2020

Aren’t we lucky …?
On the one hand we have a self-appointed god’s army and representatives threatening to wage war against whomever they deem to be the enemy of god …
And on the other hand, we have a self-appointed world’s police force threatening to wage war against whomever it deems to be the enemy of the world …

I can’t but wonder, how would the world be, had we not been blessed by such great nations wanting to protect us … from each other …!
Unfortunately, both are needed now to curb the other’s lust for dominance …

In the end, the party that has the gene that grows it beyond the mind frame and morality of a ten-year old: is the one which can look for a solution outside the prospect of mutual destruction,

In theory both have this gene, but the will to conduct themselves as mature and rational nations is absent,
A legacy of ideologies passed down from prehistoric times are still believed to be the only way, on both sides,
Let’s hope that the laypeople, many of whom have grown out of prehistoric ideologies which are presented as god’s commands or the cleverest existential strategy: can spread their wisdom and influence their leaderships

Now that Iran has admitted to its mistake … I wonder if they have the moral courage to go further …, by offering to compensate the families of the victims …
But I doubt they’re making an effort to look for a section in their thousand-year old shariah that can be stretched to the present … to cover such accidents …
If they don’t make that effort, they are, by their own terms, at the same moral platform as their US rivals, who have repeatedly killed civilians, when their drones, and indeed manned aircraft, hit weddings and social gatherings … accidentally,

By compensating the victims’ families, they would set a new standard which would urge them and other nations to think twice before using civilian air routes, land and waters as warfare arenas,
And this would also re-ignite the debate about the definition of terrorism:
When unarmed civilians are hit, whether deliberately or accidentally, during acts of warTop of Form

It must’ve been slip of the tongue, when the Ukrainian president demanded compensation from Iran; now he’s promising to compensate the victims’ families himself …
More experienced Western leaders were much more careful. They never mentioned that word in any shape or form. They know it would open the floodgates of claims for compensation for past such mistakes …
They will pursue “justice and accountability” … but what that translates to remains a question … because it might fire back at Western countries which have made many such mistakes in the past …

As for the theocratic authorities of Iran, those go by god’s law. And god hasn’t mentioned such accidents in any of their or their Sunni rivals’ shariah books, hence it should be halal to kill the kuffar, whether intentionally or accidentally …

As for the Iranian citizens who were aboard, those will probably be declared martyrs, and their families will be told that they are guaranteed a swift entry to paradise …

The problem with the Middle East and the wider Islamic world is that it knows everything best …

So it was “god’s hand” that helped Iran hit the American bases in Iraq, with Russian made missiles and Russian brains and expertise …

Out of all the world faiths and religions: Buddhists are still the only ones whose teaching is today still relevant …
Not that the Books of Abrahamic religions are less universal …
But it is Buddhists who have grasped the universality of their teaching, while Abrahamic religions used their Books to prop up their local political and business rivalries and competitions …
Not that the Ghita is less universal …
But it is the Buddhists who still make rational arguments when they preach,

Little wonder why the Karmapa has been born to them …
The karma of all the karmas, the action of all actions, the Summing of all aims and purposes …

At this critical time of human history on this planet, this is being announced, whether people like it or not …

Not that every ritual the Buddhists perform, and every attire they wear: are holy, and every Lama is worthy of them …

This is not the end of the journey, except from a non-Buddhist perspective

The most likely outcome of the impeachment of Trump that the layman can foresee is to increase his chances of winning the upcoming elections …
The question that all laypeople are asking when they hear the accusations that he’s facing: isn’t this business as usual …? Haven’t previous presidents done the same, at the same scale or perhaps at a larger one …?
Perhaps not for the purpose of interfering in the campaigns of presidential elections …,
Anyway, no one want to dig out dirt now, remember that the US is a model of democracy for the world …

So what is the issue exactly?
What’s really shocking is that the threat made to the Ukrainian president is not getting any attention …!
This speaks volumes about how the US conducts its foreign politics, this is for sure business as usual …

Aid given to small and poor countries was never an act of benevolence, as everyone have always suspected …
Successive US governments have bought political alliances, votes in the UN Assembly - as a previous US secretary to the UN ranted when those countries didn’t deliver what was expected - … and god-knows what else, as in business deals with US companies and boycotts of non-US … and the list goes on …
And things went OK for decades …, giving everyone, briber and bribed, time to think about the correctness of such a practice,
But when no lessons are learned, it’s only natural that the ill is exposed …
Corruption can’t be hidden forever …

The thing is, the official Left, I mean the Democrats, are in it too, up to their ears …
That’s why they will not be able to make a strong case …
This is how unwritten justice works

Amidst natural disasters, epidemics and climate chaos …: the things that are certain:
That no nation or group of people are exempt from them,
And that the gods of religions are incapable of stopping them,
And that political entities cannot use them to promote their agendas and hamper their rivals’,
And that foes and friends: if they don’t cooperate and help one another and care about one another: they will all be losers …

A new spirit is being conceived by the minds of a new generation all around the world,
What’s happening in the world, whether thought to be manmade or just random: affects all equally,
They hence have one cause now, and that is the wellbeing of everyone,
And the barriers that were built in the past, on the land and in the minds: have to be dismantled, for the everyone’s sake and survival,
The scope of political borders now is only organisational

What drives the Republican and Democrat haters of Trump is not whatever it is they say about him …
Such as corruption, meddling with elections campaigns, his tribal way of running his administration …

What drives them to hate him is that he does these things openly …
Because, perhaps each and every one of his predecessors did them,
And perhaps each and every holder of a high office in the US has done them …

One has to check the sizes of the fortunes many of those have amassed: to question how they could’ve achieved that on their meager salaries,
One has to check the strings that are attached to their mouths and hands that corporations pull or release as they see fit …: to have an idea about the scale of corruption that has been taking place: legally and diplomatically …

The only difference: Trump does it blatantly,
Without the façade of fake diplomacy, fake civility and fake articulacy …

This has damaged the image that the Establishment would like to put out to the world, of an America being the role model in every way you think …
Especially when they go after “rogue regimes”, to stir up wars and revolutions, to install rulers who will spread American values of capitalism and democracy …
The damage is irreparable, and the shows of thuggery on news coverage are now the laugh of the world …

But don’t hasten to think for a second that they layman will join the hate-America camp …, who would love to see America being destroyed and replaced by an authoritarian regime to fill the role of world dominance …

There are still great minds in America,
Great minds who are fully aware of the tragedy that is being brought upon America, and indeed the world, by its political and business leaders’ shortsightedness …
And great minds among the laypeople of America, who will not let their country go down in the darkest pages of the books of history,

In the end, it is perhaps intelligent people in the rock bottom of hell that give birth to a good spirit capable of change

The tricks of trade wars, scaremongering and anti-Chinese propaganda … will probably make its road to becoming a major power a bit rougher, but will not stop China,
If anything, it will strengthen its resolve,

The only way to let this natural evolvement happen smoothly for everyone, including the West: is to welcome it …
As it is, the world has become culturally boring, after the West’s dominance for a few centuries …
As for the political dominance, the world definitely can’t be dictated by one group of nations unrivalled …
If Western nations and their allies take the rise of China as a threat to them: it’s proof that they haven’t been playing the game fairly, this is their problem

I would like to pay tribute to my Aunt Rehab, who has “liked” every post on this Page, and “shared” many,
My first reading of the Ghita in Arabic, was proof-read by her, and in some instances edited and fine-tuned,
Her positive feedback, however, has contributed to giving me much confidence …
With her high linguistic skills, at a very young age, she was a reader and explicator of scriptures in old times,
Old and highly educated men of religion used to come to her seeking her help in understanding complex texts …
This is my feeling at least.

This Page is out now for everyone to read,
The clock can’t be turned back to stop it, and can’t be turned forward to skip it

It is disappointing that criticism directed at beliefs and ideologies is taken as an expression of hatred …
This Page has not expressed hatred to any person or any group of people …

Love and hatred have a long history in religious and political thought alike,
Both are sometimes glorified sometimes vilified …, in both cases the underlying feeling is that of hatred, embellished with words of love … or emphacised with ones of hatred: only to express hatred …

Nations which use love as a slogan will not hesitate to drop bombs on their enemies while announcing their love to them …
Nations which are unashamed, rather proud of their hatred, and believe it to be their national and religious duty, will also drop bombs on their enemies, only their rhetoric will be different …

Difference in beliefs and ways of thinking should not be a motive for hatred,
When an ideology or a belief, however, make it their national, religious or political duty to hate whoever disagrees with them: the result is very obvious …
But the fire of hatred thus finds its way into every aspect of their life: at work, at home and in their every activity …: because they’ve made it a motive, rather than an unwanted thing that needs to be discarded …

Many of the people who subscribe to the ideologies of religions and politics that I’ve criticised on this Page: are friends of mine, were in past lives, and I’m certain will be again …
The love between us can never die, even if they can't see it now ...
To believe that I hate them: is perhaps their only escape from failing to see that I do not, despite my total disagreement with them or rejection of their beliefs …

Religions were never meant to compete with one another, because it’s only logical that they should be calling to the same ideals and virtues …
They were delivered in different places, at different times in different circumstances, in the languages of their people,
Thus, their delivery vehicles were different but the essence of their content is same,

It’s unhelpful to say to other religions: “we love you”, while all the way implying: “although you hate us”,
Especially if this comes from most prominent spiritual leaders, including those of Buddhism,

And if it is truly the case that the practices of a certain religious group are obviously worse than other groups’ in the given circumstances: the answer or the solution cannot be: we are better,

All religions are being put to the toughest of tests: have they really got to the core of their message?
If they did, they can find it in other religions, if they made the effort to …

Whether religious authorities get to that point or not: it is what prevails, even in the absence of their notice,

