀混战、国家分裂、民众困苦的混乱时期，但不过是历史长河中的一段插曲。从1911年到1949年，短短38年就诞生了中华人民共和国，这个由乱到治的过渡时间并不是很长，与主要西方国家近代革命之后由乱到治的过程相比更是如此。 

 辛亥革命具有世界性意义。辛亥革命的发生是国际环境下内外情势共同作用的结果，受到世界形势的重大影响。辛亥革命是世界尤其是亚洲殖民地半殖民地国家民族解放运动的重要组成部分，打击了帝国主义的殖民体系和侵略势力，鼓舞了世界殖民地半殖民地国家尤其是周边国家的民族独立和解放斗争。孙中山的三民主义、世界大同、天下为公等思想．对亚洲乃至世界各国也产生了重要影响。所以，列宁认为：辛亥革命不仅标志着“地球上四分之一的人口可以说已经从沉睡中醒来，走向光明，投身运动，奋起斗争了”，而且也意味着“极大的世界风暴的新的发源地已经在亚洲出现”，“我们现在正处在这些风暴以及它们‘反过来影响’欧洲的时代”。 

辛亥革命“开创了完全意义上的近代民族民主革命”，在中华民族几千年历史进程中提出了一个新的奋斗目标，这个意义非同小可；推翻了统治中国几千年的君主专制制度，建立起共和政体，这是其最大的历史功绩，是了不起的事情；在思想领域内也引起十分深刻的变化，主要表现为民主精神高涨和思想得到很大解放。

著名学者辛灏年先生所著的 谁是新中国 – 中国现代史辨 一书对中国现代历史作了极为严谨的辨析之后，指出，辛亥之后中国民主过渡的艰难反复历程，与欧洲前专制国家的民主过渡历程并无二致，为民主过渡的必然历程所使然。这对于提高中华民族的民族自尊心和民族自信心，昭示中国民主统一 的前途究竟何在，及其与中华民国前途的关系，无疑具有重大的意义。一九九四年三月，本书作者怀揣着一个明确但是危险的答案，一个历经十数年不为人所知的痛苦研究才获得的重大成果，和数十万字已经整理好的研究资料，离开了故土，告别了亲友，来到了异国他乡，为的是要在一块自由的土地上，来完成他的著述，来回答历史的种种诘难，来证明 —— 谁，才是真正的新中国。本书高屋建瓴、气势恢宏，但又深入浅出、说理绵密。既具有发人深省的理论魅力，又具有冷峻沉雄的论辩风格。

辛灏年先生以一个学术工作者的身份郑重声明：作者在本书上卷所为之辨析和辩护的中华民国与中国国民党，只能是那个曾作为亚洲第一个民主共和国、并艰难推进了民主建国历程的中华民国，和那个曾创造了、并曾艰辛捍卫过中华民国的中国国民党。即由孙中山先生和蒋介石先生及其真正的继承者们所开创、所捍卫、所建设的中华民国和中国国民党。而不是顶着中华民国的国号，却要抛弃中华民国的国统；承继了中华民国国统，却又要背离整个中国；挂着中国国民党的招牌，却要菲薄孙中山先生的三民主义理念、诋毁中国国民党的基本民主性质、歪曲中华民国民主建国的艰辛历程、否定曾在艰难时代为台湾的繁荣和进步奠定了历史基础的蒋介石先生 – 即一方面企图将中华民国和中国国民党的历史传承予以腰斩，一方面则企图诱导整个台湾走上分裂祖国和割断历史之路的中华民国和中国国民党 —— 如果这样的中华民国和中国国民党已在出现、或有可能出现的话。在书的前言，辛灏年先生把他十数年耗尽心血的研究成果献给了一百年来所有为新中国奉献的人们：

  • 半个世纪以来，用智慧与痛苦、鲜血和生命才凝就了本书主题的 —— 中国大陆人民；
  • 中华民国的缔造者，共和制度的创建者，现代中国的开拓者，和中国民主进程的历史领袖 —— 孙中山先生；
  • 领导了北伐，统一过中国，赢得了伟大卫国战争胜利，奠定了台湾民主繁荣基石的民族英雄 —— 蒋介石先生；
  • 一百年来为推进全中国从专制向民主过渡而前仆后继、万难不辞的 —— 所有先贤和先烈们；

此外，辛灏年先生还u提出了许多很好的观点：什么是中华民族的进步？ 那就是我们念兹在兹的先民主，后统一。 辛灝年：中國命運與臺灣前途（上）, 中國命運與臺灣前途（下）, 辛灝年妙答挑釁提問 : 我愛中国 你愛中共（高清晰版）。辛灏年观点（上）：香港应该成为中华民国特区 | 以及 （下）：联邦制是要分裂中国。

香港陶傑：兩岸三地不想告訴你的辛亥革命真相【時務論壇】谈到日本对于辛亥革命的重大支持和贡献。

馬前總統最近訪問中國，高喊「國共憲法一中同表」、「九二共識又活了」、已經死去的東西會復活嗎？豈不成了殭屍？！所謂「一個中國、九二共識、反對台獨」其實是中共給藍營政治人物下的緊箍咒！是“一个编造出来的共识，就是一种政治强迫，是专制主义在对待台湾问题上的一种强盗式的表现”。受到輿論關注的「台灣地位未定論」有什麼現實意義？台灣地位和聯合國「公民與政治權利國際公約」有什麼關係？當反戰疑美思潮興起，台灣民眾準備好抵抗中國了嗎？兩岸關係與啟蒙理念：文明和野蛮的界限何在？ 訪談节目里， 內容包括了認祖歸宗、啓蒙運動，聯合國「公民與政治權利公約」，民族自決，台灣地位，文明與文化的區分等等議題。曹興誠先生講出了至理名言：要有獨立國格！「中國只是共產黨的地盤，中國人民根本沒有任何領土！」真希望台灣所有的企業家都能像曹興誠先生一樣，腦子清楚，願意放棄一己之私的利益，將精力錢財和時間奉獻給國家。非常值得讚許。

大陆外交部长秦剛提出: ” 只要有台獨台海就沒有和平! ” 他所說的台獨是什麼呢? 只要台灣不被中華人民共和國政府直接管轄就是台獨，這是中方對一個中國的定義。台灣對這種事顯然無法接受，所以中方不會讓台海有和平了! 文化部前部長、作家龍應台18日在《紐約時報》刊登文章指出，中國侵略的威脅以及如何應對這種威脅，正在分裂著台灣社會，指責某人「舔共」或透過發起危險的「反中」行為來煽動緊張局勢，已成常態。對與中國發生衝突的恐懼，正在撕裂寬容、文明以及對民主社會的信心。从另一个角度来说，一个文明的社会应当允许不同观点的表达和公民权利的行使，但绝对不应是简单粗暴的暴力方案。【苑举正】美政客煽动台湾人人持枪！台大教授揭露：美国政治的4大丑恶嘴脸。

[字幕经精确校对] 辛亥革命与中国宪政 _ 张千帆  Xinhai Revolution and China’s Constitutionalism by Prof. Qianfan Zhang 是十几年前的演说，放在今天也一点都不过时，而且似乎更是针对今天。张千帆教授是中华人民共和国法学学者、作家。现任北京大学法学院教授、中国法学会宪法学会理事。1980年，张千帆考上南京大学物理系，1984年赴美国留学。1989年获得卡内基·梅隆大学物理学博士学位。后曾从事物理学博士后研究的工作。1992年，张千帆入读马里兰大学法学院，转攻社会科学。[1]但由于财政问题无法支付法学院第二、三年学费，张千帆最终一边担任学校电脑中心咨询工作一边在法学院旁听。1995年，张千帆入读德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校，1999年获政府学博士学位

张千帆教授谈到辛亥革命百年之际，中国正陷入不可自拔的专制及其必然带来的官僚腐败和社会危机。 武昌起义终结了千年的皇权统治。但皇权的结束远非真正意义的共和的开始。 虽然改革开放让中国摆脱了大饥荒和大革命的威胁，并逐步回到世界文明的家庭中，但是共产党的专制结构与清朝帝制并没有发生本质的变化。人民实际上并未做过一天的主人。民权不张，公权必然无限膨胀。乔取豪夺，强征滥拆，欺压百姓，甚至草菅人命之事无所不在。当公权力至高无上，横行无忌， 政府变成掠夺和腐败的总根源。改革的几十年来，人民的劳动成果遭到各级官员和少数既得利益者的攫取与瓜分，人民收入的增长必然跟不上财政收入的增长，社会贫富差距必然不断拉大。

张千帆教授直指弊端：改革一方面彻底瓦解了全体官民对正统意识形态的最后一点谜信，造成不可遏制的腐败，堕落，庸俗和拜金主义。 另一方面极大透支了中国的自然资源并破坏了生态环境。 只要政治体制不变，这个破坏过程就没有止境， 直到威胁每个人的基本生存。承载几千年文明的中国从来没有像今天这样没有信仰，没有是非感，没有道德勇气，没有自我反省和净化的能力。 贪官污吏从来没有像今天这样多如牛毛。空气从来没有如此混浊，食品从来没有如此不安全，草原和湖泊从来没有萎缩如此之快。 如果这一切在国内不可维持下去，那么今日中国也在历史上第一次呈现对外扩张的趋势。这种扩张一方面体现为中国向发达国家输送廉价劳动力和产品， 通过低人权优势压榨国内工资，消耗国内资源以吸引国际投资并维持增长；另一方面则体现为利用欠发达国家和中国同样的体制弊病攫取它们的资源， 借以满足国内维持增长的需要。这种掠夺不仅触发被掳夺国家人民的反抗，而且也 将中国直接卷入和发达国家资源争夺之中。中华民族将沦落到文明废弛，腐败横行，资源耗竭，环境破坏，民不聊生的万劫不复之地。

张千帆教授呼吁公民意识的觉醒才是实行宪政的最有效推动力。然而，既得利益者想尽一切办法封锁信息，实施愚民政策，恐怕宪政将是遥遥无期了。皇权与皇民，相互滋养，生生不息。突破怪圈，在于突破世俗对人间权力的盲从和追逐。只有这样，人才可能对宪法有神圣感，宪法才可能有凌驾一切权力之上的地位和约束力。至于儒学是不是治病的药方，如演讲者所说，这可以进一步讨论。病诊对了，找药方应该成为下一步的重点。张千帆教授讲出了文化核心，即深烙在骨子里的帝王崇拜和被深刻在民族潜意识里的权力崇拜，将专制政体剖析得淋漓尽致！影片中的每一句話都是精準到位，張教授心中肯定有一股愛國情操，如果沒有用心在中國社會的各個層面，沒有從專制的假像中找出真正隱藏的魔鬼，是不可能寫出這種文章，滿腔的憤慨，激勵人心的文字，這才是真正的愛國！

[字幕经精确校对] 辛亥革命与中国宪政 _ 张千帆 Qianfan Zhang， 内容目录：

  • 0:02:59 前言
  • 0:09:29 第一部分：专制的病症与罪恶
  • 0:11:10 第一部分的第1小部分：专制政权的罪恶
  • 0:18:48 第一部分的第2小部分：专制社会的病症
  • 0:29:21 第二部分：中国道德与政治人格及其缺陷
  • 0:30:14 第二部分的第1小部分：人类的人格类型及其进化（未展开讲）
  • 0:30:34 第二部分的第2小部分：儒家传统人格及其缺陷
  • 0:35:37 第二部分的第3小部分：近代中国的人格变异
  • 0:45:57 第二部分的第4小部分：权力体系下的人格堕落
  • :59:53 第三部分：中国道德人格的复兴与重建
  • 1:02:21 第三部分的第1小部分：传统道德人格的复兴
  • 1:09:52 第三部分的第2小部分：当代道德人格的重建
  • 1:18:16 第四部分：中国政治人格之建构
  • 1:19:36 第四部分的第1小部分：建构公民人格，再造社会契约
  • 1:28:56 第四部分的第2小部分：国家统一与族群和睦的宪政基础
  • 1:35:58 特别谈及台湾问题
  • 1:37:45 第四部分的第3小部分：中国宪政之障碍与国民的历史责任
  • 1:43:36 宣言（献给每个中国人，尤其是有血性的中国青年）
  • 1:45:25 学生提问

Ukraine War – BLOOD is on the WESTS HANDS

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The Russia Ukraine War has been in our background for the last 14 months. I had been feel very confused by this war initially but had strongly calling for ending this war. Alas too many arguments in the west media try to criminalize Putin. U.S government (Biden Admin) has been in strong support of Ukraine. The western media including editorials in the Washington Post, mostly has been accused Russia as invader.

