#religious organization

[maximthejewitch]

Thoughts?

[tcclsblog]

Understanding Emptiness in Fullness

"How to view all phenomena and how to view others."

In Buddhism, we say that everything is emptiness, but that emptiness is not the same as nothingness. When everything is empty, why isn't it nothing? Empty means that it's not truly existent, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. When we say that something is not truly existent, it just means that it is dependent upon something else to exist as it is. We think that everything, including ourselves, truly exists, but actually, nothing exists independently.

When you look up into the sky, sometimes you see a rainbow, but you do not always see it. The rainbow only appears based upon whether or not the conditions that allow the rainbow to appear are present. Those conditions are the proper light, humidity, water droplets, and the angle of the sun all being there in a certain way to form the rainbow. We think that seeing a rainbow is an auspicious event, but as a dharma practitioner, the real meaning of auspicious is the ability to see beyond that. It's when we can see that everything exists by its own conditional phenomena, by relying upon something else that allows it to become as it is, for as long as it can be.

What you can see is considered external phenomena, but what about the phenomena of self and others? When you look at others, what do you see? How do you perceive them? We usually cannot perceive anything. We can only understand things through learning. The eye is doing the seeing, but something else is telling the mind what you are seeing. Your eyes, your ears, your mind, and your experiences are all working together to give you this information. The mind on its own, working independently, cannot see, hear or smell, so cognition does not happen with only using one's sense of seeing something. Our experiences and knowledge also come into play. Seeing is not always believing, and hearing is not always the truth. Those are all perceptions of yourself or of others. There is nothing that is truly trustworthy in samsara.

The main thing we should do as practitioners is to observe the nature of the mind. You can check your mind, but how can you trust your mind? Your own mind is based upon your own perceptions and beliefs. Can we drop the hearing, drop seeing, drop smelling, tasting, and feeling and simply be a vast space?

The Buddha-nature mind is clear, and it is omnipresent, but we choose to focus on the small stuff. We should perceive externally with people and with phenomena and internally with ourselves / our own mind, every moment as it is.  Be there and live to enjoy every moment as it is.

  Dharma Teaching by Singha Rinpoche & Edited by Sandeep Nath

27 Sep 2020

#Inspiration Sunday

[farazhussain]

12 Rabi ul Awal

Prophet Muhammad's ﷺ birthday, 12 Rabi ul Awal, is considered a day of profound blessings in the Islamic world. https://www.dawateislami.net/events/en/rabi-ul-awal

[captainpirateface]

And when you Google "How many Homeless Shelters in the United States?"

So let's do simple math

(On a calculator, I ain't no Damn Mathematician!)

A difference of (roughly) 369,000 more churches than homeless shelters.

And that my friends is pretty FUCKED UP!

If this Jesus guy did exist, I remember something about him helping the sick AND the poor.

Fuck organized religion.

P.S. How many homeless shelters have you seen as lavishly decorated as a

"House of God"???

Exactly.

Fuck all that noise.

Love,

[la-leto]

And WHO are these Magic Men, you ask...?

Religious Organizaton, indeed.

[sarcasticcynic]

The IRS Officially Recognizes the Satanic Temple as a Church

The church has been granted tax-exempt status

The Satanic Temple spends most of its time trying to show the government the error of its ways when it takes actions favoring a particular religion (i.e, Christianity) without considering other religions. For example, where government entities have chosen to display a statue of the Ten Commandments, the Temple has applied for the right to display a similar-sized statue of an occult being, Baphomet, in the same location.

When the Missouri Legislature passed a law requiring abortion providers to give every women an ultrasound of her fetus and a booklet specifically stating that “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being,” and then wait 72 hours, a Temple member sued on the ground that the law violated her sincerely held religious beliefs that (1) her body is inviolable and hers alone, (2) a nonviable fetus is not a separate human being but is part of her body, and (3) abortion of a nonviable fetus does not terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being. (She lost.)

The Satanic Temple has never sought formal status as a “church” under U.S. federal law or regulations. In 2017, however, Trump signed his sweeping “religious freedom” executive order, purporting broadly to bar every single federal government entity from doing anything that might infringe on a religious organization’s beliefs. The Temple thought this was an excellent time to become a “religious organization” under federal law. Which it now is.

[racefortheironthrone]

How do you think the Faith of the Seven is institutionally organized across the Andalized kingdoms? Does the High Septon appoint 'bishops' to administer the Faith's affairs in each region? Could the Most Devout actually just be these bishops in conclave? Do you imagine local rulers exercising a Gallican veto over appointments to ensure local religious authorities support secular power?

These are excellent questions! 

So the Most Devout are a council (or conclave) of the highest ranking Septons. How they are chosen is unclear - so it could be the High Septon appointing, or it could be a more presbyterian system. 

Now, historically, the Most Devout chose the High Septon from among their ranks, although that’s not a necessity. After Jaehaerys’ peace with the Church, the Crown claimed the right to name the High Septon, although this seems to have been carried out by the King nominating a candidate who would always be elected no matter what. 

I find the pre-Targaryen period a fascinating mystery - I can’t imagine the rulers of Dorne or the Stormlands or the Westerlands or the Riverlands being particularly happy with the idea that the head of the Faith is so intimitately connected with House Hightower, even if that doesn’t always mean connected with House Gardener. So I would imagine there would have to be a fairly Galician system, and some very Renaissance lobbying during the choosing of new High Septons. 

[maximthejewitch]