The victors will be the ones who will rejoice when the circumstantial elements of all beliefs are dropped … for the essence to prevail …
Those are the meek who will inherit the earth, as all the Books have foretold

I don’t understand why “creator or no creator” is still an issue in the minds of some high-ranking Buddhist lamas,
If, in their meditation, they have truly witnessed the Emptiness that is All or No Thing: they should be in no doubt that the semantics are a human invention,
Compassion, hence, suggests to them to embrace all religions, and to have no objection to saying: “creator” as a concept is fine if people are comfortable with it, and can be used as a starting premise,

The Names in different languages of Avelokitesvara, Brahman, Allah, The Sovereign, The Absolute, Ya Hu … all merge in The Numberless Oneness …
And this is Compassion that goes beyond trying to sound better or wiser, by saying that there is no creator, or that one name is better than another …
And would certainly sound more compassionate than using the names of God and Allah in a manner verging on derision,

A quotation on this issue by a high ranking Buddhist lama posted recently on his Page: falls in the category of religious competition, rather than comprehensiveness and inclusion,
Vain will be the attempts of religious leaders of all colours and persuasions: to widen the rift between religions,
Such efforts are of a nature of ignorance, particularly at our testing time and a great confusion,

I do not have a crystal ball that tells me, and neither do I have heavenly origins or connections, but as a human with a reasoning mind I can only come to such logical conclusions upon examination and reflection,
If the religions of the world are serious about their survival: they should start to unite spiritually, by making a genuine effort to study and embrace all the Books of the Far East and the Middle East and the West, to notice that the bridges between them have always been there, but were unnoticed,
Otherwise, as was said before on this Page, their religious institutes are going to be dismantled, including the most secretive and highly guarded ones …
Because, soon, humanity will be sick and tired of men in religious attires, or even in civilian ones, preaching exclusiveness and division, or claiming a monopoly over knowledge and wisdom

More than ever, the world needs spiritual guidance,
One which helps nations, organisations and individuals … distinguish real issues from illusions, and virtue from quick political and business benefit,
Natural disasters, climate change, pandemics … are all manifestations of anarchy, manifestation of confusion in people’s minds about who they are and what purpose their lives have …
Abject poverty, excessive wealth, unresolvable political and ideological disputes …
Mass killings of people and animals, bushfires that have recently destroyed perhaps around a billion wild animals …
: are all signs to reckon with …

Spiritual guidance will not come from religions, which, themselves are party in the raging wars and ongoing disputes,
The miracles that all religions have been waiting for to prove the exclusive correctness of their belief and their self-selection as the people who will inherit the earth and the heavens: will not happen,
Every religion and nation are equally receiving the alarms and warnings …
But instead of heeding, many are still stubbornly clinging to their bigotries and self-righteousness, the very ones which have delivered them to where they are now …

On the other hand, the rituals of the Far East, performed by men in religious attires, chants and standard prayers …: do not speak to the minds of people who have been educated to logical reasoning and trained for empirical sciences …
Those are guided by reason, pointing them to universal values of equality, justice and environmental awareness …
Those can feel an interconnectedness with the world in its entirety …,
No religion or ritual, no race, colour or tribal origins, no political ideology or economic necessity …: can give it or take it away from them …
This is spirituality that is today's

When we say on this Page that all Abrahamic religions must unite and that their Books are but one Book,
When we say that each religion’s self-promised salvation is a delusion,
When we say that their exegeses of the Books and the mundane laws and traditions thus drawn from those exegeses are now obsolete …:
We are not giving an opinion, but rather stating facts,

Hence, if they decide to continue on with their time old divisions, beliefs and traditions: they can expect only more of the same:
War, exodus and destruction …
There’s no limit to how far this can be taken to, until perhaps a very few are left, or some occupiers take over their land for its oil and strategic position,

A watered-down version of each of their beliefs and practices will not be a relief from their misery,
Such mild versions of their religions have been tried in the last century, when modernisation started making its way into their lives …, after centuries of isolation under the Ottoman rule from the rise of sciences, and the development of new political, social and economic theories in Europe,
But soon those mild versions of their beliefs and practices: culminated in civil and religious wars, and a reversion to old traditions …
A watered-down version of their beliefs is only a breeding ground for extremism and fundamentalism, which remain dormant, until they make their comeback at the suitable political and economic circumstances …

Of course foreign powers have been taking advantage of their backwardness and using them and their lands for their own political and economic purposes …
But they were unprepared for the foreign meddling in their internal affairs then, and they are less prepared now …
But no, to the contrast: they want it, although they say they loath it …

This is not an opinion that this Page is trying to impose on them, for some benefit that they have imagined, or by an impulse of arrogance and selfishness …

With their reasoning minds, common sense, and a basic level of a human cooperative spirit and survival skills: they can come to the same conclusions,
There’s nothing special that this Page has that they do not have

What is killing the world, the Corona virus or greed?
The empty shelves in supermarkets will make it hard for families and the elderly to survive, if this craze is set to continue …
Small businesses, which sell non-essential goods and services, are struggling to generate enough income to keep their businesses alive …
Restaurants and cafes … same, are shedding off their workers …
For both of those, the landlords aren’t budging on the rent,
Inflated as it is, paying it now is totally beyond their capacity …

Petrol price in Sydney is close to a record high, although crude oil is at a record low …!
Perhaps in their thinking, petrol companies are counter-balancing the shortage of demand due to a serious reduction in travel,

Banks will probably be instructed by their governments to reduce temporarily the monthly mortgage and loan payments of their customers …, but to those customers this will translate to their debts taking longer to pay off …
But you bet, banks will be given handouts under the guise of loans or whatever else from the governments’ tax-payers’ money, such as what has already happened in the US,

Travel and airline companies have already started asking for compensation to keep their businesses afloat …

I can’t but wonder where will the governments get the money from, if revenue is destined to drop so drastically …
But who knows, perhaps an economic theory based on the necessary satisfaction of greed will give governments the ideological justification to print money and to tamper with the numbers on the computers of their reserve banks, to make the books look good …
And they will, for a short while …
But I don’t know …, in the layman’s old-fashioned thinking: if money doesn’t stand for substance, it will evaporate as quickly as it is spilled …, and another crisis will have to be faced, but this one will only be bigger …

So, from the bottom all the way to the different levels to the top …: individuals as well as orgnisations big and small, aren’t prepared to put up with loss of convenience or income, even if this went against the welfare of their countries and indeed the world …
If worse comes to worst, the “clever” ones who are planning to survive the longest: will have to extinguish everyone else around them: to get the satisfaction of their own survival …, which will be one that is not worth surviving …!

The most likely beneficiary of conspiracy theories are the entities which are theorised by the theorist to be the conspirators …

There’s a great demand for conspiracy theories all around the world, and there is no shortage of suppliers …
In most cases, the theorist wants to spread their own panic, and to tell the world that they are too clever to be subjected to the effect of the supposed conspiracy …, as has been said on this Page ...
And the believer in a theory is usually a fearful person, who has lost trust in everything …, including the god they say they believe in,

For both spreader and receiver, the belief in a “power”, whether as random events or divine intervention: is fading …
Almost everything is now theorised to be manmade …, for some sinister motive …

This is taking a look at the influence of human emotions and desires upon the world: from the wrong angle,
We’ve argued on this Page that the events of the world, whether of a natural occurrence – such climate change - or manmade – such as breakouts of conflicts and economic crises -: are driven by human desires and emotions …
But this should not translate to believing that people can sit down, set a plot, and go ahead and implement it …
If some entities have attempted such things: they would know better that things will not go according to plan …
There’s always a factor that wasn’t anticipated, which will jump in to divert the course of their plot …
And evil plots backfire at their plotters, even if they ended up causing some of the intended harm …

But it is propaganda nowadays that paint an event as an outcome of a conspiracy or whatever else, and whether favourable or unfavourable …
And if one subscribes to a particular source of propaganda: they’ll buy into whatever is furnished by that source …

The partnership between the ignorant crowds and the tyrannical forces is what keeps this vicious cycle of passions all the way …

How will the economies of the world fight the virus they have all been infected with: remains to be seen …
Of course, countries all around the world are taking whatever necessary measures to compensate the loss of income for individuals as well as small and big businesses and to stimulate the economy within the present limits …
But while we’re still in the early stage of the infection …: no ideological shift or an intention of it can been deduced from any government’s statement …
Perhaps in their minds the situation will be had under control with the existing business rules and laws,
Rules and laws which govern … basically “ruleless” and lawless greed and competition …
Or, to be more precise: rules and laws which can be used as a reference in courts of law when disputes arise …, to uphold the right to be greedy and ruthlessly competitive,
But thank god there are labour unions, however corrupt, which do look after the rights of workers, and don’t let corporate greed trample on their livelihoods …

While fighting the new virus, however, the paradigm is completely new:
The once unspoken rule of the priority of money over the people: will be despitefully exposed like never before …
Big business will not be able to say to its workers: sacrifice your lives for my sake so I can continue giving you life …

With an all but complete collapse of competing businesses: competition dictated by greed will become redundant, as businesses will find virtually no one to compete with, considering their all downward spiraling …
Of course, businesses will always find ways to persuade their governments to favour them over their competitors: but with their lack of the lubricant cash: they are equally in a much weaker position,
So much so, government officials and policy makers, particularly the ones who have suppressed their discontentment with the dominance of unfettered greed: are going to start coming out to say: enough is enough,

The economies of countries and the livelihoods of people can’t be held in the pockets of giant corporations and wealthy individuals, who have enjoyed a long time of bullying, bribing and dictating to governments the policies that benefit the individual only if they suit big business and wealthy individuals …