But according to John Joseph Mearsheimer, Blood is on the Wests Hands – Russians have been sayinbg since April 2008 that this is all about NATO expansion. Nato expansion simply is an existential threat to Russia, but Americans simply refuse to believe it. John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation. Mearsheimer’s books include Conventional Deterrence (1983), which won the Edgar S. Furniss Jr. Book Award; Nuclear Deterrence: Ethics and Strategy (co-editor, 1985); Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988); The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), which won the Lepgold Book Prize; The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007); and Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (2011). His articles have appeared in academic journals like International Security and popular magazines like the London Review of Books. He has written op-ed pieces for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune.

A brilliant explanation from J J Mearsheimer. proving there are still some highly intelligent people in the USA. Let’s just looking up some other people who gave similar opinion of Mearsheimer.

In Around the Corner: Reflections on American Wars, Violence, Terrorism, and Hope by John W. Davis, Paperback – January 14, 2021. The author, an American politician, diplomat and lawyer, gave a collection of heart breaking, and insightful essays. Real people and actual events emerge from this collection in ways you won’t forget. Each draws us deeper into the questions we raise when we demand others serve in the secret world for their country. we find more thought provoking true stories from the Cold War, its bloody aftermath, and our own America today. Rain swept streets and dark corners serve not only as background, but also as metaphor. Around dark corners on a rainy street, what seems at first glance clear, might not be so. We see only indistinct outlines, as through a glass darkly; what may be true, could as well be only partly so, or even tragically false. So too with our beliefs about who we are. He observes events, people, laws, chance, and history from the perspective of a soldier, historian, liaison officer, husband and father.

On Western Terrorism – New Edition: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare (Chomsky Perspectives) Paperback – Illustrated, April 15, 2017. A conversation between Chomsky and Vitchek, with a lot of shared knowledge of the issues and conflicts that they are discussing. A sharp and direct to the point sternly criticize of America’s role in the international affair, such as the indiscriminate atom bombing of Hiroshima at Nagasaki, the Cold War and the nuclear blackmail, the military aggression against Korea and Indochina, adventures in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, and Cuba, the rise and downfall of the Marcos dictatorship, the anti-Soviet wars in Angola, Mozambique and Afghanistan, the instigation of the Iraq-Iran War and the military aggression against Iraq, the so-called humanitarian air-festival on Yugoslavia, the 9-11-01 ‘terrorist attacks’ and the so-called Al Qaeda threat, the second military aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuing provocative attacks against China and North Korea, the “war on terror”, up to the Arab Spring, Libya-Syria fiasco, Guantanamo and the drone warfare. Indeed a must-read book about Western Terrorism.

Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor (U.S. Army Colonel, Former Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense | 02-09-2023), who had posted in Twitter: “Having failed for at least 20 years to acknowledge Moscow’s legitimate security interests in Ukraine, Washington and its allies will inevitably confront new facts on the ground.” He also came out to say that China is SERIOUS About Peace in Ukraine as Key to Belt and Road.

Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreements, and on the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf during the Gulf War, where he played a critical role in the hunt for Iraqi SCUD missiles. From 1991 until 1998, Mr. Ritter served as a Chief Inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, leading the search for Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Ritter was a vocal critic of the American decision to go to war with Iraq. He resides in Upstate New York, where he writes on issues pertaining to arms control, the Middle East and national security. Mr. Rotter’s 10th book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika. His book SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump is a history of America’s corrosive affair with nuclear weapons, and the failed efforts to curb this radioactive ardor through arms control. The book’s title refers to the allusion by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the American atomic bomb, to dueling scorpions when discussing the deadly nuclear rivalry between the US and Soviet Union, and signals the dangers inherent in the resumption of the perilous US drive for nuclear supremacy.

Brian Berletic, US geopolitical analyst and debunker; former US marine officer came out to talked about NATO is FAILING in Ukraine, Sets Sights on Taiwan Danny haiphone show/ Brian Berletic and Angelo Giuliano.

Jimmy Dore is the star of several Comedy Central specials, author of the bestseller “Your Country Is Just Not That Into You”, a writer / performer for the Off-Broadway hit “The Marijuana-Logues”, the host of a weekly radio show in Los Angeles, and on-air host for The Young Turks. “ A crucial, profane, passionate voice for progressives and free-thinkers in 21st century America. Jimmy will anger you if you’re a conservative and enrage you if you’re a liberal.”

Chris Hedges: NATO to Blame for DANGEROUS Escalations in Ukraine War. and many others.

Filmed on five possible front-lines across Asia and the Pacific over two years, Nuclear war is not only imaginable, but planned. told in chapters that connect a secret and ‘forgotten’ past to the rapacious actions of great power today and to a resistance, of which little is known in the West.The greatest build-up of NATO military forces since the Second World War is under way on the western borders of Russia. On the other side of the world, the rise of China is viewed in Washington as a threat to American dominance.

Stephen Edward Schmidt is an American political and corporate strategist, media commentator and founder of The Warning. He is founder of The Lincoln Project, a group founded to campaign against former President Trump. Schmidt’s candid, full interview was conducted with FRONTLINE during the making of the two-part January 2020 documentary series “America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump.” Watch Part One here: https://youtu.be/SnMBYMOTwEs and Part Two here: https://youtu.be/l5vyDPN19ww.

Why has U.S. security policy scarcely changed from the Bush to the Obama administration? National Security and Double Government offers a disquieting answer. Michael J. Glennon challenges the myth that U.S. security policy is still forged by America’s visible, “Madisonian institutions” – the President, Congress, and the courts. Their roles, he argues, have become largely illusory. Presidential control is now nominal, congressional oversight is dysfunctional, and judicial review is negligible.

The book details the dramatic shift in power that has occurred from the Madisonian institutions to a concealed “Trumanite network” – the several hundred managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely immune from constitutional and electoral restraints. Reform efforts face daunting obstacles. Remedies within this new system of “double government” require the hollowed-out.

The author Michael J. Glennon, is Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He has been Legal Counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1977-1980); Fulbright Distinguished Professor of International and Constitutional Law, Vytautus Magnus University School of Law, Kaunas, Lithuania (1998); a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC (2001-2002); Thomas Hawkins Johnson Visiting Scholar at the United States Military Academy, West Point (2005); Director of Studies at the Hague Academy of International Law (2006); and professeur invité at the University of Paris II, Panthéon-Assas (2006-2013). Professor Glennon has served as a consultant to various congressional committees, the U.S. State Department, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He is a member of the American Law Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law.

The Spiritual Trap of Abbassy

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The recent report of Dalai Lama apologizes for asking a young boy to suck his tongue reflect a long time under spin of public uneasiness about abuse of spiritual power by the teachers who are in the position of doing so. This is valid concerns. There is really a delicate dance in searching for spirituality and avoiding falling into trap of abbassy. For that very reason, the Buddha had taught us for the sake of protection the precepts as they are Protection for Buddhist Practitioners. I personally came from an area in China where Chan Buddhism (禅宗）is the dominant force, so I am not familiar with the Vajira Buddhism tradition.

Chan Buddhism is Chinese version of Buddhism popularized by the the 6th Patriarch of Chan Buddhism Master Huineng. He spent all his life in the south part of China, mainly taught from Nan Hua Temple (南華寺) in GuangDong Province of China. Master XuYun ,  (simplified Chinese: 虚云; traditional Chinese: 虛雲; pinyin: Xūyún; 5 September 1840? – 13 October 1959), a renowned Chinese Chan Buddhist master and an influential Buddhist teacher of the 19th and 20th centuries, was also came from south east part of China.

What I learned is, the function of Buddhist precepts is not to prohibit us from saying or doing certain things, but, rather, to remind us not to do things that may cause harm, both to ourselves and to others. In other words, the Buddhist precepts function to protect ourselves and others. Therefore, the Five Precepts and the Bodhisattva Precepts are protective shields that allow one to a) feel peaceful in the practice, b) cultivate an appropriate sense of shame, c) repent frequently, and d) regulate behavior at any given time, in order to continually uplift one’s character.    These five precepts are:

  • 1) I undertake the rule to abstain from killing.
  • 2) I undertake the rule to abstain from taking what is not given.
  • 3) I undertake the rule to abstain from sexual misconduct.
  • 4) I undertake the rule to abstain from false speech.
  • 5) I undertake the rule to abstain from taking intoxicants that cloud the mind.

There are no lacking of abuse of power in every religions. Catholic church had notorious coverup for the abuses of public trust. In 2019, the death of Sogyal Rimpoche, author of the best-selling Tibetan Book of Living and Dyin, unleashed a new torrent of victim revelations, accounting questions and legal rulings that further illuminate the trail of injury and insult he left behind. The imposter guru ended his days as a refugee in Thailand, beyond the reach of police and civil investigations in several countries. In 2018, at Longquan monastery in Beijing China, High-profile Chinese monk accused of sexually harassing nuns in China . An article of 1989 about Ösel Tendzin, the first American accepted lineage holder of Kagyu tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism. America’s largest Tibetan Buddhist group, has been thrown into turmoil by allegations that its leader knew he had AIDS and transmitted it to his sexual partners in a report: Buddhists in U.S. Agonize on AIDS Issue. Another report 2012 by Mary Finnagan about Young Kalu Rinpoche’s traumatic revelations highlight the dissonance between Tibetan tradition and 21st-century life. These confessional sending shockwaves through the Buddhist world.

Chris Chandler’s Expose of Shambhala as a Mind Control Cult Is Required Reading The Shambhala organization is in crisis, and Chris Chandler is perhaps the most fearless and best-informed of its critics. Shambhala’s spiritual leader, the “Sakyong Mipham,” has been outed as a sexual assaulter and heavy drinker with a bad habit of assaulting his female followers. Ms. Chandler shares her journey and reveals her understanding of the Tibetan Tantric belief system. As an insider, she was privy to much that is unavailable to newcomers and those who have not progressed sufficiently along the Tantric path. She reveals a hidden agenda, an upending of Western values and democratic governance by stealth. The Dalai Lama and the Sex-Slaver Cult of NXIVM.

These horrable instances show us the dark side of spirituality when fall into the trap, and demands us to seriously consider the implications, to raise important questions practitioners need to ask: such as, if gurus are not all perfect, what measures are you going to apply to determine if you should follow one or not? If other Tibetan Buddhist leaders are not willing to unequivocally and specifically denounce such a clear case of abuse, what does this say about the value of Buddhist practice?

