I have killled 99% of my social media. It's toxic and offers echo chambers for whatever topic of hatred is the rage at the time.
I killed Mastodon, FB, Instagram and Tumblr. I only just logged back in here today. I'm limiting my time here too because... well I just am. During my time off the net I have prayed, meditated and gone back to scratch with my Buddhist study. I've delved back into the 4NT and Eightfold Noble Path. When I feel the time is right, I will re-do my Green Tara and Avolekiteshvara Empowerments.
My time offline has shown me, in stark reality, that EVERYONE has their own biaises and when we strongly feel something, more often than not we will mow down anyone who disagrees with protests, "sources" and anything else we can to prove them wrong. Being active online is frigging exhausting.
One thing my self imposed "exile" showed me is that it's easier to implement Right Speech and Right Action when not engaged in online drama. Just my 0.02
A couple of practical notes come to mind about your thread.
At least as far as I understand from what you have explained...
One of these brothers is a rapist, while the other brother who had this rape situation explained to him, still chose to protect this perpetrator over the criminality that was committed against you, the victim. That makes him an accessory.
I would be hesitant to renew your contact with either of these individuals as they might reasonably perceive you as a credible threat to their current lifestyles, despite how benignly you think you might be able to present this renewed interest in them.
Your forgiveness of them does not really depend on renewing contact with them unless **you **make that contact a condition of your forgiveness.
I am not presuming to know if you should contact them or not. Just that if it's a "letting go" that you really seek, why should it depend on you deliberately re-entering this karmic arena with them again?
Be safe.
It seems to me that many people leave few traces in the world. A couple may spend a lot of time and money on their house and furnishings, and the next occupant sends everything to the recycling and remodels. An aircraft engineer spends months measuring out vibration loads in an aircraft, only to say, it’s ok. A Zen monk spends hours sitting zazen and then stands up and there is no trace.
Like a dream, a mirage, a wave in the ocean or clouds in the sky.
We leave no traces because we are not that.
Form is like a glob of foam;
feeling, a bubble;
perception, a mirage;
fabrications, a banana tree;
consciousness, a magic trick —
this has been taught
by the Kinsman of the Sun.
However you observe them,
appropriately examine them,
they're empty, void
to whoever sees them
appropriately.Beginning with the body
as taught by the One
with profound discernment:
when abandoned by three things
— life, warmth, & consciousness —
form is rejected, cast aside.
When bereft of these
it lies thrown away,
senseless,
a meal for others.
That's the way it goes:
it's a magic trick,
an idiot's babbling.
It's said to be
a murderer.[1]
No substance here
is found.Thus a monk, persistence aroused,
should view the aggregates
by day & by night,
mindful,
alert;
should discard all fetters;
should make himself
his own refuge;
should live as if
his head were on fire —
in hopes of the state
with no falling away.https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.095.than.html
I think I have been lucky. When I was young there was never much money, and so I got into the habit of only buying what I needed. This meant that I never really paid attention to what I desired, and so even in wealthier times I was modest in what I would buy. Pretty much the only things I spent money on were books, DVDs and technology. My mother used to call me a cyber monk.
Living a humble life in this way shields you from your desires and aversions, it keeps them small without repressing them. It was that in combination with the old saying, “take everything in moderation”. This gets you into the habit of applying a counter-pressure to desire, and taking the things that you enjoy in small quantities, without foregoing them entirely. You allow yourself to enjoy, but only once in a while.
I find myself doing the same thing with beer: once every month or two I will buy a bottle of Belgian Trappist beer, and just sit back and enjoy it with a few nuts on a quiet afternoon. I find this allows me to savour the enjoyment. But I don’t look forward to these things, that would be fuelling craving, I just buy them on impulse once it’s been a month or so since the last time. I don’t really keep track rigorously.
Some things I don’t keep in the house, like “borrelnootjes” or paprika crisps, because I know I won’t be able to restrain myself and will just end up eating an entire bag of the things. I’ve found it best to just not buy certain things which I know i have a weakness for.