Political parties that are not on the beneficiaries list of big business and wealthy individuals, free to make the decisions and adopt policies which benefit the people: will be the right parties to govern at this trying time,
The dogmas of capitalism will have to be adjusted, or they will drain – not just individual countries, but the entire world economies,
The stock markets will crash down to null, if governments cannot step in to stop brokers, buyers and sellers from bringing the stock market down while outdoing one another …
The lives and livelihoods of ordinary people: has got to be the first thing on the minds of governments, to stop a complete collapse,
Without the people: businesses, big and small, cannot exist

Photos of the earth from orbiting satellites have shown the difference low air pollution makes to the colour and the clarity of the atmosphere …
I haven’t seen any numbers yet, but it’s quite obvious that carbon emissions have been reduced significantly, due to a significant reduction of all kinds of travel …

How will this affect climate, if at all, is yet to be seen …
Both Climate Change skeptics and believers are probably not too keen to see those numbers, and their interpretations of forthcoming climatic events and whether or not the carbon emissions reduction has contributed to them: will still contradict each other …, to keep the debate going …

In whichever way you look at it: the current situation – which itself is attracting opposing views, as to its gravity and our reaction to it -: is just exposing our lack of focus,
Human made ideologies and religions, regarding the survival of humanity, its purpose and its natural or supernatural laws …: are all being blown away before our own eyes …
People who still want to stick to them: aren’t going to learn the lessons the change is meant to convey …

If you believe in the Creator, no matter how much you hate someone: He loves them,
And if you don’t: the chemistry and evolution don’t care at all who you hate or love,
The god who loves only the people you love, and hates all those you hate: is a figment of your imagination,

Regardless of the theories you may have about the causes and effects of today’s events: the survival and the welfare of one group of people isn’t going to be possible without the survival and the welfare of all groups,
So, it is only logical to put all your grudges and your self-selection behind you and wish for the best for everyone,
People’s destinies are so intertwined now that any harm they wish onto others: they’ll get a big share of it, if not all of it,
And life will continue on, despite all the ill-wishes, but the ill-wishers will be the biggest losers

The way I see it, titles such as Karmapa or Dalai Lama …: are only a spiritual responsibility, rather than a continuation of a physical existence …
Buddhists who are staunch believers in their system might reject such an argument,
And they perhaps use the prophecies which came true as evidence to their belief,
But one has to look at those prophecies closely to make logical sense of them,
The actualisation of the prophecy concerning the coming of 17th Karmapa, for example, references hints to the whereabouts of his birth, and to the visions that some high ranking Lamas had …
But that doesn’t prove that this is the rebirth of the previous person who was the holder of the title of Karmapa,
The texts need to be revisited and analysed logically to come to such conclusions, and reason should have precedence over tradition,

The reason I raise this subject is the posts I see on social media, depicting photos of the 16th Karmapa, side-by-side with those of the present 17th Karmapa: from two perspectives ...!
So, the followers of each Karmapa have come to their own conclusions about which Karmapa is the re-birth of the previous,
But physical resemblance is never a proof of identity,

I also add that I remember clearly Karmapa Ogyen explicitly saying, in a lecture that he gave a number of years ago, that he doesn’t feel that he is an incarnation of the previous Karmapa,
So why are Buddhists clinging to such traditions, which are causing divisions amongst themselves …?

The fact that neither of the present Karmapas is an incarnation of the previous: doesn’t diminish their either spiritual rank and responsibility …

Besides, it seems that the current system assumes a monopoly of spiritual teachers, whom I call messengers and prophets and their assistants,
A monopoly which sternly claims the ownership of those teachers, and denies their rebirths in other cultures and religious orders …
Again, if this aspect of their belief is analysed logically: it would imply that the responsibilities of the Karmapa and the Dalai Lama: are strictly Buddhist posts,
This takes away the universality of the Message, and makes of Buddhist monks and clergy: an exclusive world spiritual authority …
Such an argument is false by its own reason and by the very teaching of the Buddha,

On the other hand, the recognition of objects which belonged to a previous lama by the supposed current one: is not proof of the rebirth either,
Such incidences are not “scientifically” overseen for them to have the certainty of a physical proof: as they are believed to be …
The recalling of previous lives usually happens spontaneously, without an external interference or encouragement, and they usually encompass a whole lot of things, including places, people, events and so forth …

So, I urge my Buddhist brothers to take a rational look at this issue, and see that both Karmapas have a spiritual message to deliver,
And while the Karmapa Ogyen’s message is universal, by virtue of him being the birth of Ishvara, the other Karmapa’s message is perhaps addressed mainly to a branch of Buddhism, but this doesn’t make it less important …

Cardinal George Pell doesn’t have a reason to celebrate the High Court’s decision to quash his conviction,

Cardinal Pell still has to answer his “lord’s” questions:

If a man errs, does a ritual of confession wipe clean his error?

Does the belief in a particular god of a particular religion make man guilt free, no matter what he does?

: the questions that his mind will ask him, if he hasn’t numbed it completely,
 

Because, even if he is genuinely innocent, some other priest, like many in the past, will abuse children and subsequently confess, and get the appropriate backup and coverup from the Church,

And if called to justice, someone will cry out: are you interfering with god’s law?
 

It is about time that the god who creates man irreparably corrupt, and sends the devil to tempt him, then forgives him if he believes and practices the rituals that he prescribed: is joined with the rest of pagan gods, not worthy of worship,
 

This is not Christianity Dr Pell; do you have a copy of the Gospel? Please read it,

If faith, justice and morality were so easily achievable, the Christ wouldn’t have wasted his breath giving the speeches that he gave,

Think about it. If you do, many of your colleagues will, and you'll discover that reason is the best approach to spirituality,

This is the real issue, and the media hype is just a distraction from it

Religions and New Age prophets have all been so disappointed that they couldn’t find a hint to the present situation in any of their prophecy books …

And as if time is a predetermined sequence of events, they all keep boasting: "we knew it all", when major events take place …

Today’s world events, however, go to say that time is not predetermined, and no one has been privileged by the knowledge of the future …

When prophets in the past were given glimpses of future events, they were meant to convey a warning about what could potentially happen in the future, if human thought and relations stayed on the track that they were on …

Funnily, the warnings which came in the Bible and in the Qur’an: most of them are happening now …

The thing is, religious authorities on all sides would’ve preferred that only their enemies were affected by them,

But today’s events have put all religions, all ideologies, all nations … together as one entity, and have given them a reason to put their differences behind and cooperate for their all welfare and survival …

Whoever are still trying to use those events as an opportunity to backstab each other or to gain an advantage over others … are going to be the biggest losers

Science and scientific methods of investigation have conquered pagan beliefs and exposed many of their fallacies, and more is yet to come …

The pious people of religions cling ever more stubbornly to their beliefs and traditions, however,

If they are driven by a sincere sense of an Essence, their pursuit won’t be wasted, and they’ll open up to other beliefs and traditions and will set themselves on a path of knowledge in their lives to come …

Their best excuse for not coming close to a close encounter with Truth: is that they have already got there, but it’s our fault that we don’t appreciate the depth of their knowledge!

Pagan beliefs across the ages have pulled out such an argument ready up their sleeves, while unaware how naïve their reasoning is …

Religions have hence been trying to reinvent themselves in recent times …

Learning logical reasoning, sometimes tapping on science, expressing an admission of universal human values of rationality, cooperation, justice and equality, at every opportunity …: they attempt to bridge some of the rifts created by their predecessors between them and reason, and between themselves, in order to close the scandalous logical gaps and the over-emphasis on blind embracement of concepts, conveniently called faith in every religion,

In the end, it doesn’t matter how well they articulate their want of reason, time makes an appointment for them to expose their new falsehood, like it is doing now with the old one …

Monotheism will do its best to survive … for the sake of the millions who can’t grow out of it …

Their leaderships had better learn from their past, to replace animosity and competition by friendship and cooperation, and not to guarantee a paradise or salvation of any kind to their followers and hell and torture to everyone else, and certainly not to choose themselves as a god’s favourite creation in any shape or form …

As for Far Eastern religions, also those have to come down from their ivory towers to realise that their arguments and self-development techniques cannot address today’s problems,

If they fail to extend their spiritual reach to everyone and fail to adapt to them: their future is not going to be certain

This Page doesn’t aim to create a perfect world,

For the simple reason: there’s no such a thing,

With its constant movement, hence change, this world cannot be perfect,

If it is thought to be prefect, it will be for a short instant, and time will soon introduce an unanticipated factor to mar its supposed perfection,

Not being poetic or religious in anyway, people consciously or unconsciously have observed the phases of the moon,

From the colourful sunset skies it cracks and grows until it reaches its complete circle, only to start going …

This randomly/arbitrarily designed monthly display, and other periodical phenomena, have been making known the impermanence and the spontaneous regeneration of nature to the deepest depths of human consciousness,

Religions have unfortunately taken it that they have to sit back and pray, in order to be pious, in order to escape impermanence,

Their prescriptions, however, do not work in everyone’s mind,

And after millennia of religiously practising them, those prescriptions have become ritualistic/robotic, hence ineffective,

I don’t know anyone who has been given a history of the future that gives them reassurance that this is what’s required/set up,

For the rest of us who have thinking minds: we can’t help thinking about the problems people face on every day of their lives …

Problems which, they too, constantly change and require new answers and solutions,

If we gave the standard answers of religions: be pious and patient, pray and observe our law and traditions: they will be where they are now …: either religious or atheist,

For the rest of us who have thinking minds: if a disaster can be avoided, let’s try to avoid it, and be prepared for the next,

This kind of reasoning and action is known to work

Governments in Western countries where incidents of racial vilification have been occurring, as a reaction to the spread of the virus in their countries: can blame only themselves for their people’s down spiraling in racial hatred …

And as if the virus is an opportunity to bash China, leaders of such countries have hastened to point their fingers at it, suggesting that it is the authoritarian regime’s fault, and the communist party’s that have brought this havoc to the world …

I don’t know if the media are intelligent enough to figure out that the US’s government is following this track of argumentation in order to distract its people from the its own mishandling of the situation …

The disastrous situation in the US cannot be blamed on China, except in the minds of angry irrational people, who are too ready to have yet another reason to hate China,

Western media make it look like it is pro-totalitarianism and pro-communism if we approached this matter rationally, and as if any impartial scientific investigation should certainly come to the conclusion that it was the Chinese government that deliberately allowed the virus to spread in the world …

No one knows yet where the virus started and how it jumped to humans …, and a preconceived conviction does not help a scientific investigation,

Ideological differences cannot make any difference in stopping it or indeed spreading it …

Perhaps China’s success in having it under control has been the envy of some Western countries, which are still living in an illusory political, cultural, economic and technological superiority …

The best approach to handle the civilisational transition that is occurring in the world is to embrace it, because stop it or reverse it: they cannot,

And this will give them a positive role to have in it, one which will have a long-lasting outcome and which will be admirably remembered, rather than the obstructive and envious role they are playing,

And a new era in human and civlisational understanding can thus be started

When will the nations of the word, the wealthy and powerful, as well as the ones wishing to be so: realise that they all share the same domestic problems: of lack of freedoms and injustice, in one form or another ...?