The detail accounts in Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche by Mary Finnigan and Rob Hogendoorn is well worth a read by anyone involved in or interested in any spiritual movement to be aware of such issues. This is a work that everyone connected with Vajrayana should read. It serves as a grave warning to exactly how far people can delude themselves. It shows exactly why people should not trust what is popular or fashionable. When eight students wrote a letter accusing Sogyal Rinpoche of decades of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, Tahlia Newland set up an online support group for abuse victims and students of his Tibetan Buddhist community, Rigpa. Appalled by the lack of ethics, the group undertook a journey of discovery during which they uncovered the depth of the trauma suffered by victims, and the fundamentalism and cult behaviour at the heart of Rigpa. They learned about destructive cults, trauma and recovery, narcissistic abuse, co-dependency, institutional betrayal, and the methods of mind control used by Rigpa, who had covered up and enabled the abuse for decades.

Readers feedbak on this book was: The most serious omission in this book is the lack of depth in discussing the Dalai Lama’s motivations providing Sogyal validation and the Dalai Lama’s motivations for not specifically condemning Sogyal until after after the scandal blew wide open. The same could be asked of many other gurus. It is an important discussion, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter: Is it acceptable in Tibetan Buddhism for lamas to behave like Sogyal? If not, what are the barriers to critically discussing and identifying specific instances of abuse by gurus in TB?

The book includes an almost forensic – yet very readable – dissection of how a sexually voracious and ultimately abusive, untrained and unqualified opportunist, Sogyal Lakar, seized the opportunity offered by a constellation of factors: Westerners’ spiritual hunger and the gullibility that thrives in the needy; an unwillingness to probe; a simple inability to ask the right questions, because of our ignorance; a willingness to indulge the sexual and culinary gluttony of someone believed to be extraordinary; the patriarchal, even misogynistic culture of old Tibet, along with its class-ridden unwillingness to be seen to criticise; the only-too-understandable urge of the Tibetan community – a community that has been slaughtered and tortured out of its own land – to pull together and look after its own, trying to sweep the appalling behaviour of one of its best-known representatives under the sofa. These are some of the ingredients of this ghastly cocktail.

After having heard about and researched into the abuse of Sogyal Rinpoche, one question was left open. How could anyone who was part of this group and witnessed the abuse, just have let this happen? Why was this allowed to grow to these extents and all involved seemingly just swooning about the abuser? The book Fallout: Recovering from Abuse in Tibetan Buddhism Paperback – July 20, 2019 gives exactly the answer to this question. It’s an honest and personal account about the process involved for people to wake up from the delusion that supporting hellish behavior would bring them to enlightenment or would set them apart and above others as exceptional beings with special insight, wisdom or realization.

Enthralled: The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism Paperback – June 17, 2017 The author Chandler spent nearly three decades in the center of the hierarchy of Tibetan Lamas’ inner circles by taking care of the son of notorious Lama, Chogyam Trungpa, whose Crazy Wisdom has destroyed a significant mass of three generations’ reasoning minds.

Trungpa paved the way for the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Lamas to ‘colonize’ the United States and the West to spread out their Guru Occult Tantra to slowly undermine foundations of a liberal education and its Judea-Christian Western Civilization roots. Tantra is about chaos; i.e. creating chaos to turn social mores upside down. It changed a critical mass of three generation’s views about ‘right and wrong’; good and bad; and an ability to tell lies from the truth. Chandler has both and intimate and a bird’s eye view of how these Lamas work their western groups, together, and in collusion with the Progressive Left, the Green New Deal, and China. Once Chandler realized she had been made a pawn on a geopolitical chessboard to perpetuate a deeply misogynistic, totalitarian worldview for the future, she broke free, determined to warn others about what lies beneath the smile of the Dalai Lama and a guru-worshipping cult that goes by the name of Buddhism.

The Pros and Cons of Globalization – High Concentration of Wealth, Hidden Assets and Tax Free Inheritance

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An article in the New Yorker a while back described a bunch of millionaires and billionaires building luxury bomb shelters on private islands in anticipation of some sort of apocalyptic scenario – high-end sanctuaries for the end of days. These people are willing to pay millions to live through the collapse of society in comfort, but how many of them have spent millions – or any amount, for that matter – to change the dynamics that caused the threat in the firt place? How many of those millionaires are willing to admit that they helped create or worsen the societal onditons that are cuasing their fear? Do any of them understand that much of – even most of – what is happening today is their fault? You can not continue to sit by and enjoy your riches while the rest of the world falls further into poverty and chaos.

A trend that worth paying attention if the number of young billions below ago 35 is growing. U.S. Net Worth Statistics: The State of Wealth in 2023. According to Economist Robert Reich, America is now on the cusp of the larget intergenerational transfer of wealth in history. As wealthy boomers pass on, somewhere between $30 Trillion to $70 Trillion will go to their children over the next three decades. By the loophole of current tax system, these children will be able to live off this wealth and leave the bulk of it to their children tax free.

The Geographic Distribution of Extreme Wealth in the U.S. dwells into many perspectives of wealth distribtuion by states and offer their insights about tax reform. Another research The Wealth of Households: 2020 by U.S Censor Bureau analysis wealth by household statistics. Thebusinessinsider.com gave a good account of the situation in an article dated Sept 29, 2022: The bottom half of American families hold just 2% of the country’s wealth — while the top 1% of families have a third.

The collapse of the money supply is said to be one of the four major reasons causing the 1930 great depression. Everyone said nowadays the Fed hiking interest rate will cause recession becuase rate increase monetary policy will reduce the money supply. The argument may have some logic in it. But it ignore another major factor, the highly concentration of wealth. 如果問題是來自印鈔，那解方不是衰退，是QT。衰退一直不來，慢慢QT才是正解。雖然這會讓經濟成長停滯一段時間，但可以讓未來的人負擔減輕。

Tax engineering in Luxembourg explained in four minutes

To go into more detail, Inside the Secret World of Tax Havens: The Multi-Million Businesses in Luxembourg | Documentary investigate the world of tax havens and show how some of the world’s most famous companies are using a tax haven at the heart of Europe to save millions in tax. The small country Luxembourg the size of Wyomin had become one of Europe’s cleverest tax shelters and attracts big corporations from around the world. Secret documents reveal how companies like GlaxoSmithKline have been getting big tax breaks on billion-pound transactions in the tiny country of Luxembourg. By opening offices there, diverting profits overseas and then having their Luxembourg office lend offices in other countries money, they can avoid multi-million euro tax bills in their country of origin. In these austere times, is big business paying its fair share?

This vido dive into how it became a tax haven thanks to quick-thinking civil servants in the 1960s and ’70s who bet big on attracting financial investment from abroad. According to audience who live there, the country still have high tax just for ordinary citizens like in panama, but not for massive companies. That is why companies like amazon headquarters is in luxembourg. Ironically europeans defend that they have the best democracy, law etc. But in the middle of europe everybody acts like those fradualent countries like luxembourg or lienchenstein do not exist at all. But we all know throughout the history no crime schemes or systems etc could continue like that forever. Billionaires safehouse. Why is Luxembourg so insanely rich ? explain why the insane salaries, huge companies and some of the richest people in the world are just some elements that make the entire world why this tiny country is so rich and why it is even on the map. In this video you will find out why and much more. If every government just put a fair tax nobody would hide their money. Does not these count as organized crime?

Mr. Reich explained in clear and easy understandable way about corporate greed. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter IX wrote: “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people. ” Media had helped corporation to hide their profits. If the media reported on corporate profits then it would be impossible to blame the powerless.

SPOT ON ! We are not against a CEO being wealthy. We are against a CEO taking everyone else’s hard-earned money for themselves. People do the lion’s share of the work, they take more than the lion’s share of the money. These CEOs are like dragons hoarding treasure and need to be dealt with the exact same way. Greed destroys everything.

People get reporting on jobs. We get reporting on wages. You know what we don’t get? Reporting on corporate profits. Corporate America wants to keep it this way. Workers get blamed for inflation. Corporations get cover for their greed. The Truth Behind “Self-Made” Billionaires.

  • The CEO: “I’ll need a multimillion dollar bonus if I succeed, and a multimillion dollar severance package in case I fail.”
  • The executive board: “Let’s spend our profits on stock buybacks and more bonuses for ourselves. If we fail, the government will bail us out.”
  • The workers: “We just want enough to pay our rent/mortgage and take care of our families.”
  • The media: Look at those GREEDY employees!”

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” — Elizabeth Warren, 2012

The Supreme Court’s War on the People Citizens vs. United really was one of the most disasterous Supreme Court decisions in this country’s history. This 2010 Supreme Court decision, a controversial decision that reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections, further tilted political influence toward wealthy donors and corporations, with negative repercussions for American democracy and the fight against political corruption. Dark money is election-related spending where the source is secret. Citizens vs. United contributed to a major jump in this type of spending, which often comes from nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors. In Canada Corporations are not allowed to make any political donations and private citizens donation amounts are capped. In 2008, before the ruling, billionaires contributed $31 million to federal campaigns. In 2020, billionaires contributed $1.2 billion. Corporations should not have the political rights of citizenship, particularly those that operate in more than one sovereignty. And there are at least fifty-one sovereignties in the US.

Corporate greed is off the rails. Then they spend millions or more to fight unions. In a Nov 2021 youtube program How Wealth Inequality Spiraled Out of Control – Economist Robert Reich explained how prblem baloon into the top 1% holds 15x more wealth than the bottom 50% combined. Professor Reich pointed out: “Billionaires are not made by rugged individuals. They’re made by policy failures. And a system that rewards wealth over work.” The ultra wealth had benefits from American system – from laws that protect their wealth, and our economy that enable them to build their fortune in the first place. “Don’t blame the billionaires, blame the game,” but what if the billionaires own and direct the game? Unlimited wealth = unlimited power, the game itself is an illusion.

People are not mad at the rich for being rich. We’re mad at them and our politicians for the unadulterated corporatism that is now a signature of what used to be capitalism based democracies. They should pay their fair share! Professor Reich suggested many way to do so: closing the stepped up basis of loopholes, raising capital gain tax, fully fund the IRS, so it can properly audit the wealthiest tax, for starters. Beyond those, we need a wealth tax of 2% tax on wealth in excess of $1million. That is hardly a drop in the bucket for the super rich. That would generate plenty of revenue to invest in education, health care, so that millions of American can have a fair share of the system for both risk and rewards. The most important thing is everyone of us need to fully understand how the reality of wealth inequality, and how the system has become rigged in favor of those on the top. And demand your political representative to take action to unrig it.

In the similar token, Tobacco industry has reported a profit and tax revenue of 1.4 trillion yuan in China, Shouldn’t government charge much higher taxes for industries that create hidden damage to the society ? 2023年4月10日，中国著名的异议人士许志永，被判处有期徒刑14年，罪名是煽动颠覆国家政权罪。三大罪状：第一倡导公民权利，践行宪法规定的公民权力，履行公民责任；第二推动教育平权，随迁子女就地高考； 第三呼吁政府官员财产公示。 本片的所有收益，将全部捐给该纪录片的制作团队。制片者希望各位通过这个纪录片，能更多地了解许志永。非常感谢王志安先生利用影响力为许教授发声。墙内对舆论管控严厉至极，99%的百姓都不知道有这么一位北大法学博士为民请愿，为中国公民社会平权请愿！中国民主化，需要这样的殉道者和自我牺牲，如此这个社会才会觉醒。王志安先生的传播，实在太重要了！

关于中国经济的判断，林毅夫很可能是错的！How Can We Improve The Economy? Start By Reining In The Power Of Corporations – Robert Reich on CNN.

The Pros and Cons of Globalization 2 – Taxes, Budget, National Debt

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The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law authorized $80 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service over the next 10 years. More than $45 billion is earmarked for enforcement — part of an effort to close the estimated $600 billion “tax gap,” the difference between what Americans owe and what they actually pay. In fact, research by the Wharton School of Business concludes that the Inflation Reduction Act “would have no meaningful effect on inflation in the near term but would reduce inflation by around 0.1 percentage points by the middle of the first decade.”

