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What is a Bodhisattva?

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Comments

  • JasonJason God Emperor Arrakis Moderator
    edited December 2013
    Dennis1 said:

    Jason: You are cheating. You won't respond to the quote you request any more than to the Wiki quote. You will simply ignore it. Or deny the accuracy of the translation or? Because it doesn't fit in with your previously held views. Please acknowledge the wiki quote. That is the honest thing to do-else further efforts are a waste. Wouldn't you agree? I will get the quote and If I can still input on this site I will put it on a new comment with a new question. That won't change anything though will it? And by denying the other members the input you and I have made about Lenin being a Bodhi, you can still push your obvious agenda of radicalizing this site. As has been pointed out this is not my site. If you don't play fairly it hardly seems like something the Buddha would support either. At this point I am sure I am seeming like a Vexatious person to you. I suggest you read the wiki quote above. Look into your heart and put your zealotry aside long enough to at least acknowledge that quote. I am still here for you should you decide to do that and respond. No data or kindness can change a fixed heart. Namaste

    lol You're funny.

    For the third and final time, you made a claim about something Marx supposedly said in Capital about wanting to take the vast wealth and creative energy away from the capitalists and return it to the aristocracy, and I'd like a reference before continuing. Either the quote or the page number so I can find it myself. I wasn't kidding. I'm not going to bother addressing the rest of the things you've continuously spammed after said assertion until you do. And calling me a zealot or accusing me of trying to radicalize this site (double lol) isn't going to change that.
  • Well As I said: I won't give up on you-don't worry. But of course you can simply stop replying if you really mean what you say. I suggest that response-really. As I say you expect me to spend the time finding a quote I read years ago-which I can do-but you won't even acknowledge the one I did find which is much more to the point. We are talking about Lenin being a Bodhi-not my line. I responded that he responded to a open and free election that didn't go his way by a military take-over. You have denied this twice and I have proven it through wiki. I gave the resource and you can look it up yourself. Of course you won't. And that is the point. Acknowledge the quote which is exactly on the topic instead of demanding one that is an aside. Then I will believe that you won't just cheat your way out of the next quote I find. Mind you, let us be clear, I am accusing you of unworthy cheating in your mental duplicity. I'm a Buddhist zealot-no crime to me. But cheating mental gymnastics is unworthy.

    I won't give up on you and don't worry, you are not vexing me. I can do this all day long.
    In case you forgot the issue, here it is again

    December 14 edited December 15 in Buddhism for Beginners Flag

    I am truly amazed to see these two questions below asked and openly debated in this venue. Delusion is a stain on our path. We should seek balance and perspective in our views of the world. Here are the two discussions
    1. Is Trungpa a Bodhisattva? Well he wrote neat books and influenced many toward Buddhism...
    2. Was Linen a Bodhisattva? Well he destroyed a democracy (Russia under the White Army) and murdered an awful lot of people including quite a few of his buddies, while creating a totalitarian dictatorship that destroyed the lives of 100's of millions of people. Now I would like to understand why this venue considers these two questions reasonable for discussion.

    Now Jason here is the quote to answer the question. Deflecting the question and making specious demands on other subject won't really work with me. As I said
    Acknowledge the quote below and show you are not simply duplicitous. The quote:

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917

    The elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly that were organised as a result of events in the Russian Revolution of 1917 were held on November 25, 1917 (although some districts had polling on alternate days), around 2 months after they were originally meant to occur. It is generally reckoned as the first truly free election in Russian history.

    The Bolsheviks, who had seized power in the October Revolution, believed that it would consolidate their power and prove that they had a clear popular mandate to govern. Instead, the election yielded a clear victory for the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs), who polled far more votes than the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks allowed the Constituent Assembly to convene on 18 January 1918. However, the other parties refused to give their support to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin's idea of a soviet republic. He persuaded the rest of the Bolsheviks to leave in protest with him and later that day, it emerged that he had dissolved the Constituent Assembly after only one day. This action is considered to be the onset of the Bolshevik dictatorship. Within a few months of the assembly's dissolution, all opposition parties had been banned. Following the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, no free elections of any sort would be held in Russia until the 1990 republic election.