The propaganda machines, I mean news corporations, whether state-sponsored or corporate: can continue painting current events as black and white at their convenience,

But the true colour of each event cannot be changed, and time recognises only the true colours,

They only have to look at the recent history that is well known, to realise that the “rope of dishonesty is short”, as the Arabic saying goes …

Whenever and wherever there is injustice: the wronged masses will get to the point when they feel that their very existence is threatened, and the once conformist becomes an unstoppable rebel …

The democratic institutes of the West, although in theory are the right mechanisms to fight corruption and injustice: can themselves be turned into a tool of corruption and injustice, when they are entrusted to corrupt officials …

The West can no longer lecture the world on good politics and economics when it deals with its own problems in the same manner that rogue and corrupt regimes do …

It is only a matter of time until the prestige and credibility of news corporations, the state-sponsored and the corporate: crumble under their heavy burden of deception and monetary entanglements,

As it is, people, pretty much all around the world, have lost trust in their governments and the news that they read and hear …

More of the same will only accelerate the downward spiraling

The compassion that the religions of the world can demonstrate today: is not to tell the world that they are compassionate, and compassion doesn’t necessarily translate to a passive attitude towards the disputes and the tension that are building up everywhere, in the belief that this is the working of karma or god and will be sorted out in time …

Of course it is the working of god and karma, but if the people don't change their attitudes and practices their destinies won't change either ...

A lot of the tensions and the disputes of today’s world are rooted in the divisions and the misunderstandings between the different religions …

If the religions of the world still believe that if everyone adopted their beliefs and practised their practices: everything should be fine …: those disputes and tensions will not go …

In today’s divided world, compassion demands of religions to open their borders wide, so that they teach and learn from each other and empathise with each other’s problems …

The once high walls and barriers have to come down, so that religions realise that they actually share all their core beliefs and spiritual values …

And many will be surprised how much they can learn from a religion they once looked down on and despised …

The religions of the world were never meant to compete with one another …

They are basically teaching the same thing, in different languages, in different circumstances, in different cultures, in different climates and geographies, to different groups of people …

The religions of the world were not meant to make the world homogeneous,

Nor were they meant to hide in their ivory towers while god and karma haven't yet made the world entirely like them,

This is the wishful thinking of their ancestry, perhaps it made sense in the past and inspired them …

Today it is a barrier

Compassion, as a Reality, is projected in every aspect of the world,

But we have to be careful not to be drawn into believing that every human activity is driven by compassion,

So when the nations of the world call out: “O we love our enemies”, while they’re plotting to harm them or bombing them: we cannot sit back and say: we must not criticise because we are compassionate,

The ill-intent that the nations of the world have harboured for one another will not yield a good outcome for any of them, but to the contrary, the ones with the worst intent will have to cop the worst outcome,

Karma as a projection of Compassion, is meant to correct crooked paths and ill deeds …, and to alert us to the presence of somber parts in our psyches, that they too can generate fear and suffering …

Advanced nations run their affairs of economics, war strategy and politics: aided with statistics and probabilities … amongst other indicators,

Perhaps in a future time such methods will be placed in the same category as dissecting a chicken’s liver to predict a volcanic eruption,

Nations of the world should not be racing to be better and stronger, for the purpose of control and hegemony, but rather for the sake of helping the less fortunate and less capable,

This is the surest way to insure their own welfare and long term survival,

In the end, nations which are the least irrational - and those are naturally the ones which have the least ill of intents: will be the triumphant ones, despite the damage that will be inflicted on them,

Like natural activity: human activity also has laws which guide it and constrain it, whether people are aware of them and recognise them or not …

When nations deceive one another or wrong one another: however smart and loud their propaganda machines are: the deed is what it is when harm has been its intent and outcome …

The present pandemic with its economic and other consequences has exposed many ill intents, and has flared paranoias …

The buildup of weapons – and as if there aren’t enough already to wipe out civilisation and pretty much life altogether – will not insure anyone’s survival, but will indeed make things worse, by giving leaders and populations a false sense of self-confidence,

War is not an inevitable natural law, as many self-proclaimed experts in human psychology and history have professed,

War is the failure of human irrationality,

When wild animals fight, it is to maintain a certain natural balance, and for the good of all the species involved,

When nations fight, it is their failure to foster mutual understanding between one another …

Humans can’t take the jungle as a model to go by,

The problem, however, is that when a god is supposed to backup one nation against another: the irrationality is deeply entrenched in people’s psyches as well as their leaders’ …

A channel of communication between competing nations: is the best way to an exit from a treacherous road and a volatile situation,

Through which both parties express to the other their fears and anxieties …

The minutest degree of an honest and good intention can grow and bear its fruit, for the giver and the receiver, and conflict can be avoided altogether …

And they can rediscover what their Books have in fact taught them, practically, not through the politicised sermons and advice of heads of religions,

Unless those embrace all religions: they are of no use

The Lebanese people, and world nations which have watched the Lebanese rebellion and kind of revolution recently … are perhaps wondering: so what has transpired from that …?

First of all, it’s a good thing that it hasn’t turned into an all-out civil war, like the one in Libya and Syria, or constant strife like in Iraq, or a ruthless war verging on genocide like in Yemen …

And everyone hopes that there’s still a measure of rationality in the Lebanese people’s minds to prevent this kind of a total breakdown …

What’s not happening though is change,

So, although ordinary Lebanese from all walks of life, from all religious backgrounds … came out and embraced one another and expressed their solidarity against corrupt rulers and systems: the corrupt rulers and systems are still there,

The change of governments was as shallow as paint applied to an old house, it has made it look a bit good for a short term, but the old house is still old and is about to fall apart,

I see that the main reason behind this is that the Lebanese people, or most of them at least, have not been unable to let go of their allegiances to their political and religious entities, in order to replace them with one allegiance only: to Lebanon,

So, each party and group were indeed fed up with their leaders, but couldn’t relinquish their political and religious belonging,

The government that was sworn in a few months ago typified that attitude, in that it consisted of new personalities: all of whom belonged each to an old group of religion and politics …

So, it has been proven practically now to the Lebanese and their leaders: that the problems are not only in the personalities, but in the mentalities …

And until those mentalities have changed … nothing else will …

The pandemic and the repercussions it has had on world politics and economics … has driven the Lebanese economy to an all but total collapse, while as leaders and populations: the Lebanese are still clinging to old beliefs, systems and traditions … which perhaps worked hundreds of years ago: but have no place in today’s world,

As leaders and populations: the Lebanese have to let go of the belief that their religion is going to be the final victor, so that when they manage their affairs they all work for the good of everyone,

With a minute degree of rationality they can realise that an exclusive victory of one religion is not possible,

The best they can do is to be good to one another, going by their Book, and let God be the Judge

Knowledge cannot be built on observation alone,

Knowledge has to be sought deep inside our minds,

In fact, the disciplines of learning by observation: start in the mind, with a theory and then the adoption of it … all taking place in the mind,

What is a “substantial” fact: is what the mind has accepted as such,

This doesn’t mean that we should go back to blind faith and subjective convictions …

It is a delicate balance, that cannot be really expressed in any degree of accuracy …

The so-called secular philosophies today: wish that religion has been just a phase in human evolution, that will soon or later be surpassed by a smart twist of “evolution” …

The concept per se is not very wrong,

In fact, mainstream religions will have to step back to give way to a broader and more inclusive vision of humanity and its purpose in this world, if they really understand what came in their Books,

But the so-called secular philosophies, many of them, still believe that life with all its aspects of human life and intellectual development: is just a byproduct of chemical accidents …

The problem with such a view is that it limits their scope of investigation and their source of knowledge …

And the main loophole in it is that it strips individuals and nations from every existential responsibility,

In that, if for example one is alone, they can do whatever they want, if there’s no CCTV watching them …

Or if someone is watching but can’t stop them: they’ll do whatever they want anyway…

And ironically, this is the ground both the materialists and religions find themselves fighting over,

One with backup from chemistry, the other with backup from god …

And the fighting goes on in every available direction, or within one's own borders ...