And then it is reported a couple days ago that U.S. IRS to hire nearly 20,000 staff over two years with $80 billion in new funds. We wonder if that will resolve the problem of inequality? While experts generally agree that the legislation will modestly help slow the growth of prices, its benefits to the consumer is unclear.

Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves by Anthony Infanti (The MIT Press) Hardcover – October 2, 2018 written by a Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, explore the topics of Why tax law is not just a pocketbook issue but a reflection of what and whom we, as a society, value. Most of us think of tax as a pocketbook issue: how much we owe, how much we’ll get back, how much we can deduct. In Our Selfish Tax Laws, Anthony Infanti takes a broader view, considering not just how taxes affect us individually but how the tax system reflects our culture and society. He finds that American tax laws validate and benefit those who already possess power and privilege while starkly reflecting the lines of difference and discrimination in American society based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, immigration status, and disability. Infanti argues that instead of focusing our tax reform discussions on which loopholes to close or which deductions to allow, we should consider how to make our tax system reflect American ideals of inclusivity rather than institutionalizing exclusion.

 Infanti offers two comparative case studies, examining the treatment of housing tax expenditures and the unit of taxation in the United States, Canada, France, and Spain to show how tax law reflects its social and cultural context. Then, drawing on his own work and that of other critical tax scholars, Infanti explains how the discourse surrounding tax reform masks the many ways that the American tax system rewards and reifies privilege. To counter this, Infanti urges us to work together to create a society with a tax system that respects and values all Americans.

The recent CPI numbers indicated that The index for shelter was by far the largest contributor to the monthly all items increase. This more than offset a decline in the energy. Housing played a major role in the February CPI all-items index, with shelter accounting for 70 percent of the increase. There is a different argument that The Biggest Driver of Inflation Is a Price That No One Is Actually Paying. Which one is more reflective of reality?

The Book, Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age revealed the underbelly of a system tilted in favor of the few, with the many left out in the cold. David Wessel, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings and director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, unveil incredible tale of how Washington works-and why the rich keep getting richer-starts when a Silicon Valley entrepreneur develops an idea intended as a way to help poor people that will save rich people money on their taxes. He organizes and pays for an effective lobbying effort that pushes his idea into law with little scrutiny or fine-tuning by congressional or Treasury tax experts-and few safeguards against abuse. With an unbeatable pair of high-profile sponsors, bumper-sticker simplicity and deft political marketing, the Opportunity Zone became an unnoticed part of the 2017 Trump tax bill.

In another book, Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget Paperback – July 2, 2013, David Wessel, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter, columnist, and bestselling author of In Fed We Trust, dissects the federal budget in this New York Times bestseller. In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget–a topic that is fiercely debated today in the halls of Congress and the media, and yet is often misunderstood by the American public–Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the money was actually spent, and why the budget process has grown wildly out of control. Through the eyes of key people, including Jacob Lew, White House director of the Office of Management and Budget; Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office; Blackstone founder and former Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson; and more, Wessel gives readers an inside look at the making of our unsustainable budget.

Red Ink is a sobering look at the 2012 federal budget, including an analysis of the “unsustainable trajectory” of federal borrowing—which has expanded significantly in the seven years since this book was published. The U.S. government will spend $1.28 for every dollar it receives in 2020, and is set to run trillion-dollar yearly deficits as far as the eye can see. And now in 2023, Federal budget deficit hits $1.1 trillion over six months: CBO estimates. U.S. government posts $378 billion deficit in March.

At this rate, by 2049 federal debt will equal 174 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product—the value of all goods and services produced in this country in one year. And gone are the days we could console ourselves by saying the national debt is no problem “because we owe it to ourselves.” Today, around half our debt is owed to foreign nationals, over $2 trillion to China and Japan, societies that saved while we borrowed.

Public economics and public policy: The ideas and influence of Martin Feldstein, 1939-2019 spoke of the method Martin Feldstein deployed in institutional data collection and policy making bases. Maybe congressional government need to establish committees to work on these important issues.

The Pros and Cons of Globalization – Huge Problem in Wealth Resources Mis-allocation and Injustice

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I would prefer to be silent if I can. But the chaos we are in keep swirling bigger. Another young man being arrested because of so-called security document leak reminds me of Ruan Xiaohuan who was criminalized for nothing but political reason. On 10 February 2023, the Chinese Snowden was sentenced for 7 years for stating some facts about CCP on his blog Blob ‘ProgramThink’ and Project ‘zhao’, which initially only focused on computer technology and software development. Later, a massive wave of internet blockade was carried out in mainland China around the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen protest, this led Ruan to turn his blog to focus on political and methods to bypass the blockade. One of this is about three years of famine happened in 1961-1963. And Corruption of CCP《太子党关系网络》 .

【周孝正：党内有派系，什么叫反党？逼人说假话，身边全小人】/2020/10/16 #时事大家, 越是极权，越要注意 兼听则明，偏信则暗。要任人为贤 集思广益 。从刘亚洲被判死刑说起-【私藏視頻·首度公映】李肅挑戰周孝正：習近平卸磨殺驢 太子黨覆沒。 锵锵三人行 周孝正：让权力在阳光下运行，中国官员不敢让人民监督。

八股如何毁滅漢語？中共政治話語正在墮落，社會語言數字概念化，算不算一種新時代的黨八股？冠善名以恶行 (老楊到處說 楊錦麟論時政). 一直王志安节目确实比较中性，而且以事实为基础. 听众反映王局是中国最好的调查记者，当年《局面》系列也是之前很少见的让人们感到采访者是纯粹出于探知真相的目的，完全理性且不卑不亢地追问被采访者的好节目。如今再看国内一众采访节目才更怀念王局在的那个互联网时代。Wang Sir’s News Talk on Why he was banned? 周孝正：中国社会问题分析（完整版） 2003 网友评论，在2021年的大学校园里很难想象以前还能有这样的讲座，中国曾经居然有过这个高度的言论自由。要是能碰到周教授这样的老师我不得天天早起占教室第一排，看看现在那些划水的老师大学都失去了意义。

崔永元《东方眼》Eyes on East：小崔揭政协委员两会标配 周孝正畅谈公民参与权力【东方卫视官方高清版】20150302 扒一扒张维为 陈平 金灿荣 胡锡进及其子女的国籍和现状 著名崔永元在最近上传了一段视频：他说很多著名的公共知识分子的活法就是政治正确，挂着 “我热爱国家，我热爱祖国” 这般的 羊头，摆着政治正确的口号，在这个幌子之下，在这个外衣之下包裹着自己无恶不作， 目前网络上的现状就是这个德行。那个正能量简直就是不堪入目。他举了 胡錫進、金燦榮， 張維為， 陈平，司马南, 张召忠，戴旭 这些典型例子和狂热的民碎主义，呼吁如果这些人成了这个社会唯一的正确声音，这个社会就太不正常了。上有好者，下必甚焉，將毀國家前途， 这种声音我们当然要反对。周孝正：2019最新视频怒斥习近平默许王健林马云马化腾盗取中国99%人民财富！

袁腾飞怒怼金灿荣打台湾| 又比如金灿荣作为人民大学的教授，并没有起到教书育人的作用，整天在国内鼓吹战争。忽悠中国老百姓及战狼小粉红。鼓吹几个小时美军所有的东亚军事基地都会被摧毁。鼓吹中国导弹世界第一，没有慎重考虑任何防御，不把老百姓的命不当回事， 说台湾军队是肉长的，仿佛大陆的子弟兵不是肉长的。哪怕对方是真心希望中国变好而指出问题所在。 这些政治正确的公知立刻跳出来指责对方是反贼，汉奸，卖国贼。 这些人只有立场，没有是非。 仿佛只有有爱党爱国这张牌在就可以胡说八道，百毒不侵。 自己一边反美，一边把自己的孩子送美国去读书。反美是工作，赴美是生活。大跃进的教训：有计划的饿死， 三年饿死几千万人，没有自然灾害，全是人祸，大炼钢铁。 非常可恶，忽悠中国老百姓及战狼小粉红，胡说八道，说台湾问题是中国的百年国耻，打着爱国旗号，实际是在为资本运作。

真正的良知不敢随便讲话，否则轻则炸号，重则有大麻烦， 近十年，类似袁腾飞这样的实话实说的声音都被打压，有良知的中国知识分子在中国不断被打压，甚至没有发声的渠道，近十年中国是在进步吗？

Wang Sir’s News Talk | Why was Hu Chenfeng blocked? – The Tragedy of Chinese Peasants and Seniors in the Countryside. On March 14, Hu Chenfeng, a Bilibili blogger, shot a video in Chengdu about helping seniors and retirees to buy things. In the video, the 78-year-old woman only has a monthly pension of 107 RMB. His son is an unemployed engineer affected by last year’s COVID-19 pandemic, and without his support, she couldn’t afford meat for a long time. Touched by her story, Hu Chenfeng bought her 127 RMB worth of rice, eggs, and pork.

网友心酸地反映：我爷爷奶奶也是农民，70多岁了还得靠自己养活自己，辛苦了一辈子，这个国家从来没有给过他们任何一分好处、一分尊重，真的悲哀。所以我现在在努力，尽量让自己的下一代离开这个罪恶的政权之下，再也不要重蹈覆辙。这个话题引起巨大共鸣：另一个说： 我农村的舅舅们辛苦了一辈子，80多岁了， 还得干活养活自己，有病都硬扛着，不敢去医院， 象牲口一样卑微的在社会上活着。每看见身边的人对这些悲痛视而不见，总有种文明生在农耕的感觉，非常难过，甚至有时候让我感慨不知道良心到底应该用在哪里。台湾的农民退休后和公务员享受同等待遇，中国大陆的公务员退休每月几千一万，而农民才130元，这个视频中的老人碰巧也是南充人，是我的老乡，看得我热泪盈眶，我父母同样也是一样！

Chen Zhilong bristled with anger, China Labor Law Made a Fool of Itself。 Recently, there has been a circulating WeChat group chat record on the internet. The record shows that an employee named Chen Zhilong became angry when his boss demanded that he work overtime during the Qingming Festival. Chen Zhilong had a heated argument with his boss in the WeChat group, which caused his colleagues to cheer him on. Why did this internal company chat record resonate so much in society? Why can’t our labor laws protect the most basic rights of workers? What exactly is the problem here?