    Please acknowledge or quit the bluster. Namaste, Dennis
  • JasonJason God Emperor Arrakis Moderator
    edited December 2013
    Dennis1 said:

    Well As I said: I won't give up on you-don't worry. But of course you can simply stop replying if you really mean what you say. I suggest that response-really. As I say you expect me to spend the time finding a quote I read years ago-which I can do-but you won't even acknowledge the one I did find which is much more to the point. We are talking about Lenin being a Bodhi-not my line. I responded that he responded to a open and free election that didn't go his way by a military take-over. You have denied this twice and I have proven it through wiki. I gave the resource and you can look it up yourself. Of course you won't. And that is the point. Acknowledge the quote which is exactly on the topic instead of demanding one that is an aside. Then I will believe that you won't just cheat your way out of the next quote I find. Mind you, let us be clear, I am accusing you of unworthy cheating in your mental duplicity. I'm a Buddhist zealot-no crime to me. But cheating mental gymnastics is unworthy.

    I won't give up on you and don't worry, you are not vexing me. I can do this all day long.
    In case you forgot the issue, here it is again

    December 14 edited December 15 in Buddhism for Beginners Flag

    I am truly amazed to see these two questions below asked and openly debated in this venue. Delusion is a stain on our path. We should seek balance and perspective in our views of the world. Here are the two discussions
    1. Is Trungpa a Bodhisattva? Well he wrote neat books and influenced many toward Buddhism...
    2. Was Linen a Bodhisattva? Well he destroyed a democracy (Russia under the White Army) and murdered an awful lot of people including quite a few of his buddies, while creating a totalitarian dictatorship that destroyed the lives of 100's of millions of people. Now I would like to understand why this venue considers these two questions reasonable for discussion.

    Now Jason here is the quote to answer the question. Deflecting the question and making specious demands on other subject won't really work with me. As I said
    Acknowledge the quote below and show you are not simply duplicitous. The quote:

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917

    The elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly that were organised as a result of events in the Russian Revolution of 1917 were held on November 25, 1917 (although some districts had polling on alternate days), around 2 months after they were originally meant to occur. It is generally reckoned as the first truly free election in Russian history.

    The Bolsheviks, who had seized power in the October Revolution, believed that it would consolidate their power and prove that they had a clear popular mandate to govern. Instead, the election yielded a clear victory for the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs), who polled far more votes than the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks allowed the Constituent Assembly to convene on 18 January 1918. However, the other parties refused to give their support to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin's idea of a soviet republic. He persuaded the rest of the Bolsheviks to leave in protest with him and later that day, it emerged that he had dissolved the Constituent Assembly after only one day. This action is considered to be the onset of the Bolshevik dictatorship. Within a few months of the assembly's dissolution, all opposition parties had been banned. Following the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, no free elections of any sort would be held in Russia until the 1990 republic election.

    Please acknowledge or quit the bluster. Namaste, Dennis

    Fine. If you're not willing to post the Capital reference in question, then I'm going to assume that it doesn't actually exist and that Marx said nothing of the sort. As for the rest, if you bothered to read what I wrote previously, you'll see that I never denied that the Bolsheviks did some very unbodhi-like things. If you recall, I wrote:
    After the removal of Provisional Government by the Bolshevik Party in October of 1917, the country erupted into civil war, and the Allied Power's intervention in Russia's Civil War on the side of pro-monarchist and anti-Bolshevik forces didn't help matters any. During this time, the Bolshevik-lead government did become increasingly more brutal and repressive in an effort to hold on to power amidst the chaos and upheaval. They suppressed rival political organizations and began taking away power from what was left of the directly democratic workers' councils (i.e., soviets) that consisted of worker-elected delegates with both legislative and executive powers.
    I don't deny that the Bolsheviks did some very undemocratic things, including the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly (although the reasons are more complex than the Wikipedia article implies, and it should be noted that Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source since anyone can edit entries, meaning someone biased against Lenin and/or communism could have helped write it). I've also said that I don't uphold the Russian Revolution as a method for achieving economic democracy in the US.

    The point I'm trying to get across, at any rate, is that it was a complex and chaotic time, much like it was during own own civil war (except ours wasn't also fought in the midst of a world war), and just as Lincoln felt forced to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, the Bolsheviks felt compelled to do drastic things to protect the revolution while facing very real threats, both foreign and domestic.

    Does that mean I fully support all of their actions? No. Does it mean I think Lenin is a bodhisattva? No. (And the member who asked that did so jokingly in response to thread started by another member arguing Kurt Cobain was a bodhisattva.) What it does mean is that I think the situation was a bit more complicated than you acknowledge.