With a pandemic that is causing world leaders to panic: we can see that some are considering the option of instigating war … for some immediate economic and strategic benefit they hope to achieve, and for galvanising their fragmented populations around one national cause …

It’s an option which will backfire at them first and foremost, on top of causing devastation and suffering to everyone,

In the end, the civilisations which will survive the change that is beyond everyone’s control: will be the ones which can adapt,

And the adaptation that is most required is the will to be honest and to cooperate, regardless of national and ideological considerations,

The old smart methods won’t work anymore, their period of effectiveness has expired, and are indeed making a bad situation worse

If you want to see firsthand how religious animosities get their dose of revitalisation … you don’t need to look too far,

First, the king of Turkey reclaims Hagia Sophia as a mosque, overruling Mustafa Kemal’s perhaps only wise decision to turn to a museum …

Then the Pope expresses his disenchantment with the reclaim …

One can almost be sure that both are sure that the god in the heaven will not celebrate such a victory or get angry over such a defeat, however …

But such is a reminder to their loyal and pious populations, necessary to keep the phantom causes of war and competition alive …

After all, this is how all Abrahamic religions have thrived over the many centuries,

The best thing that can be done with this magnificent work of engineering and architecture, however, is to turn it to a place for prayer and meditation for everyone, belonging to a religion or not, who want to be inspired by the lofty ceilings of those sky wide domes, to sit down quietly and recite verses from whichever Book they want, or just to say their own prayers to the Creator of the worlds …, “Who taught mankind what it could not have known” …

Perhaps this would be the first drops of water over the fires that have been flaring for millennia,

And so that the Books are adopted as one Book, and the symbols, statues and names and paintings of people are removed …, so that no attachment is made with God, as all the Books have commanded …

But the people of religions aren’t interested in building bridges between each other, and they surely prefer to continue leading their leaders to push them down the road of further hatred and to flareup more wars …

And as warfare technology gets more destructive … so will the wars …

Perhaps when more parts of that part of the world are flattened, like some have been already, with no one on them to celebrate victory or to weep over defeat …

Perhaps a new generation will come … to throw away pagan beliefs and rituals once and for all

Nihilism is a concept of mind … as well,

If some meditation technique gears the mind into a state of “nihilism”:

It’s because the mind has had a conceivable acceptance to it …

Then it went down the road of mind, which has been prescribed, which can deliver one to it,

The fact that some meditators can induce a state of nihilism onto themselves, and say therefore I don’t exist and nothing exists:

Doesn’t mean that this the ultimate goal of existence …!

If I’m totally certain, that existence is an accident that it is at humans’ will to end it: I would say: let’s hang on to it,

It’s beautiful, virtuous, glorious, joyful …

If people suffer in it, help them to acknowledge those virtues in it, and they’ll be happier …

It is perhaps the failure of some people, who are nevertheless very virtuous, compassionate and non-violent: to see virtue in existence: that urges them to seek nihilism,

Run from such a bliss …

So where did the virtue of compassion come from?

Perhaps Buddhist teachers should consider re-reading what is generally called “Dharma”,

A collection of speeches by Gautama, and perhaps other teachers …

Like all “messages”, it’s only “natural” to envisage that the message of the Buddha has been added to and perhaps tampered with and misread and misinterpreted, across the centuries …

Buddhist teachers should consider this natural phenomenon to have the Dharma freed from it

As soon as we utter words about the nature of the mind, we are not in it anymore, but on the peripheries of it,

In a merge in it, however short or long a meditator can relax in it: those words are empty,

This is emptiness,

As for the mind, this is all, emptiness included,

This is why religions should not compete, and should never have competed,

The deliverers of them spoke in their place and time, from the mind …,

It is their problem, the clergy, that they haven’t approached it, and preferred differing over the words …

And until they witness a glimpse of mind, they’ll continue falling deeper in emptiness

You’re lucky that all your ambitions and aspirations have been shred and thrown in emptiness, many times since child, when you didn’t even know how precious emptiness was …

But you have a body, with hands, eyes and ears, those you don’t own,

Serendib will use them to his attest,

So the praise and encouragement annoy you, because it shows permissive and dismissive authority,

This is your imperfection and their imperfection,

After all, all humans have imperfections,

The world doesn’t change by ambitions and permissions,

When Serendib wants to bump into someone, he will into whomever keeps an eye constantly out for him, without giving anyone prior notice,

The world has changed already, it’s just labouring now …

And everyone who likes the new world will rejoice in teaching it …

Isn’t this what they are doing now with the present/old world?

And you will gather, and everyone will be laughing at their own deeds including you,

And this has to be written, and everyone will think it is addressed to them,

That’s how it works

As the prayers in the Solitary in His Identity are being read in English, one thing should be born in mind,

And that is, the Books were delivered by the same mind of humanity,

Religions might feel offended if told: this was written by your prophet/teacher/deity …

And I’m sure, at a “higher” level of existence: such truth will be immediately known to them …

The time is now, and after millennia have passed since delivering the now known Books: to see them as one Book …

There’s no standard way to salvation/enlightenment/…

Compassion is a “word” all religions agree upon, and is centre stage in their philosophy and methods of transcendence …

I’m being careful with my words, so if you are not prepared to read another dictionary: those words are hopefully neutral, and point to essences,

It is when words and standard methods are embraced that essences are at a huge risk of being lost in their fog …

Compassion has no form, nor does it lack form,

Compassion has mind, image and expression, in a manner of speaking,

If mind is seen as emptiness, it is because it is sublimeness,

Sublimeness which can be visioned as void, or as all,

This is where words fall short of expression,

But so long as we acknowledge that: it’s fine, and religions can hence be unified in the mind …

The moon is reflected on the water,

If the water is still: one image is reflected,

If the water is agitated: there are too many reflections to count, each lasts a split of a second,

As soon as the moon goes, so do the image(s),

But compassion: that lets this happen: is sublime above it, unphased by it,

Time comes from it and goes back into it

To try to paint the Lebanese crisis as a political, economic and strategic crisis, that uses religion only as one of its cards: is not very helpful,

The local and Arab media have to be discounted altogether as a source of information on it,

As for the Western ones, those have mastered the craft of taking things at their “face value”,

So, for example, if the Americans say that by weaponing terrorists, directly or indirectly, they are championing freedom, democracy and a free market: these are the lines those media go down,

Even the ones less gigantic and less controlled by corporate interests …

That’s on top of their patriotic duty of anti-Russian and anti-Chinese bias,

Hence alternative media are gaining popularity, at least within the readership of the less involved in this complete international dichotomy, consisting of the blatant Western bias, and the anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Jewish sentiments which revolve around it …, and are expanding their issues of interest to the Lebanese crisis,

Those, though, have yet to make a complete leap out of the quagmire of international misinformation,

Because, by being in it, unable to have an extrospective view of it: they are bound to be drawn into its relentless tides and fides,

It is perhaps not easy for a journalist to critique religious beliefs, and it’s not their job anyway,

But I see that it is their duty not to downplay their major role in fueling those wars,

It would be very naïve to think or to pretend to think that religious differences aren’t the root of the Lebanese crisis, and its parallels in the Arab and wider Islamic world,

Religious rivalry there is not only driving the constant strife, but also the coalescence of corrupt politicians and public officials with their heads of religions, who bless their sectarian support and constantly demand more of it …

As has been said on this Page, every religion and every sect of every religion have a book or books of prophecies, which have promised them exclusive victory and the inheritance of the entire earth,

Discarding those books, and taking a rational view of their situation is considered a betrayal to their faith, punishable in an eternal jail sentence in the heaven’s ovens,

So, although journalists aren’t meant to get involved in proving the falsehood of such time old pagan beliefs, they can at the least point to them, as major sources of rivalry, corruption, backwardness and irrationality, for the purpose of exposing them and stripping them from their tabooness and fake holiness

It’s a good thing that people have faith, which they explain with the help of words or other mental constructs …

And if other people don’t share the same faith with them, they should respect it and appreciate it nevertheless, and shouldn’t in any degree feel threatened by it …

It’s only when the faith requires from the faithful to force their faith upon others, by whatever means, that the apprehension is experienced,

But when people become convinced that all faiths are based on mental constructs, which have been embraced emotionally and faithfully by the believer, they start to feel less forceful with their faith onto others, and less intimidated by other’s faiths,

The world cannot be completely free from faith, at least not now or in a foreseeable future,

So, to say that it would be best to throw away all faith, for the aim of becoming purely rational, is not a practicable idea,

Moreover, “rationality” itself: requires faith in it, for it to work …!

The working of the human mind and emotions is not an easily analysable subject of study, and anyone who claims mastery or even just a fair degree of comprehension of it: are only driven by faith in certain convictions of faith …!

It’s good that people talk about their faith and would like to introduce others to it, but they shouldn’t expect a reward of new conversions to their faith …, or of any other kind for that matter,

And as the Book of The Solitary in His Identity is being read in English on this Page, and in which a “Call” is being called loud and clear, and a promise of suffering if the call is not heeded is also made loud and clear:

Essentially, at least as COB sees it, the Call is to transcend the narrowness of mental constructs and beliefs, on the Way to Union,

And this, indeed, is the Call of every message of Abrahamic religion, and also that of Buddhism and Hinduism … as well,

It is when the mental constructs … which in fact are not the Call itself, but rather pointers to it in place and time: are believed to be the “call” that the Call is fogged, and after many centuries totally forgotten, buried under piles of dust,

In those trying times, it seems that everyone is being pointed to accept other people’s faith as they do their own,

After all, all are only a few steps ahead on the long road to total enlightenment and knowledge, so long as they are alive and well on this planet, engaged in its activity and stillness,

I have faith that faith doesn’t care how we formulate it in our hearts and minds and express it to others, and to which historic events and places on earth we tie it …

All are objects of it,

If our hearts and minds can contain the whole, we are perhaps a lot closer to it

It is sad to see great thinkers and philosophers of our time, such as Prof Noam Chomsky, of whom the layman is a great admirer, confusing the natural law with human virtues, and hence unnoticing the Law, but rather looking for divine law!