网友讨论根本問題不是貧窮，是政治制度，是共產黨對中國人的剝削壓榨。。四十年都實現不了養老醫保，你覺得問題出在哪？中國人還不夠勤勞嗎？窮人剛開始都是「死都不怕，沒有越不過的生的難和檻」，但最後，窮人也都會變成「再窮活，到不如求死得痛快」。那些權貴，每家的財富，都夠自己的子女後代吃喝一萬年，所以，參加人大會議和政協會議的那6千左右的代表們，他們從不會為百姓的利益說話。贫穷只是一种现象，而不是原因。 根据孔子的论断，每一个人的富有的生活和尊贵的地位是上天赋予的，因此人与生俱来地是富有的和尊贵的。当魔鬼或者撒旦把人类变成了统治的对象，贫穷和卑贱才与人类发生了关系。 因此我把贫穷区分为制度造成的制度性的贫穷，其次是作为制度造成的最可怕的结果的制度创伤性的贫穷。 制度造成的制度创作性的贫穷发生在：这种制度已经消亡了，由制度造成的人口已经极端地稀少了，但是人们对于人类本身已经极端地绝望了。这种制度造成的创伤性的贫穷出现在非洲，更出现在过去的美洲。在这种制度造成的创伤性的贫穷之中，人们不再欣赏和利用广大的富饶的大自然为人类提供的巨大无比的财富，而仍然习惯于相互的杀戮，而在杀戮之后就是无所事事——他们不愿意劳动，不愿意思考，整天坐着不动，并成为一种Sedentary的存在。 中国人永远不应该忘记郑永年对中国人犯下的罪行，他是极权暴政的鼓吹者，他是中国的杜金之一。

王志安根据一则非常轰动的微博群聊天记录，从微博到抖音，从快手到B站，就中国很多企业违反劳动法，探讨的是这个事件背后反映出来的可怕的社会现实. 其实这件事的真假已经不重要了，它能引起共鸣就已经能说明一定的问题了. 有网友反映以前很信任中国共产党政府，特别是读书时候。但是随着出来社会打拼并且独立思考，还通过翻墙上网才真正知道，我们的这个政府是多么的假。 这期真的感同身受，每天下班后要求开会，不加班就会被点名说不够努力。节假日有工作信息必须回复。多次996冲上热搜，各种公司裁员不按照要求赔偿，劳动法毫无作用。还有网友朔，国内加班真的非常非常非常严重，我周围很多人都没有双休，一年至少有300天在加班，还没加班费，被强迫被自愿，好多人精神状态都不好了。在私企上班真的太苦太累了，经济下行，工作不好找，根本不敢辞职，只能每天苟着，咬着牙在撑着，不讨厌工作，但是痛恨加班！最遵守中国劳动法的，不是国企，而是外企真的太优越了。

In fact the internet presents the leak everywhere in this information age. Let’s work on how we can brainstorm ideas on remedy problems. One reason of this discontent is stated by what Paul Craig Robert put it in the piece “Slavery in America Was Resurrected in 1913“: “The brutal fact is that in “free America” today, the bulk of the population owns less of their labor than did Medieval serfs, and higher earners until Reagan owned less of their labor than 19th century slaves on Southern plantations.”

But I can not totally go along with Robert’s argument. The problem is not just how much we earned, the problem is about how huge a disparity of social resources mis-allocation causing all the injustice, imbalance and the evils derived from there. Where is the no equal power in law, there is no genuine equality and harmony. 没有权利平等，就没有真实的和谐。 And this phenomenon exist everywhere, U.S or China, and most countries. Just look at the Gini coefficient index. And the article: Post-apartheid South Africa is world’s most unequal country. Today China so called “socialist country” is in fact more unequal, more exploitation and suppression than before 1981 when it start the open door policy. Even the middle and upper class who supposedly financially benefits from this change are suffering from a general environment that is deteriorate day by day （唇亡齿寒）because everything is interrelated.

The story of China, as delivered by its statisticians and propagandists, is a sunny tale of a country dispatching extreme poverty, steering the world’s economic growth and, earlier this year, adroitly depositing a rover on Mars. The article Why did the Chinese become less happy during their growth boom? describe a symptom of “paradox of unhappy growth”, not just in China, but a reality every where that materialism’s fail to deliver a healthy society and fairness in social contract. Look at China’s Forgotten Peasants: An Element of Unrest. Look at the tax rules unfairness reflected in One of China’s most debt-ridden provinces 贵州 asks Beijing for help in now. What about the approximately 69 million children in China that are left behind by one or both of their parents due to migration, which is equivalent to thirty percent of the children in rural area.

Can AI and chip industry fill the hole of that inadequacy ? Most of the US is dealing with a teaching shortage, but the data isn’t so simple More than three-quarters of U.S. states are experiencing a teacher shortage, highlighting a growing concern among public education and government officials about issues that were exacerbated during three years of the COVID-19 pandemic. From Kentucky and Idaho’s communications officers’ statements calling the teacher shortage a “crisis” to several Missouri school districts implementing four-day weeks as a recruitment and retention tool, some states, as the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) put it, are still facing “unprecedented” staffing challenges.

Carol Graham from Brook Institute argue in her paper Adaptation amidst Prosperity and Adversity: Insights from Happiness Studies from Around the World that the ability to adapt is indeed a good thing from an individual happiness and psychological perspective. But this same human defense mechanism may shed insights on how some societies stay stuck in bad equilibrium—such as high levels of corruption, bad governance, or bad health—for prolonged periods of time, while much more prosperous ones continue to go from good to better equilibrium. No one is an Island – Howard Thurman’s Meditation of the Heart.

Are we plundering our children’s future ?

Teachers of Buddhism in the West Share Their Wisdom to Liberation – Becoming the Ally of All Beings

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Buddha once said, “Develop a mind so filled with love that it resembles space, which cannot be painted, cannot be marred, cannot be ruined.” When we relax the divisions that we usually make, the mind becomes like space. This is not something that a fortunate few have the capacity to experience; it is the nature of the mind, which every one of us has the ability to know. In talking about practice, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher, said we practice in order to learn to trust ourselves more, to get confidence in what we know, to have faith rather than doubt. Loving kindness and compassion are innate capacities that we all have. This capacity to care, to be at one with, to connect, is something that isn’t destroyed, no matter what we may go through. No matter what our life experience may have been, no matter how many scars we bear, that ability remains intact. And so we practice meditation in order to return to that spaciousness and to learn to trust our ability to love.

As the Buddha said, “All beings everywhere want to be happy.” It is only due to ignorance that we do the things that create suffering or sorrow for ourselves and for others. If we take the time to slow down and see all the different forces coming together in any action, we will see this desire for happiness even in the midst of some terrible harmful action. That is why we use our mindfulness practice to notice our feelings and to understand them. Through that we can see very clearly that if we are immersed in tremendous anger, it is great suffering, it is a state of burning, of contraction and isolation, of separation and fear. We don’t have to reject the anger or reject or condemn ourselves for it, but rather we can feel compassion for the pain of it. This quality of empathy is also the basis of modern psychological thought on the development of morality. We learn not to hurt others because we understand how it feels to be hurt.

Howard Washington Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil right leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer and professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience.

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One of the social psychology is the desire to fit in, one of the most powerful, least understood forces in society.  Author Todd Rose dwell into examples psychological distortions from toilet paper shortages to kidneys that get thrown away rather than used for transplants; from racial segregation to the perceived “electability” of women in politics; from bottled water to “cancel culture,” , we routinely copy others, lie about what we believe, cling to tribes, and silence people, author bring to light some new perspective about the root cause of collective wounds in Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions Hardcover – February 1, 2022 . Draw on cutting-edge neuroscience and social psychology research, this acclaimed author demonstrates how so much of our thinking is informed by false assumptions—making us dangerously mistrustful as a society and needlessly unhappy as individuals. 

Path of Parenting, Path of Education, Path of Awakening

Our country’s postindustrial culture has left us to raise our children apart from a community of neighbors and elders. There aren’t many grandparents around – they all live someplace else or they’re off, like most fathers and many mothers, at the office or the factory. There aren’t many uncles or aunts around to take care of the kids when parents become overwhelmed, or to initiate the teenagers (so that they don’t have to seek initiation on the streets), to help them discover what it is to be a man or a woman and a productive member of the community. there isn’t a community of elders from whom we can hear stories and learn practices that will keep us connected with our human heritage, with our instincts and our hearts.

Instead of village elders, American parents have turned to various “experts” and whatever fad or theory they have come up with. In the 1920s an influential school of child psychology actually taught parents that it was bad to touch their children. Several decades later, parents all across America read books that insisted we bottle-feed (not breast-feed) an infant every four hours and that we should not pick up a crying baby but just let it “cry itself out.”

Every wise culture in the world knows that when babies cry, they cry for a reason, and that you pick them up and feed them, or hold them and comfort them. You have to really fight against yourself not to pick up a sobbing infant. Among the less technologically developed cultures of Asia or Africa or Latin America, children are always being held, always in someone’s lap. Children are valued, are included in all family activities – in work, in ceremonies, in celebrations, there is always a place for them.

When children are valued in this way, the whole society benefits. In this spirit, there is a tribe in Africa that counts the birthday of a child from the day the child is a thought in its mother’s mind…. What a beautiful way for human beings to listen to and to comfort other human beings. This is the spirit of conscious parenting, to listen to the song of the child in front of you and to sing that child’s song to him or her. When a child is crying, we need to ask why this child is singing the crying song, what pain or frustration this child is feeling.

Yet the western culture seems to be telling people ignore their instincts, to distrust our intuition. The result is that many children growing up in our society are not bonded to an adult. One of the more painful statements about what we are collectively doing to our children came one year form a teacher named John Gatto who was voted New York City Teacher of the year. At the awards ceremony 1990 January 31, in front of the mayor and the school board and thousands of parents, he castigated his listeners for the “soul murder” of a million black and Latino children- Why School Don’t Education. He challenged the audience to consider the effects of American culture on our children: “Think of the things that are killing us as a nation: drugs and alcohol, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling – and the worst pornography of all: lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy, all addictions of dependent personalities, and that is what our brand of schooling will inevitably produce in the next generation.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018): Remembering America’s Most Courageous Teacher. In a collection of essays and articles A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling Paperback – January 1, 2002 John Gatto exposes a system designed to promote economic and business interests and advocates a greater emphasis on teaching critical thinking skills. Gatto leaves behind a legacy that inspired thousands of people to challenge the premise on which our education system was built. Gatto’s writing, teaching, and approach to not just education but human flourishing in general inspired us to think critically about our own life and education. He’s one of the most important thinkers in American history—that’s becoming more obvious every day. He’ll be missed dearly.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Paperback – July 17, 2018 Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important―and successful―history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times. Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself.

The author of Teaching with the HEART in Mind: A Complete Educator’s Guide to Social Emotional Learning , Dr. Lorea Martínez Pérez is the award-winning Founder of HEART in Mind Consulting, a company dedicated to helping schools and organizations integrate social emotional learning in their practices, products, and learning communities. An educator who has worked with children and adults internationally, Dr. Martínez is a faculty member at Columbia University Teachers College, educating aspiring principals in Emotional Intelligence. Previously, she was a special education teacher and administrator. Learn more at loreamartinez.com Dr. Perez argues that creating better outcomes for your students sometimes means you have to challenge the odds. Academics and standardized assessments aren’t the solution. You need to educate both their hearts and minds. Strengthen your students’ resilience, spark their curiosity for learning, and encourage future success in college, career, and life. Be the best teacher you can be and infuse social-emotional skills into your teaching of any subject.

The average American child watches eighteen thousand murders and violent acts and half a million advertisements. Violence and materialism. We are feeding the next generation of children the very suffering we’re trying to undo in our spiritual practice. with the highest rate of infant mortality of any industrialized nation and millions of “latch key kids,” we have given up caring for our children. An increasing number are raised by day care and TV and smart phones. We end up with a new generation of Americans more connected to TV or video games (often violent ones) than to other people. We will have more Gulf-style wars and violent crimes than successful marriages. Because these children were not held enough when they were young, were not valued enough and respect enough, were not listened to or sung to, they grow up with a hole inside, with no real sense of what it means to love, with no rel capacity for intimacy.

When the Dalai Lama spoke with a group of Western psychologists, he couldn’t understand why there was so much talk about self-hatred and unworthiness. he didn’t understand, because in Tibetan culture children are loved and held. he was so astonished that he went around the room and asked everyone, “Do you feel unworthiness and self-hatred sometimes?’ “Yes.” “Do you feel it?” “Yes.” Everyone in the room nodded yes. He couldn’t believe that this was a culture where people primarily talk about their difficulty with their parents instead of honoring them. Contrast this with the healthy childhoods of the Buddha’s time. The Buddha himself was raised by his mother’s sister (after his mother died) and given all the nurturance, natural respect, care, and attention that every child needs. later, when he left home to practice as a yogi, he had the inner strength and integrity to undertake six years of intensely ascetic practice. The Buddha had this vision of well-being from his childhood to draw upon in his practice.