Restraint is a theme you often come across in the sutras (Aparihani Sutra or Bhikkhuvagga) with respect to the senses or about the monks’ heedfulness, but I think it is important to lay people as well. I find it something that I sometimes struggle with to keep it in mind, especially with food items that I am fond of, like a salmon mousse or certain potatoe dishes. But often I remind myself of it, and then I give up a few more places where maybe I had been eating over-generous portions.
I've seen some blunt comments to be sure, but I haven't seen anyone criticize Jundo as a person. I don't know him personally. I have no idea about his family, his friends, what he's like at the office, etc. All I know is what I see here:
1. He's using a clickbait banner for his funnel
2. The funnel is to book sales
3. He denies he's selling books (despite providing us the links)
4. Beneath all that, he's advocating (I think; I didn't buy the books) recognition of the potential for technology to increase the dissemination of a message; the message being Buddhism in this case.
Having observed him here and in the videos to be observant and articulate, i recognize that there is certainly the potential for him to contribute meaningfully to the forum should he choose.
I doubt he'll choose. Among us, Shoshin did engage him on the concepts, at least initially. But critical mass in this thread seems to be that the sales/denial/innocense approach is off-putting (as it is to me), possibly fatally, and should he see this and decide to engage and salvage the effort here, it will be at notable cost in time and focus, for a very small audience/prospect pool. (And his approach will have to be "OK, OK, my cloak is off now; let's talk.") If he doesn't resurface, or if he does but continues on the marketing trajectory, then it was just a sales channel. If he comes back and engages in substantive discussion about technology and the expanded medium it confers, it could definitely be quite an interesting conversation.
My prediction and my hope are opposites. Jundo, come through!
Back when Al Gore and Newt Gingrich invented the internet, although people knew it could be revolutionary/useful/dangerous, no one could have predicted the vast complexity and second-tier effects that resulted. But humans are still humans, in all our fabulous diversity, we just have a powerful tool to enable and magnify -- but not invent -- the native talent. Artists, scientists, and horse rustlers moved to the internet, but the internet didn't invent art, science, or crime. AI seems similar to me: It will change everything and it will change nothing. I expect it won't reduce my ability to discover things that match my (peculiar) taste, and I don't think it likely that human talent will become more rare; quite the contrary I'd imagine. I certainly expect things to get pretty interesting, but I also expect to still be able to go for a hike, play the piano, have interesting dreams, cold beer, and hot showers. I'm expecting something akin to turning up the gain in a circuit: signal-to-noise will get worse, the signal itself will get amazing, art and science will both boom, sleazeballs will get sleazier, scams will get scammier, Jundo will beam a 5-dimensional treeleaf directly into all our synapses, and Bill Gates won't need to use vaccines to implant his microchips any more. But even with all those and many unimagined-yet miracles to come, I think/hope we'll still need soap and windshield wipers and loud electric guitars played raucously.
We invented the wheel, then we invented propulsion, then we flew the Flyer at Kitty Hawk, then we flew to the MOON. Welcome AI -- let the future begin!
I'll just say that the US is very large and diverse. Each state is the size of an average country, we have a federal system of government where each state has a lot of control over how it is governed. Since it is one country though people can move easily from one region to another without needing to change citizenship or currency, etc., so there is a lot of self sorting. Its easy to move and live with more like minded people.
I've lived in the same area for 50 years and have rarely witnessed the attitudes you talk about. I've seen the Christian identitarianism prominently displayed when I've traveled to certain other areas and I've experienced some of the competitiveness occasionally when dealing with people from outside my region. For example I just did a lot of work for someone who grew up here but moved out east for her professional life and just recently moved back to retire. People in her neighborhood would stop and make small talk and she'd talk to me about how this seemed really weird to her, like they were up to something. She also was much more perfectionistic and passive aggressive than I'm used to dealing with.
The competitiveness seems from my perspective like more of an elite professional thing. I listen to podcasters who live in that world and they talk about trying to let that sort of thing go and a desire to develop attitudes that just seem like part of my everyday working class life.
Mainly I'm saying don't judge us all by the headline grabbing extremists.
Lets try to keep any criticism we have to the ideas or approach and avoid critiquing Jundo as a person. We really don't know all that much about him.