One which would translate only to relative law and self-selection immediately, as has been the case for millennia,

The inference from one into the other is too obvious, and needs not much deliberation …:

Once one has declared oneself a believer and an abider by the divine law: one awards oneself special rights and privileges on behalf of the divine …

The thing with the Law is that it can never be expressed neither fully nor partially …

If, for example, the Ten Commandments were pointers to virtue, it’s because they point to the Law, but they are not it,

It’s the human mind that has to do the work of making them work in their time and circumstances …

However, if we sit back and say: well, we can’t get right there, so let’s make do with the laws that we’ve got …: we have destined ourselves for trouble,

The Law is not taught to humanity by divine intervention, except if humanity wants to see it this way,

The Law is taught to humanity by the entire world and the events of it …,

Hence, whether this is seen as divine intervention or just a cosmic manifestation … becomes an insignificant personal choice:

Because in both cases the Law can still be seen …

So, if we want to teach fairness to children at an early age: it should mean fairness, not “favouritism” because god told us, or because we are mightier, and might is a natural law …

In such frames of mind: the one with the upper hand believes that if they give what they have to give: it’s because they are good and benevolent: when they are only doing the normal just thing …

If one believes, for example, that the Ten Commandments are God’s Law - and the layman thinks indeed they are, for they came again in every subsequent Book, and they make sense, albeit with a different interpretation of them than the mainstream one - : they are everyone’s, and not a privilege to the adopters of them,

Such realisation gets the adopters of them to put themselves at the same level as everyone else who might have their own version of them … or something else entirely,

There’s perhaps not a human civilisation in the world, whether advanced or not, ancient or modern, religious or religionless: that has not a basic understanding of the virtue of just human interaction and temperate self-conduct: for the sake of the good health and happiness of the individual and the community …

If there was, they would’ve vanished too quickly, and if there are now, they will vanish quickly, by their own want of virtue …

The “community”, however, has become much wider in the last centuries …, and people of different cultures and laws have had to interact, and it became obvious to them that they share more than they ever thought they shared before …

For their own laws to work: they have to treat each other as equal, whatever their laws,

If, in times of dispute, they sit down face to face and try to understand the other side’s needs and fears: they will quickly come to the conclusion that they are people like them, with their own laws which also teach justice and fairness …

And by the way, no contemporary academic that I know has demonstrated a better understanding of “equality” than Prof. Chomsky himself, when he engages in commentary on world conflicts and affairs …

People, for example, can’t wage wars against people: they have judged are bad because they are different: in whichever way: by way of their colour, ethnicity, religion, political alliance, laws or whatever else …

The fittest is not the self-proclaimed best and mightiest, but rather the most virtuous …

Of course, the sceptic about cosmic justice, or a Law with the capital L: will come up with more clever questions … to ridicule this line of thinking, which sounds to attempt to revive religious traditions …

Like, who said? Or better still, I can do whatever I want, because no one cares …

But when the fate of the entire of humanity is at stake: the people with the smallest spark of reason inside their heads must not let the whole world ruin: because we all care, including them who believe that no one cares

By quoting the Books and referencing Buddhist teaching and perhaps other sources …, this Page doesn’t aim at mixing and matching, for the purpose of formulating a new religion,

By quoting and referencing, this Page is actually saying that religions and spiritual teaching concur in one point, and are essentially the same …

If heads of religions open up their minds, they too will see this reality,

It is not sufficient, if religions continue declaring their respect and love of other religions, when in the back of their minds they still believe that in the end their religion is the best, and that the world will one day come to them to declare allegiance to them …

Religions as are now and as practised: cannot take the world anywhere other than where it is …

Although they all have their areas of success within their own cultures and borders, they also have shortcomings, within those cultures and borders, and indeed at the international stage …

And far from attempting to judge them, the layman looks around and finds mainly disaccord and danger, emphasised by natural disasters and now a pandemic …, which have not spared any nation or any religion …

Religions as are: aren’t able to offer guidance to the people, or to the leaders of the world, on specific matters that have not been dealt with in their religions …

To keep believing that the state of the world today is god’s or karma’s answer to people’s non-adherence to the teaching of their particular books: is not going to bring about a resolution to the many threats and conflicts …

To keep believing that the heaven will somehow strike its final strike, to punish the non-believers and the bad people: will not make any group of people completely safe from such a punishment,

The major thing that is shared by all the peoples of the world is reason,

When this is woken up in them: it will guide them to have faith in it, and hence to cooperate and help one another, for the purpose of their all well-being and survival …

They will start then to appreciate, each, their own religion, and indeed other religions, better …

It is perhaps a long journey before all religions can see each other as one religion,

This Page has not asked any religion to convert to another religion,

But has consistently pointed them to the virtue in their Books, and that’s why its quotations and references therefrom …

The process of opening up has to start within the minds of the people and their heads of religions,

If any of them would like to contribute to guiding to such a virtuous aim, they should go ahead and do it,

This Page will be happy if such guidance is provided, and won’t seek to compete with it or contradict it

On the same day that Julian Assange’s extradition trial was held in London, two Australian journalists had to leave China, due to unclear issues relating to their freedom and safety there …

Upon their arrival back in Australia, the two were interviewed to express their concern about the freedom of press in China, and the intimidation they experienced when questioned by the Chinese authorities …

None of them though had the empathy or the professional audacity to speak out in support of Assange, to mention the psychological torture that he has been subjected to for over 10 years now, and the farcical trial that he is facing there, one that is run by a judge and other officials who are known to have a conflict of interest in this matter …, backed up by a government which will do their American ally a favour at any cost, to help them cover up war crimes, in which the British forces have participated as well …

The farcicalness of the accusations that Assange has faced has gone to unimaginable extremes …

Some are still questioning - yes in Western media - whether what Wikileaks has uncovered should or not be investigated, given that Assange is not officially a “journalist”!

Just a few days ago, and yet again the Secretary of State of the US has expressed his mistrust in the International Court of Justice and branded it corrupt, and a few months ago described it as a kangaroo orgnisation …, implying that his country will not abide by International Law …

The sad thing is that all this happens under the nose of corporate Western news media, and reported by them with an obvious deliberate twist of language and perspective, for the purpose of numbing the public’s sense of justice and freedom, for the purpose of giving justification for being biased, because: well, if a certain Western group of countries have declared themselves a “force of good”, they should be allowed to do whatever they want …

Whether “free”, “totalitarian” or “theocratic”, all systems of governance have no clue how to rule big nations with large and fast-growing populations and fast-developing technologies …

And whether or not all countries have fast-growing populations: technology and migration have made them “grow”, by a forced inclusion of them into a wider world, to open up physically, socially and economically …, and the very few left forcibly or willingly isolated are going to have to open up soon ...

And “rule” implies not only the management of infrastructure, the generation and supply of energy and water, waste management, disease control, preservation of the environment …, all of which are basic needs for the survival of populations, and at which many countries have demonstrated a degree of expertise and innovation, albeit with degrees of success as well as failure …:

“Rule” implies mainly earning the allegiance of the populations, their abidance by the laws …, for the purpose of the minimisation of dissent, crime and terrorism and so on …,

And of course, it implies also being able to provide a degree of happiness, for the population to be not only good law-abiding citizens, but also happily hard working and creative, at whatever they do …

As the layman sees it, these are the most complex questions that governments and their advisors, and indeed academics and theorists face, if they just think for a minute about it,

If all those questions haven't been nagging their minds, on top of many many more that any essay can include: the layman tells them that they have no idea what they’re doing, and most likely they’re creating more problems than solving …

In the end, the answers to those questions, and indeed the raising of the questions before answering them: hinges primarily on the beliefs of the rulers and the ruled populations, and what they envisage as a purpose of life for themselves …

The purpose of life as embraced by a people and their rulers: points them in certain directions, and motivates them to work hard and to employ their mental and physical energies in the activity or the lack of it which are believed to progress them towards their purpose and targets along the way …

So, it becomes clear that a harmonious society can function better …

But what does harmonious mean exactly?

Does it imply one belief, one purpose …, or does it imply diversity? and if diversity is a “belief”, how can diversity be employed to create social harmony?

This is the question that multicultural societies are facing, and indeed the entire world today can be said to be multicultural …

And obviously, in a multicultural society, there has to be a one purpose at least, and that is the cohesiveness of the society, one that sits on top of the multiplicity of purposes and beliefs …, so that the cohesiveness itself is adopted as a purpose, alongside the other individual ones …

This is not an easy task, and governments all around the world are struggling to keep their societies united, in the face of many challenges …

Cracks are showing in the different systems in the world, and no country can claim to have perfect answers …

But as long as “control” is taken as the means to achieve good governance, whether this is exercised directly by governments, whose main purpose is to stay in “control”, or by the private sector, whose main purpose is to grow money …: the end result can be catastrophic …

In the face of many challenges today, nations are tightening their control and intensifying their competitions, and this, by the natural law, speeds up the attrition and the disintegration …

Perhaps, a good purpose for all in such trying times: is to consider that everyone is entitled to survive, and efforts should be directed into such a good aim for all …

Artificial identities, made in places of rituals, in academic institutes, or in the meeting rooms of political parties and business magnates …: serve one purpose only: the perpetuation of division and strife …

Although they all have an item in their manifestos declaring love and harmony, they actually believe in isolation and self-privilege …

Of course humans differ, by their looks, beliefs, cultures and traditions, interests …

But their love and pride of their own “identities” is same … in all of them,

If we want to take it to a universal level: all people share the same universal identity,

That is being human, made of this world, having the same logical routs in their minds, experiencing same feelings, enjoying same pleasures, shunning pain and suffering …

It is the artificial identities that install in people’s minds the fear of other people …

Because people express those universal aspects of their identities in many different ways …

In fact, it is when people aren’t aware of their universal identity that they become trapped in the local ones …

Not that the local ones should be abolished,

But they shouldn’t be taken as god’s gift or evolution’s unique accident …

As if god or evolution made someone and broke the mold, and cast the rest in an inferior one …

The “values” that people are taught and told to have as their unique values, whatever they may be: social harmony, compassion, cooperation, family values, hard work and achievement …: are none but the projections of the universal identity of all humans …

But when these are projected in one place and time, although they can be of local benefit: their benefit is temporary,

Because sooner or later they will be challenged by the same values, held by another group of people, focused in their own place and time …

This paradox cannot be resolved by holding onto the confinement of the local identity stubbornly, but rather by letting the local identity shine outside its own contours and borders of definitions of identity …

All national, racial, religious, cultural … identities are now facing the same challenge created by hiding the universal identity, and substituting it for the artificial ones, drummed up to be national, spiritual, economic, cultural, racial, religious … duty and cause of existence,

In the end, the events of the world cannot be controlled by smart heads of religions, political leaders and business magnates …

The events of the world hit everyone equally,

And if people aren’t able to see their universal identity, their artificial ones will cause their demise, because they withhold them from being a part of the whole

The concept of “divine intervention” is a pointer that is used by the self-proclaimed representative of the “divine authority”, to point it to whatever they choose to point it to,

It’s like a compass that is drawn on a piece of paper,

It can’t turn itself by the magnetic field of the earth,

The holder of it turns it and tells you: this is where the north is …

It is easy to find many examples, where an event was thought to be a sign of divine intervention by some, and just a natural random occurrence by others …

What’s more, divine intervention as such, presupposes that the world is a separate entity, run by some force other than the divine: for us to be able to say that the divine has essentially or practically intervened …!