Parenting is a labor of love. it is a path of service and surrender, and link the practice of a Buddha or a bodhisattva, it demands patience and understanding and tremendous sacrifice. it is also a way to reconnect with the mystery of life and to reconnect with ourselves. Along withe practice of mindfulness there are four other principles of conscious parenting; attentive listening, respect, integrity, and lovingkindness.

The principle of attentive listening means listening to the Tao of the seasons, to our human intuition and our instincts, to our children. do we hear what our children are trying to tell us? it’s like listening to the Tao. How long should we nurse our babies? how late should we allow our teenagers to stay out on dates? To answer those questions, we have to listen and pay attention to the rhythms of life. Just as we learn to be aware of breathing in and breathing out, we can learn to sense how deeply children want to grow.

A measure of respect comes in the setting of boundaries and limits appropriate to our child. As parents, we can set limits in a respectful way, with a compassionate “no” and an explanation of why something is out of bounds. Children learn by example, by who we are and what we do. They watch us what we communicate y the way we drive, the way we talk about others, and how we treat people on the street.v We teach them by our being.

Just as we learn in meditation to let go and trust, we can learn to develop a trust in our children so they can trust themselves. And we shall respect our children’s need for both dependency and independence. Most often instead of listening to them, we impatiently hurry them along. Dependency, insecurity and weakness are natural states for a child. They’re the natural states of all of us at times, but for children, especially young ones, they are predominant conditions and they are outgrown. In an article on dependency in Mothering magazine, Peggy O’Mara wrote:

We have a cultural bias against dependency, against any emotion of behavior that indicates weakness. This is nowhere more tragically evident than in the way we push our children beyond their limits an d timetables. We establish outside standards as more important than inner experience when we wean our children rather than trusting that they will wean themselves, when we insist that our children sit at the table and finish their meals rather than trusting that they will eat well if healthful food is provided on a regular basis, and when we toilet-train them at an early age rather than trusting that they will learn to use the toilet when they are ready to do so.

In the similar vein, Dorothy Law Nolte has written a poem, “Children learn What They Live”: 

If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement, he learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise, he learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice.
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship.
He learns to find love in the world.

Service – Expressing Our Practice

Many people tend to think practicing spirituality is about going to a house of worship, a meditation hall, or a quiet spot in nature, and engaging in prayer, meditation, solitude and self-reflection. These spiritual pursuits seem to foster a simpler, more peaceful life in which we might experience greater intimacy and self-worth. But with the many responsibilities of life in the world, we often have precious little time to devote to such practice. When time does permit them, our spiritual yearning is momentarily satisfied and we feel aligned with the needs of our hearts; but generally our spiritual practice remains secondary to our more pressing daily activities.

Is it possible that we are defining our spiritual practice in too narrow a way? Perhaps we have become too attached to a particular form of spirituality – to a specific practice or set of circumstances. If we return to the intention behind our practices rather than adhering strictly to a form that supports the intention, we may discover a new approach to spirituality, one that truly feeds our hearts. Service work is a form that seems to be common to all the sacred traditions of the world. It cuts through all artificial divisions between “spirituality” and “life”.

Elisabeth Kubeler-Ross once said that she never meditated and never wanted to – she found it too dry. but when working with the dying, being intimately present with that person, listening fully and learning constantly, she was as focused as any mediator sitting on the floor and attending to the breath. She was in fact meditating, but her meditation arose naturally from her concern for the dying, not through formal sitting practice. For her, meditation was an expression of her service to the dying.

Spiritual teach Rodney Smith spent eight years in Buddhist monastic settings, both at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts and several years as a Buddhist monk in Asia. He ordained with Mahasi Sayadaw in Burma then practiced for three years with Ajahn Buddhadassa in Thailand. He disrobed as a monk in 1983 and, after returning to the West, started working in hospice care and teaching vipassana meditation throughout the U.S. Smith’s many years as a monk in Asia, hospice worker, partnered householder and longtime vipassana teacher inform what he considers pivotal: that without Wise View, our pursuit of awakening will go nowhere.  He openhandedly shares his own struggle in Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha’s Liberating Teaching of No-Self.

After spending several years on retreat, including a few years in Asia as a forest monk, Rodney Smith began feeling that his practice was becoming dry. Then he discovered that service has a way of transforming our daily life into a spiritual practice. And that discovery has led to serving others as a practice of the heart. Often the shift from helping to serving is only an attitude deep. Service can actually be an expression of prayer, an ongoing engaged meditation. If service work is defined as breaking through the artificial barriers that seem to isolate us form the rest of life, then washing the dishes, dressing, cooking, eating, and showering are not separate from our prayer or meditation. When our daily activities teach us about our relationship to all things, our life becomes an unceasing prayer of the heart.We become less dependent upon specific practices because we are more aware of the interrelationship between who we are and the activity we are involved in. We may participate in prayer or meditation, but we no longer find that these are the only ways to access a spiritual dimension. Your heart becomes as available through a variety of contacts and relationships as it does through sitting meditation. We start being fed from life itself.

Rodney Smith further talked about service in light of waking up and becoming alive. Aliveness is our birthright. To come alive, we must align ourselves with our heart’s desire. We just have to rediscover how to do that. This observation solves the problem of how to practice and fully participate in our lives at the same time. It says that service is not a burden; rather, it defines service as that which feeds our aliveness. The word aliveness implies wakefulness, awareness, and a connected passion for life. We may notice that the essence of aliveness is a pure quality distinct from the actions that spring from it, such as following our desire or avoiding our fears. No matter where we start with our understanding of aliveness, however, through investigation we penetrate to new and deeper meanings of this word. We need to keep redefining the idea, allowing it to evolve beyond what we think it means. in this way, it will always be fresh and new, as our aliveness itself.

When we help someone, subliminally we pass on a message of inequality. In doing so, we diminish that person as a human being. We hold those we help in a fixed perspective and often refuse to allow them to grow. This is because if they grew out of their role, we would lose the contact we need to help. So the difference between serving and “helping” is the difference between being alive and being depleted. Helping is based on sacrifice, not strength. It is giving something to someone for a particular reason. Its intention is self-enhancement at the expense of someone whom we regard as underprivileged. The helper is rewarded by knowing that he or she is better off than the person being helped. We become as dependent upon them as they are on us. Our minds can force another into an unequal relationship, but not our hearts. Genuine warmth cannot exist unless there is equality. Within this profound connection, there is mutual appreciation. Our hearts naturally open in service work. A long time meditation teacher, Rodney Smith teaches program on “uprooting our false identity within our encased narrative and aligned ego structures.”  His approach is built on the The Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness:

  • First Foundation: Contemplation of the Body. …
  • Second Foundation: Contemplation of Feeling. …
  • Third Foundation: Contemplation of Mind. …
  • Fourth Foundation: Contemplation of Dhammas.

Sometimes at crucial moments in our lives we are presented with new paths, opportunities to grow in ways we never expected. If we have courage to take these new directions, we expand, becoming more than we ever dreamed we might become, discovering ways to live and to die with dignity, with grace. That is the story of Rodney Smith’s life journey. In an interview, Rodney spoke of how Buddhist working with the dying.

Urgency, Contentment, and the Edges of Love

Drawing from many spiritual paths including the Muslim-Sufi and Christian mystical traditions as well as Buddhism, Veteran Meditation teacher Gavein Harrison about transformation through suffering. In a detail personal account of his uphill battle with HIV virus and searching for truth: “What truly is the meaning of death?” “Is there an end to suffering?” He described his commitment to facing and standing up for truth—even when confronting abuse, AIDs and death, in Beyond the Grip of Fear.

Teachers of Buddhism in the West Share Their Wisdom to Liberation – Keeping Alive the Tradition in Our Own Time and Space

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From the time of the Buddha’s enlightenment in India twenty-five hundred years ago, the teachings known as Buddhism have spread throughout the world, adapting to the needs of different peoples and cultural settings. Wherever the universal human longing for for spiritual freedom has been felt, the Dharma – the Buddha’s Teaching – has found a home. When the Buddha sent off the first group of his disciples to teach “for the good of the many, for the welfare of the many …. out of compassion for all beings,” he instructed them to teach the people they came upon in an idiom that was most accessible and most meaningful. Meditation on the specific challenges and how the Dharma can help us overcome the difficulties from a specific circumstance is a wonderful and important step in making the Dharma our own. By retelling the ancient allegory of a spiritual journey in our own idiom, we are unfolding a tradition that speaks of our our inquiry, our own triumphs, and our unique lessons. We are discovering new metaphors – in our own time and place, in our own families and communities and institutions – that connect us to a reality and a teaching that is timeless and universal. It is a significant step in the transmission of a living truth. In the end, the crucial understanding is one’s own, while the tradition is kept alive through the awakening of more and more people and the commitment of follow the step of the Buddha by strive to become Bodhisattva.

In the Buddhism tradition, Bodhisattva are those who, aspirating to enlightenment, make a resolve, “I vow to attain full enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.” This means we recognize our own liberation is intertwined with the liberation of all beings without exception. Rather than seeing other beings as adversaries, we must see them as colleagues in this endeavor of freedom. Rather than viewing others with fear or contempt, which arises form a belief in separation, we see them as part of who we ourselves are. Seeing the truth of this fundamental interconnectedness is what is known in the Eight-fold Path as Right View. The Buddha said, “Just as the dawn is the forerunner and the first indication of the rising sun, so is Right view the forerunner and the first indication of wholesome states.” Seeing the truth of our interconnectedness leads to the mind-state of lovingkindness that characterizes the Bodhisattva.

True, the Bodhisattva aspiration does seem to be up against some insurmountable odds. It may seem impossible to genuinely care about all beings everywhere. But developing the heart of loving kindness is not about straining, not about gritting your teeth and, though seething with anger, somehow covering it over with a positive sentiment. Loving kindness is a capacity we all have. We don’t have to do something unnatural in order to be capable caring. We only have to see things as they actually are.

When we take the time to be quiet, to be still, we begin to see the web of conditions, which is the force of life itself, as it comes together to produce each moment. When we look deeply, we see constant change; we look into the face of impermanence, insubstantiality, lack of solidity. As the Buddha pointed out, given this truth, trying to control that which can never be controlled will not give us security of safety, will not give us final happiness. In fact, trying to control ever-changing and insubstantial phenomena is what gives rise to our sense of isolation and fragmentation. When we try to hold on to something that is crumbling or falling apart, and we see that not only is it crumbling but we are changing in just the same way, then there is fear, terror, separation, and a lot of suffering.

If we re-vision our world and our relationship to it so that we are no longer trying to fruitlessly control but rather are connecting deeply to things as they are, then we see through the insubstantiality of all things to our fundamental interconnectedness. Being fully connected to our own experience, excluding no aspect of it, guides us right through to our connectedness with all beings. There are no barriers; there is no separation. We are not standing apart from anything or anyone. We are never alone in our suffering, and we are not alone in our joy, because all of life is a swirl of conditions, a swirl of mutual influences coming together and coming apart. By going to the heart of any one thing, we see all things. We see the very nature of life.

Sharon Salzberg talked about balance in the mind being like walking on a tightrope. She described what a relief it was for her to discover ( after having permanent balance as a goal) the ease that comes with realizing that we stumble all the time, lose our balance and fall, and find there is another tightrope waiting – that mind based in equanimity has space enough to allow for a full range of emotions and space enough to see around them, or through them, so that everything becomes workable.