    As I said, Lenin wasn't perfect, but I don't think he wasn't the monster you make him out to be. I could pull up numerous things that American generals and presidents have done and just say that they must have been bad people, but that wouldn't be fair to them or intellectually honest, now would it?
  • Thank you Jason. I want you to know I spent 2-3 hours last night and reread 6 chapters of Das Kapital. I am looking for that quote. As I said When I can get to my books I will find the data and present it to you. My memory is excellent. That is a fair quote-but I will find it.

    Meanwhile, Thank you for your acknowledgement. I think his military take over and subsequent brutal put down of objections, coupled with the subsequent horrid results is ample demonstration that Lenin was no Bodhi. That is-was-the question.
    The Marx quote is merely an aside, an easy way to distract from the question.
    We should have a very high standard for Bodhis. I look up to them and rightly so.
    Trungpa may be criticized for his lackluster conduct but he is a genuine Buddhist teacher of excellent knowledge. There surely cannot be any reasonable comparison between Trungpa and Lenin or Mao or Stalin or General U.S. Grant. People who make a livelihood or profession as soldiers are not suitable subjects for Bodhihood.
    Personally: When I was 18 I joined the Air Force. I was a Buddhist at that time. I was selected by the Air Force to got to the AF Academy. I gave great thought to it as I am very pro-American. This was in 1966 during the Vietnam war. I decided that as a Buddhist I could not become a professional soldier. The AF let me out. I have never regretted that decision. A Buddhist should not be a soldier if there is any choice.
    A Bodhi surely cannot be a killer of men and women and children.

    Thank you for your thoughts and endurance. My readings of Marx last night confirmed me in my view that Marx desired a return to the natural rulers before Capitalists-the nobility. I did dupe over about 3 pages of quotes from Marx that tend to this conclusion.
    If you want the quote-say so-and I will send it to you. You really should look up Fabian Socialism. They are the people who have been in control of world finances for the last 70 years or so. They are the people you despise and want to pull down. The world bankers Marx hated so much. Best, Dennis
  • JasonJason God Emperor Arrakis Moderator
    edited December 2013
    Well, all I can say is that I respectfully disagree with you about Marx and Capital. I started reading through it myself and two things are abundantly clear to me. The first is that Capital is meant as a logical, historical analysis of how capitalism arose from previous modes of production and, more importantly, how it functions, i.e., the motion of capital.

    The second is that Marx foresaw in his logical, historical analysis of capitalism the means by which the contradictions embedded into said system would, if not superceded by an evolution in the mode of production, turn the forces of production into forces of destruction (crises, war, etc.). This evolution, socialism, which isn't the focus of Capital, is alluded to, however, and it has nothing to do with reinstating feudalism or any other 'exploitative' system, but with "an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single labour force."

    As for the supposed quote in question proving Marx wanted to resurrect feudal aristocracy (which, if it exists, I think you may have misunderstood and/or taken out of context), I've asked for it now at least three times. I don't know how many times or how many different ways I can ask so that you'll actually produce it; but please feel free to do so if and when the spirit ever moves you.
  • Hi Jason: I agree with your analysis of Das Kapital. In the last chapters you can see his admiration for the American system of Laws and abundant available land-due to the homestead act passed by the 37th congress of 1861-2. Too bad he didn't live to discover that that same nation of laws and new land made a huge progress for the working man. Good though, that he didn't live to see the misuse of his ideals to tear down those nascent freedoms and create slavery.

    You really should check up on The Fabian Society (Fabian Socialism ) that created the world bank and IMF in the name of Socialism and who are now controlling the world banks and undoing all of the gains made by the great mass of the common men.
    Socialism today works toward slavery of the worst kind. Marx would be disgusted.

    I will get you that quote. But it is easy enough to see that Marx looked ate the separation of the peasantry from their land plots and feudal conditions as a much preferable condition compared to the crammed low wage which industry had placed the too abundant workers. He didn't live to see those conditions greatly improved by the very forces he heralded-from America. My books are stored in a rental. When I re-visit
    it I will get the relevant books and find your requested quote-I am correct though-I don't get my quotes wrong very often.

    Thank you for your bracing dialogue. Best fortunes to you, Dennis
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