The rational mind, faithful in its own ability to fathom things: cannot accept a concept that is true by choice not by reason …

Of course, philosophic concepts are unverifiable scientifically,

But they can be examined and debated,

If you say that the same can be said about divine intervention, here’s COB’s take of “divine intervention”:

The Divine doesn’t intervene,

The Divine is everywhere,

There’s nothing but the Divine,

Everything “else” is human illusion,

When we realise that, we stop searching for and hoping to see divine intervention, but rather be content in it

Another genius of modern times is Prof Hawking, to whom COB dedicated a chain of posts in the past.

The black-and-white filter of theism and atheism becomes totally useless, when the scope of one's view is opened wide …

Prof Hawking is labelled atheist by religions, because he doesn’t accept their assumptions that they call pillars of faith,

And perhaps not totally atheist by the atheists, because he isn’t very clear on the “existence” or the “absence” of “God”,

His approach to knowledge is scientific, therefore, facts are facts when proven mathematically or experimentally,

Scientific pursuits, by raising more questions while answering them, take the researcher beyond their own established facts, sometimes to the extent of retiring those facts, or falsifying them outside their limits of application …

As COB sees it, this should indeed apply to every aspect of human activity, so that laws and traditions, for example, are constantly being finetuned and if necessary, totally overhauled …

What remains universally known though, is the human mind’s ability to discover, question and verify …, experimentally and mathematically ...

The universality of the physical laws, as Prof Hawking puts it in this interview, and his trust in mathematics, which is none but an abstract of human intellect: is his faith, as COB sees it, in the human mind …

His answer to the question on what god can or cannot do: is in total agreement with what came in the Books of the religions, which have commanded repeatedly and emphatically: not to discuss God in such a frivolous manner

Two cold wars are already looming in the world, whether Western corporate media have concocted names and numbers for them or not …: 2.0 and square root of six, maybe…!

One over the dominance over Europe and Western Asia, between Russia and the West, and one over the South China Sea, and indeed over trade and industry, between China and the US,

The decision of declaring them as “the new cold war” by corporate Western media and their political partners, however: hinges on the political and financial needs of those entities,

Not in the context of alarm and concern about the safety of the planet and its living beings, but indeed, from the background of opportunity and benefit, domestically and internationally, as circumstances dictate,

And the layman watches politicians and analysts lightly mentioning the timing of the decisions of escalating small wars or signing up treaties and arms deals in preparation for a big one,

To the extent that it is considered by politicians and their critics alike: totally ethical and acceptable for leaders to escalate dangerous situations or threaten their rivals with military action …: if it suits an elections campaign or boosts approval ratings …!

This exposes the “cause” spun by the politicians and the media: as totally fake, and the timing hides its resolvability by true consideration,

And when the championship of “freedom and democracy” is the sellout, the paradoxical situation thus created renders the wars of old times between rival kings: a child’s play,

At least in those days all they had was the support of a religious institute that got god on the king’s side, reducing the situation to a war of pagan gods, and indeed a laughable story,

The new wars in the name of fake causes cannot be swallowed with a laugh,

They can destroy the world, if world leaders don’t budge out of them

Another message that I received privately, names of people or indications to them have been suppressed:

“Only you can see this. This is … the man you said died and his reincarnation was … . I spoke to … today. Another one of your lies. Lies certainly have expiry dates. Who said that?”

Definitely I was wrong there. The process of identifying people’s past incarnations is not easy or straight forward,

In a Group on fb in the past I've told how I found out one day that by squinting and letting an inner kind of light wash the image of someone, whether on a photograph or live, then their past images start to show …

This is not a foolproof method, as the images come and go very quickly and can be confusing, but I’m always willing to explain how I do certain things …

The process of identifying people’s past lives cannot rely on one indicator alone, and often there are visions, including dreams or wakeful visions, and including personality traits, and including bodily signs and sometimes even words they say …

It is my fault that I hastily divulged such suspicions in private conversations in order to share and get information from them which might confirm or debunk those suspicions,

However, the allusion to reincarnations of certain historic personalities that have been written in COB on the website and herein are confirmed

The race to be the “superpower” is on, relentlessly,

The participants in different times are many, but the major stirrer of it now is the US, which finds its monopoly of the superpower status being challenged,

The superpower status that the US has worked hard for has guaranteed for it the power to dictate rules and laws, and award itself a blank cheque to launch military or other kinds of punishments upon whomever it deems enemy of “freedom and democracy”,

Of course, a superpower finds pleasure in hearing criticism, even from the biggest nations, because it knows that criticism sends a warning to every nation which dares to challenge: that this is the upper limit of their inferior status …

Nations with the least degree of sensibility and sense of universal responsibility would have shivers down their spines from contemplating a new situation whereby a nation or league of nations adopt pre-WWII mentalities, with a difference in the slogans only …

A new breed of nations will have to emerge, not super rich and nor super destructive, which will float above the competitions of the last millennia,

Competition and animosity which fueled pretty much every international activity and interaction: can take the world only this far,

A dead end has been reached now, and anyone holding on to the sinking boat will sink with it,

In the midst of a new kind of threats which hit indiscriminately, existentially, economically, environmentally …: the mentalities of religions and political ideologies have been reduced to ineffectiveness, nay self-destructiveness,

There’s only one humanity,

That’s what time is trying to say loud and clear,

The barriers of all kinds between nations and the peoples of the world are manmade, and are being dismantled

At the time when journalism has been reduced to a business, it is rare to come across real journalists who research, reflect and report: rather than blow the fanfares and beat drums; and even rarer to find ones which have covered a wide range of issues and conflicts worldwide,

In the aftermath of WWII, the West was perhaps too comfortable with its victory over dictatorships … and any scrutiny of Western role in international politics was perhaps seen as an ideological bias against the West,

Unfortunately, in the absence of scrutiny: the spread of television and its power of advertising, the unfettered funding of political campaigns by the benefitting mega businesses, the partisan reporting of domestic politics, the unhesitant manipulation of public opinion by media giants and their political partners…, and many factors that cannot be squeezed in a short essay: have all meant that the media in the world today that calls itself free is as dishonest as the propaganda machines of rogue regimes,

There was not a conflict in the last decades, or an issue of contention that John Pilger hasn’t covered, always with a high degree of fairness and impartiality

All religions and without an exception have been shown that their rituals and beliefs cannot protect them from the dangers of the world as they have always believed,

So how can those rituals and beliefs protect them from the dangers of the hereafter?

When they will be brought back to this world, as all the Books have foretold them, they will have to change their beliefs and traditions as time directs them,

The connections they all believe to have with someone in the sky, whether a god or supernatural angels, whether aliens or prophets …: are their own fabrication,

The Books never said it …

They assigned invisible forces to their service, they have waited for them and promised their followers,

The plots each religion have plotted for the end-of-days: will not materialise, however hard they work for it, and however loud and far reaching their propaganda …

Time doesn’t consult heads of religions and political leaders and wealthy men to determine the destinies of the nations and the people,

With the tiniest degree of faith: they all could’ve come to this realisation,

It is not the nature of this world to be permanently peaceful and harmonious, but to play a part in polarising it is inexcusable

Compassion urges the compassionate to tell the warring tribes of the world and their leaders and financiers that they are doing wrong,

Being silent about their errors, in order not to hurt their feelings, contributes to their error …

Compassion is not a screen for hiding errors, rather light that shows them, so they are not repeated.