One the central teachings of the Buddha is that of a lawful cosmos, the truth that all conditioned things have causes and all actions have seqelae. Everything is happening for a reason. This understanding can be both calming and energizing. We are sustained, when things are difficult, by the awareness that whatever is happening is lawful and cannot be otherwise, and although our previous actions surely conditioned part of the current experience, everything in the past is part of current experience. No one is ever guilty and everyone is always responsible. What we do now matters, that our actions now condition the outcome of current circumstance. Even nonaction is an action. Everything and everyone matters.

Perfecting the Heart

In America, people tend to feel free to invent ‘salad’ religions, by mixing and matching. The first reason being it is a very American trait (at least Erik Erikson thought so) to be a ‘lone cowboy’ pioneering a new frontier. We can’t think of an other culture with such emphasis on Do-It-yourself.) The second reason is these private and singular attempts are part of a growing, widespread recognition of spiritual need. Consumerism and materialism doesn’t work as religions. When people don’t get a meaningful spirituality from their family or community – either no spirituality or one that doesn’t work – they need to invent a new one. This is have one possible pitfall and one potential shortcoming. In a solo practice, there is no one available for feedback, no one who can encourage us and no one to tell us that we’re deluding ourselves or that nothing is happening (no progress at all).

The practice of consciously cultivating character – of having morality as a goal – is fundamental to what the Buddha taught. The Ten Perfections in the Buddhist tradition are The ten qualities (paramis, the word parami is related to paramam which means “something of foremost importance.”  ) to help us focus on as inspiration for transformation. These ten qualities, the paramis, are our birthright, present in all of us at least in seed potential. The karma of our birth circumstance, physical and mental, social and cultural, is where we start. The parmis are listed sequentially below, although they are all reflections of each other and grow, simultaneously through practice.

  • Generosity;
  • Morality
  • Renunciation,
  • Wisdom,
  • Energy,
  • Patience,
  • Truthfulness,
  • Determination,
  • Loving kindness,
  • Equanimity

The transformation is the goal of our spiritual practice, is the purification of the heart, our conversion to benevolence and altruism. It is not enough to feel good or more relaxed, or even more connected to the experience. All of that is great, but it is only half the job. We relax, we connect deeply with our experience – then we see clearly and understand deeply the truth of suffering – universal suffering – and we are transformed by our wisdom from self-serving, trapped and limited by our own stories, to having compassion and kindness toward all beings.

The Five Precepts Supporting Our Relationship

When we bring a deeply caring and respectful awareness to the way we interact with one another we change our social relationships from a source of confusion and pain to a vehicle for personal and social transformation. Spiritual awakening, in every tradition, brings this transformation of our actions from limited self-interest to a joyful, open response to all of life, an inclusive love and appreciation. In the Buddhist tradition, this move is described as the Five Precepts. these precepts involve training our speech and action in order to serve our inner and outer harmony. The precepts speak to areas of life that are the source of our greatest pleasure, joy, and happiness as well as our greatest fear, pain, and confusion.

By paying careful attention to how we speak and act, we notice the effect such behavior has on ourselves as well as others. If we notice that our behavior causes pain, can we gracefully give it up, or will we remain caught in an old habitual way of reacting? This is the challenge of practicing the precepts.

We are not asked to submit to an authority or any “one ” of behavior, but rather we are asked to look as carefully as we can and see for ourselves. The workhorse of this practice is attentive awareness, or mindfulness. when we notice that pain results form something we have said or done, there is no threat of punishment or condemnation, but rather we acknowledge the unhappiness we have caused. it is then seen to be in our larger, more authentic self-interest to adjust our behavior so as to minimize the pain, confusion, or insecurity. This is not a grudging submission to an imagined authority. The restraint of our behavior is undertaken willingly, our of interest in the happiness of all.

1. A COMMITMENT TO NOT HARMING

Refraining from killing is an obvious place to start caring for other beings. The First precept asks us to look at how our behavior harms others. Can we acknowledge that we play a part in the chain of causation that leads to the death of other beings, animal as well as human? If we do not take an active interest in seek the truth, we may live our lives believing that this suffering is just someone else’s problem.

Do the war in the Middle East have anything to do with the miles per gallon of the car you prefer to drive? does the massive use of pesticides and herbicides now polluting our environment have anything to do with what you prefer on your table for dinner? Can we live our lives with care and consideration for the life around us. To the extent we do awaken to the vast web of life, we have the opportunity to contribute to less suffering in the world.

In some parts of United States, to learn how to use gun and enjoy the fun of hunting is the culture norm people raised in. In the Buddha’s teaching, there is a quality called hiri, defined as modesty or fear of doing wrong by causing harm to oneself or another. The Buddha identified this as a wholesome quality of heart to be developed on the path of awakening and as one of the necessary foundations for a harmonious communal life. Cultural conditioning may obscure hiri but cannot remove it from the heart. Modesty is refined attainment to what makes our heart contract and tighten, or remain open and aware. This quality of heart is innate within ourselves. We need not attribute the fear of doing wrong to some omniscient deity standing in judgment over us.

2. A COMMITMENT TO SHARING

We live in a culture and time awash in material goods promising to make us happy. the pressure to acquire the many items we are told we need is incessant. often we may be tempted to resort to less than noble or honest means to acquire them. This precept involves refraining from taking what is not freely offered. in its most elemental form it means not stealing or taking another person’s property without his or her informed consent. In order to break this precept, we must scheme to get something by deception, strength, or stealth. in the traditional texts of Buddhism this is called “having a thievish intent.”

Our legal system makes a distinction between petty theft and grand larceny. The sole distinction is the magnitude of the resultant loss or harm. However, when we look carefully, we see that the thievish intent to acquire something improperly is the same in both cases. Acquiring material goods in such a way causes harm to others and creates disharmony in our neighborhood whether it is local, national , or international.

Though we may not personally act on thievish intent, we may discover that we are the beneficiary of other’s use of stealth, force, or deception. with the widespread reports of slave labor throughout the world, should we inquire if we are the recipients of any benefit from this forced labor? Was the Persian carpet in our home made by child labor in India? Did force labor in China contribute in any way to the silk clothing we now wear?when we ask thee questions, we awaken the quality of heart that the Buddha called ottappa, which means conscience, or the shame of acting in such a way that bring harm to another. This conscience is the quality that respect others’ sensitivities, vulnerabilities, and limits.

A commitment to this precept doesn’t necessarily mean going without; it means knowing what is enough. Can we look at our busy and full lives to discover what we have in excess? Can we allow ourselves to feel the pain of those who must go without? Can we awaken to the wisdom of renouncing possession of more than enough? Can we be content with what we now have?

3. MAKING AND KEEPING CLEAR RELATIONSHIPS

Undertaking the third precept involves practicing restrain from acting our sexual energy in a way that cause harm to another. This is not a moralistic injunction against mature, adults living a full, enjoyable, sensual life Rather, we develop sensitivity to that personal behavior which, obviously or subtly, causes insecurity, fear, same, humiliation, dis-empowerment, jealously, or other painful feelings to arise within our own heart or the hear of another.

Undertaking this precept is not a capitulation to a moral or spiritual authority, nor is it an ego-investing, self-imposed spiritual ideal. it is a commitment of interest and energy to awaken to our choices and what conditions them. Whether we are aware of it or not, we choose the nature of our relationships with each other. We make commitments based upon shared understandings and expectations. We affirm our connection with all others by honoring our individual commitments.

4. SPEAKING CAREFULLY: THE POWER OF INTENTION

When we undertake to train our speech in order to create harmony, trust, and safety in our communal relationships,we also examine the resultant effect of what we say and how we say it. to help us in our exploration, the Buddha enumerated five conditions of speaking to attend to, five ways that we can awaken to the power of our words to cause pain or condition happiness.

  • By taking a moment before speaking, we can evaluate our intention so that we may choose to speak as a peacemaker rather than carelessly encouraging further agitation, tension, or division between individuals. Choosing sides in interpersonal conflicts is a habit that rarely helps to resolve the conflict. By speaking of reconciliation, resolution, and harmony, we encourage and support letting go of strong opinions and judgment. Renunciation of opinions brings immediate relief.
  • Words spoken gently are more likely to be heard and their true value felt. it is especially important that we speak in a nonthreatening, non-aggressive way when what we need to say will be difficult for another person to hear. speaking gently allows our words to be received even in difficult circumstances.
  • The third element of wise speech that preserves the harmony of community is truthfulness. when we speak the truth, we come to be known as one who can be relied on, one who is dependable, believable, and honest.It is unfortunate that we cannot look to our contemporary social or political mores to guides us in this arena of life. All around us we see deception in advertising, politics, and personal lives. This lack of integrity in speech conditions cynicism, disrespect, confusion, and disbelief. Though the truth is elusive and difficult to discover, or situation is as the Zen monk Ryokan says:
If you speak delsion, everything becomes a delusion;
if you spek the truth, everything becomes the truth ...
why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your own hearts.
  • Even if what we say is true, a fourth condition of wise speech is whether it will be beneficial and useful to another person. Useless, frivolous, foolish, or nonsensical chatter is called samphappalapavada in Pali. Included in this category is gossip, which for the st part is useless potentially harmful, and not of benefit to anyone.
  • The fifth element of wise speech is speaking at the proper time. It is essential that one be prepared for the impact of one’s own words, sensitive to the other’s state of mind, and aware of any other attendant conditions. Buddhist teacher often says, “Nothing is accomplished without patience.” with practice we learn that wisdom is not the manipulation of conditions to get what we want – not “being in control,” but rather the alert waiting for conditions to favor and support what we have to do. in this way the restraint imposed by patience supports wise speech.
5. KEEPING THE MIND CLEAR.

We all have deeply rooted habits that can manifest as compulsive behavior. Perhaps we have an addiction to excitement, pleasure, numbness, thrills, or any other compelling experience. When not seen clearly, thee habits then become obsessions. we often feel powerless in the face of our addictions as we struggle to escape their debilitating effects. By undertaking the fifth precept to abstain from using intoxicants, we confront the tenacious and obsessive addictions of the mind. This precept traditionally refers to the use of physical drugs and alcohol that cloud our awareness. some substances are determined to be physically addictive and harmful, such as alcohol, drugs and nicotine. when we look carefully at what affects our judgment, we can then broaden our understanding of the domain of the fifth precept to include our attempts to free the mind from all compelling, obsessive behavior, whatever the source.

To the degree we act obsessively, we are not free. The joy of freedom is undeniable. it is also fragile. Therefore, it is important to see that a broader application of this precept includes confronting all obsessively addictive behaviors. We limit ourselves through addictive behaviors and thought patterns. we can change. A commitment to grow, rooted in knowledge, sincerity and repeatedly remembered, gets real when we arouse confidence and energy. Acting the body and mind to at least try is the first step. you will never know what can be accomplished if you never try. A considered decision to abstain from some harmful behavior has tremendous power when made with awareness so the consequences and with a sincere commitment. it steadies the mind when the opportunity to indulge is presented. The commitment allows a moment’s pause in which alternatives can be considered. it is a turning away not out of fear or spiritual guilt, but from a decision that we reaffirm each time conditions present the choice.

Integrate the Dharma into our Daily Life

There was a monk in the Buddha’s time, it is said, who originally came from an extremely wealthy aristocratic family. Because he had lived a very pampered life, he was ignorant about some of the simplest things, which made him the object of much teasing by the other monks. One day they asked him, “Where does rice come from, brother?” he replied, “it comes from a golden bowl.” And when they asked him, “Where does milk come from, brother?” he answered, “it comes from a silver bowl.”

In some ways, our own perceptions about the nature of existence may be a bit like those of that monk. When we attempt to understand how our lives work, if we do not look closely, we may see only superficial connections and relationships forming our world. Upon closer examination, we come to understand that each aspect of our present reality arises not from “golden and silver bowls” but rather from a vast ocean of conditions that come together and come apart at every moment. Seeing this is the root of compassion and loving kindness. All things, when seen clearly, are not independent but rather are interdependent with all other things, with the universe, with life itself.

Teachers of Buddhism In the West Share Their Wisdom to Liberation – Taking Refuge in the Sangha

Posted on by PathFinder

In learning Buddhism, people have been especially drawn to the various technique meditation. But at the core are two of these practices: Vipassana (insight meditation) – the observation of the mind/body process with clear and focused awareness, leading to a deepening of wisdom and equanimity; and Metta (loving kindness) – the systematic exploration of the ability to love, leading to a deepening of concentration and connection. These practices are to ground in the foundation of Buddhism tradition which is to expand an ever-deepening awareness of the triple refuges ( or Triple Gem). The tradition is kept alive through the commitment to insight, moral integrity and compassion of all who practice it. By honestly making that commitment and sincerely practice the path of insight, we can all free our minds of habitual clinging, anger, and confusion. This is a journey of continuously mindful cultivation and practices.

The Triple Gem of Buddhism is The Buddha, The Dharma & The Sangha. If we look closely, the Triple Gems are actually one. The other two gems always exist in each gem. The Buddha is vision, the Dharma is embodying that vision, and the Sangha is sharing or expressing that vision. The Buddha is wise view, the Dharma is meditation and Sangha is wise action. The Buddha is faith or motivation, the Dharma is practice, and the Sangha is intimacy. The Buddha is enlightenment, the Dharma is actualizing of enlightenment, and the Sangha is manifesting enlightenment. The Buddha is wisdom, the Dharma is the truth, and the Sangha is harmonious action. The Buddha is the vision of awakening out of the conditioning of the mind, the Dharma is refuge in the truth of things, and the Sangha is refuge in the recognition that we have company. Each refuge is powerful and essential in and of itself; at the same time they are all connected in a full and integrated path. The Triple Gems are common to any spiritual search, and are ultimately found within our own heart when we are open to looking.

When the Buddha’s first group of disciples reached enlightenment, he said to them, “Go forth, go out, for the good of the many, for the welfare of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the benefit, for the welfare, for the happiness of beings.” By saying this, the Buddha made it clear that freedom should be expressed and shared in the world – through the Sangha, the third of the Triple Gem. Taking refuge in the Sangha means embracing a seamless view of practice that integrates how we are meditating with how we are in the world and then expressing our understanding through wise action and speech. It is living our meditation, and allowing our lives to express the truth. Sangha reveals the gap between ideas and actuality.

In the Buddhist community one way to take refuge in the Sangha is to remember that we come out of an ancient tradition of awakening. The fact that for over two thousand five hundred years people just like us have been walking this path, can help to give us a sense of direction, protection, and confidence in our own capacity to awaken. It can be comforting to remember that everything that we think is so unique and personal to our own experience has been very well documented in the discourses (suttas) of the Buddha. when we read what was written down so very long ago and see that it is our own experience that is being written about, we may gain a sense of strength and unity.

There are many different ways to look at what Sangha as community means, however. Communities have many shapes and forms. Some communities may even seem formless and fluid. Taking refuge in community does not necessarily mean that we are taking refuge in a specific group of practitioners. One meaning of Sangha is the ordained community of monks and nuns. One meaning is the community of those who from beginningless time, have realized the truth. One meaning is the community of all who are dedicated to lives of truth and good-heartedness, who live with the benefit of all beings in their hearts and minds.

The Buddha’s teaching, as expressed in the lives of the Sangha, is never removed from a sense of humanity. The Buddha was a human being who talked abut what it ultimately means to be a human being and to be happy. When we explore Sangha, we explore what supports us, clears our vision, and inspires us, and what protects us in a life committed to wisdom and good-heartedness. To explore the meaning of community and the exhortation to go forth “for the good of the many,” is to explore a quality of compassion that isn’t lofty or abstract or removed from the concerns of people, but is very present and available.

When the Buddha was asked about he different experiences of life – about being a parent, a renunciate, a friend, being sick, being the one who gives, being the one who receives – he said, “Any life at all may be lived well or may be lived wrongly. If it is lived well, it will bring great results, but if it is lived wrongly, it will bring very poor results.” What ever the particular circumstance of our lives, our potential is great when we honor our own sense of purpose, when we bring wakefulness into the different aspects of our day, and when we remember a heartfelt commitment to the welfare of all beings.

In the time of the Buddha, practitioners had to work with the very same difficulties, hindrances, and obstacles that we meet in our minds today. There are descriptions in the suttas of yearning and longing and anger and agitation and restlessness and doubt and sleepiness and dullness and boredom. To remember this can be a place where we can nourish ourselves when we hit dry or difficult spots. Zen master Dogen said that if there is just one log on a fire, the fire will be weak, whereas many logs make a fire strong and powerful. People can help each other by combing their strengths as they practice. This is one reason why we get together in retreat centers. In terms of a lifetime of practice, most of us can benefits from the support of one another. We are dependent on ourselves to practice; no one can do it for us. But at the same time, most of us need support.

The practice of Vipassana (insight meditation) goes against the grain of the culture, we in the West especially need the strength that practicing together brings. The values of the culture in the world at large differ greatly from the values that we uncover and strengthen in our meditation practice. One examples is that in the culture we are generally encouraged to have strong opinions. having strong views is seen as making one more stable and productive, whereas if we don’t have firmly held dogmatic views, we are seen as wishy-washy. When we look deeply, however, we see that attachment to views and opinions narrows our world and limits creative possibilities. Opinions and views are very subjective and are not something to cling to too tightly.

In spiritual practice we begin to question what is defined as success. The dominant culture encourages us to be as busy and frantic as possible, telling us that if we are doing something, we are on the way to becoming someone. The more crowded one’s life is the more successful. The culture urges us to live for the future and values greed and accumulation. But our practice invites us to be aware and present, while letting go of our attachment to fantasy and preoccupation with external things. It is a radical act to do nothing and to sit in stillness. Doing nothing in a meditative sense means keeping the heart still and being completely present with whatever activity we are engaged in: it is an extremely vibrant creative activity. The art of doing nothing, however easy it may sound, requires a great deal of practice and training.

Although wholesome qualities of heart are developed through our own effort, we can get a clear sense of what they look like and how wonderful they are by seeing them embodies in others. Being contact with wise friends points to and strengthens our own latent wisdom, generosity, and compassion. When we are in contact with those who are wise or free, it touches that which we already know within ourselves but have forgotten. Some part of the heart remembers a little bit more through this contact. Our own Buddha-nature gets revealed. When we see that others have changed and have grown into deepening levels of freedom through practice, we see that this path of liberation is also available to us. When we begin to recognize and let go of our competitive conditioning, others can inspire us when they share themselves and the fruits of their practice.

The Buddha clearly valued the presence of wise friends on the path. In the suttras he taught that when a particular quality of hear such as generosity, patience, or concentration needs to be developed, one should try to have contact with others who have already developed that same wholesome quality. The Buddha emphasized the importance of “noble friendship and suitable conversation.” It makes sense. If we want to realize truth and freedom, it’s helpful to be in the presence of those who are manifesting and expressing truth and freedom. It is more than inspiration. On some level it is transmission: we are very much influenced by one another. Although wholesome qualities of heart are developed through our own effort, we can get a clear sense of what they look like and how wonderful they are by seeing them embodied in others.

The people that we choose to be with in intimate ways and as friends have strong influence on our lives. It is important to notice what we base our relationship choices on. Are we being drawn by blind desire or by wisdom? It is a true treasure in this life of attempting to awaken to find friends who will tell us the truth when we ask. It is very easy to find people who will talk behind our backs, but to receive the truth from friends in a kind way is a wonderful gift. We can take refuge in their discernment. We can check our our assumptions and conclusions. Discerning friend can help us examine ways that we habitually cause suffering from ourselves and others. The path of freedom is a difficult one, a path that requires great effort and earnestness. To be in the company of spiritual friends who can help us recognize and transform the inevitable obstacles that we encounter along the way is invaluable. It is hard to walk on this path of awareness without friend gently pointing out our blind spots.

Though wise friendship is an essential aspect of the spiritual path, this doesn’t mean to avoid or insulate ourselves from people who we think do not have the qualities that we aspire to. There is a great deal to be learned form interacting in situations that are not so protected or consciously supportive of our inner development. When we are being challenged in ways that are not necessarily of our own choosing or within our control, life can continue to teach us. We can develop patience and compassion in situations that provoke impatience and aversion, if we are willing to be mindful of our own reactivity and learn to take responsibility for our response. If we can bring these situations into our practice, then we do not have to relate to ourselves as victims, subjugated to the whims of others.

While being part of the Buddhist tradition that began with the enlightenment of the Buddha, we are also part of a much larger Sangha that includes not only Buddhists but also the greater community of those who are seeking freedom and truth. We are part of this greater community simply through our commitment to being awake and choosing not to engage in harmful actions toward ourselves and others.

We are immediately brought into this larger Sangha with our willingness to be openhearted and with our intention to grow in discernment. Taking refuge in the Sangha is not a matter of adhering to a particular belief system or of identifying oneself as a Buddhist. The Buddha didn’t want people to follow him blindly or to identify with what he taught; his teaching is an invitation to know freedom for ourselves.

When we come in contract with others, as we do everyday, we are bound to be hurt form time to time, and at certain times quite a bit. Our first reaction is to cling to our hurt feelings, to our sense of being separate from one another. instead we can bring mindfulness into our relationships with others rather than taking refuge in withdrawal or blame. Perhaps we can take refuge in risking something different from the old familiar unworkable and unsatisfying ways that we all know so well. We can be mindful in relationship and ask: Am I acting in a habitual or mechanical way? When we are up against that which seems unworkable, what does it mean to remain openhearted? To stay open may go against every bone in the body! So taking refuge in eh Sangha also means making a commitment to bringing mindfulness to this rich area of relationship in all its diverse forms.

Taking refuge in our interconnection means that when we hurt another person, we recognize that we hurt ourselves as well. Similarly, when we hurt ourselves, we also hurt others. We may think that we can hurt ourselves and that no one else will be hared. But because we are interconnected, this is never true. Unless we learn to take care of ourselves,we won’t really know how to care for others. If we haven’t learned how to be kind with ourselves, being kind to others is often merely an ideal to strive for. Taking care of oneself also means being willing to acknowledge one’s suffering and then investigate its source. this means to silently observe our suffering without judging or reacting. This process takes a great deal of patience and courage, and we gradually discover an inner refuge through cultivating these qualities. buy training the heart to be steady and equanimous, our confidence grows as well as our capacity to help others. when we remember to bring our mindfulness practice to the complex world of relationship, the gap between spiritual ideals and actuality dissolves.

While we try to be openhearted to everyone around us, we can practice being openhearted to all the emotions, inner voices, and thoughts in our inner environment. Taking refuge in the Sangha means being openhearted with this inner Sangha as well. If we can embrace and accept negative emotions and unpleasant states of mind when they arise, without identifying with them or acting on them, we can begin to trust ourselves and live with greater ease. The practice of meditation teaches us to face whatever is occurring, and this strength of heart and mind becomes a lasting refuge. In the words of the Buddha, “By wise effort and earnestness, find for yourself an island that no flood can overwhelm.” As we find an inner refuge that no flood can overwhelm, we quite naturally become a refuge for others.