In the world today, there are two major religious tracks of thought,

One commands what is generally called self-defence, and one commands forgiveness and compassion,

If taken in their true meaning in their Books, both are righteous,

But if taken in a political context, to excuse crime or to condemn crime, as it suits the political agendas of political leaders and their supporters: they are turned to their opposite,

Religious understanding of virtuous action is being put to the test all around the world, so that abuse and misconception of compassion and self-defence are exposed and not repeated,

Neither compassion should urge one to turn a blind eye to crime, nor should self-defence translate to retaliation and vendetta,

Both misconceptions perpetuate the wrong that compassion and self-defence are actually intended to correct, as was taught in the Books and teachings of prophets, messengers, Avatars and Buddhas

COB got involved in a number of debates with religions in the past,

Each time they are shown with evidence and reason that they misunderstand or mis-practise some aspects of their own religions, they bring out their standard expressions and say: you do not understand faith, piety, worship, compassion …,

And then they open up their bag of standard accusations: you are kuffar, unspiritual, have a big ego, uncompassionate …

And until the layman sees heads of religions playing an active and positive role in bridging the religions and the cultures of the world: the layman is unconvinced that their understanding and practice of their Books is immaculate …, and will therefore be unreluctantly critiquing their theories and practices,

A past post which mentioned names has been taken out, as an admittance of error of expression, unhelpful and uninforming,

But subsequent posts which address matters of essence and principle will not be taken out,

The Books of all religions without an exception were meant to heal the world from hatred and division,

Of course, it is the nature of this world to be imperfect,

And the remedy should be applied on all sides equally …

No one is born perfect in this world and everyone have to climb up the mountains of knowledge every time in their new projections,

And however high the mountains they climbed in their past lives, if their memories of them do not help them with practical steps to climb up the new mountain, they remain as memories, good only for self-glorification,

COB doesn’t need the support of religions, and neither is it frustrated or disheartened by the lack of it …

What the mind has as reason cannot be silenced to make one party in this world happier than another …

COB has called upon all the religions of the world to come together and put all their political and business interests, and all their past rivalries behind them, to start a dialogue of reconciliation …

Until the layman sees heads of religions offering their spiritual support to opposing ends of every conflict to thwart those conflicts: the layman isn’t convinced that they have correctly understood and practised their Books

The concept of infallibility is true only in the minds of those who believe it …

All the Books of Abrahamic religions have rejected it, also the Buddha is known to have said that he shouldn’t be believed blindly, and hence questioning him or critiquing him is not blasphemous,

Also in the Ghita, Krishna is constantly being questioned and he is never reluctant to explain, until he is convincing,

Laypeople nowadays, because they have good intentions, aren’t intimidated by the fear of punishment if they criticise the decisions of heads of religions,

Those had better look around to see that political alliances in those critical times must be put to rest in favour of the entire of humanity,

Time is constantly pointing the world in this direction, but some prominent religious personalities seem to cling to their alliances and polarisations stubbornly, without providing an explanation,

There are no secrets any more that are worth holding on to, and you don’t need a crystal ball or some divine intervention to see that the road that religions have taken is leading to nowhere except more division and a more dangerous situation

It’s time religious teaching from the Far East to the West be expanded to become applicable to today’s complex world and international relations,

The teaching which has guided people in their daily personal interactions seems to be unheeded when it comes to group or international relations,

It’s understandable why group and international relations weren’t given the same weight as personal and community relations in the past,

Especially when the general attitude was still: our beliefs and religion are the best, let’s focus on our own community,

And hence, even basic sympathy with the “enemy” or the “others”: was considered condescending and perhaps a betrayal,

At a time when tensions are building up in the world, if religious leaders can’t expand their teaching to be completely neutral in their international alliances, even if they don’t openly backup one side against another: they are participating in exacerbating those tensions and polarities, indirectly,

Especially when those leaders are seen as totally wise and enlightened by millions, and their words are being listened to and actions watched constantly,

It takes an intellectual and spiritual effort at an individual level to expand religious teaching to an international scope,

So that the “neighbour” in the Ten Commandments is indeed every nation in the world today,

And to love your enemy can be applied practically, to defuse international tensions,

And for “the people and tribes to know and acknowledge one another” to be taken as a commandment to build bridges between the nations of the world …

And needless to say, that if all sentient beings share the same suffering, even those who appear to be criminal, they too deserve help and guidance …

The individuals who have taken up the responsibility of religious and spiritual leadership, whether by their birth in their belief, or by choice: have to live up to such leadership which looks at the world from a 360-degree perspective,

If they don’t, they have to cop a lot of criticism, which will disregard their personal feelings, because the criticism is mainly directed at an ideology and a political entity,

This is a bitter reality

Religions can’t continue to assume that their religion is the only correct religion, and that their methods of acquiring knowledge and high spiritual standards are the only real such methods,

As said in a previous post, the virtuous action any religion can take towards a group of people who seem unguided, while believing they are totally religious nevertheless, is to try to understand their religion, to guide them by it …

If this sounds farfetched, it’s because religions haven’t made any serious effort to know other religions, each feeling too confident and comfortable in their own world,

On the other hand, the world can’t be forced to become religionless,

Attempts made in the past to replace religions with secular ideologies and nationalism have failed,

But religions can be taken to new higher levels …, within the spirit of their Books,

Religions find it hard to believe that all religions can lead to knowledge and enlightenment, if followed sincerely …

What separates them is just language and practical disciplines …

It is still a long way before this fact becomes universally accepted …

But the journey has to start …

In one lifetime, people don’t have enough time to study thoroughly every religion there is, in order to come to this conclusion,

But when they reach high levels of awareness, this becomes self-evident to them,

This is a reality that needs a sincere effort to be appreciated

The last thing religions should say is that their religion is better or superior …

Religions weren’t meant to compete with one another …

The layman can’t work out, how religions adopt commercial and political concepts, namely competition in this case: too quickly, without passing it through the checks and balances, of virtuousness, compassion, love of the enemy, universalness …

Competition is a modern concept, created perhaps in the industrial world, adopted by evolution theorists …

I’m not sure if the concept had in the past the ideological status that it enjoys today,

When it is seen as nature’s blessing on nature, and its impeccable law of improving nature …, and bolstering the economy …!

Improvement and bolster that harshly crush the meek and promote the strong,

Competition as an ideology is failing today, and indeed driving the world to self-destruction, on both ends of every conflict and every arena of competition, be it commercial, political, religious or ideological of any kind,

And if we are to draw a model from nature: and as has been said on this Page a few times:

There is no competition in nature,

There’s cooperation,

It is the human mind, driven by its ideologies and convictions, that chooses to see natural activity as competition or cooperation,

If it changes its lenses, the cooperation that it will perceive in nature will inspire it to be what the Books of religion have all commanded it to be: cooperative,

If a religion today can widen its circle of empathy and helpfulness, to include its rivals and enemies, then laypeople will start to say: this religion is better …

But religious authorities should quickly correct, by saying: no one is better, we are all learning,

Yes, Buddhism has a system that covers a much wider spiritual reach, with thorough details and comprehensiveness …

But the purpose of it is not to promote Buddhism,

The purpose of it is to spread knowledge and alleviate suffering …

Time doesn’t care, whether this is called Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever else …

These are spatiotemporal human perspectives,

In a very past time, or in a far future one: religious teaching had/will have different names and used/will use different definitions of spiritual concepts, and prescribe different methods for achieving high spiritual goals,

Time creates time capsules, and the mind is meant to break out of them

The Dharma and the Books are protected by their truth,

This is their strongest and best protection,

Laypeople aren’t intimidated by supernatural beings supposedly protecting the Dharma and the Books,

Because laypeople don’t have any bias in favour or against any one of them, and are happy to learn the good things in them, and to question the interpretations and practices of them …

Supernatural protection is made up in the imagination of religious institutes, by their own lack of understanding,

One which surfaces every time they face questions that they can’t logically and truthfully answer,

Since the descent of the Hikmah Books, which have been read on our Website in English, this has been the Age of Reason, if we are to give it a name …

It gave birth to empirical sciences and pantheist philosophies, and many fallacies and superstitions have been falsified, and more is yet to come,

It is not a coincidence that a major Book of Hikmah is titled “The Cause of All the Causes”, pointing to the Whole Mind, in the language of its time and author,

New “windows” in the skies were opened for human consciousness, and a new world dawned to everyone …

Of course, religions are divided about it, and those who say they believed it, are also divided,

This is the nature of this world,

From every truth that is delivered: pairs of opposites do emerge

A truth that can be expressed in a statement or a short essay: can only be as temporary as the language it is written in and the culture where it was delivered,

Messengers, prophets, Buddhas, Avatars … have come and gone in many different places at different times,

Each time they were able to reach their Summum, they were able to bring down truths, correcting misconceptions of current beliefs, straightening paths and teaching new disciplines and methods for the seekers of wisdom and enlightenment,

This is an irrefutable fact,

And if they were unable to achieve that: their message couldn’t have been expressed and delivered …

The fact that messages, each puts more emphasis on certain issues than others, or that some are more “comprehensive” … doesn’t diminish the universalness of all the messages,

Between the lines, and behind the most basic of commandments: realities are told, for those who have ears that can hear …

So, to say: “our messenger is the only and the last messenger to discover and deliver ultimate and complete truth, and everything before him and everything after him is now redundant”:

Firstly, is not true,

Secondly, is divisive;

The Qur’an’s “We differentiate not between any of His messengers”, (2:285): is an unequivocal admission of all messengers, in whichever language their message was delivered,

But Muslims and non-Muslims alike pass by it never to read it or quote it, because it doesn’t suit their either political agendas …

Religions, from the Far East to the far West have got to stop thinking that the world will be reformed if it followed their religion, and that their Books and messengers are the most correct ones, and that their disciplines and laws are the only effective ones, and that the sky loves them most …

If religions open up their hearts and minds to other Books: they’ll be surprised by how much they can learn, and how much agrees with and indeed repeats what came in their own Books,

But first they have to relinquish a self-proclaimed superior rank

Religions don’t have to continue arguing between each other about whose dictionary of philosophic and spiritual words is better, and who knows the best way to salvation or enlightenment, or whichever word they believe describes best their believed purpose of life …

Rather, they have to accept that all these religious theories are here,

It is OK if they exchanged ideas, and it’s very virtuous if they helped each other in times of physical or philosophic and spiritual strife,

But as soon as they talk from the standpoint of superiority, and as if the skies are in their small pocket, as the Arabic saying goes, their supposed help turns into more division and creates more tension …

No one knows who will be salvaged and who will be condemned …

No one knows how karma balances its books of debits and credits …

Religions can’t see it, but they’re all making the same mistake of playing god, even if they don’t have the word “god” in their dictionary …

No one knows how will people be judged, and what karma has in store for them,

No one knows if their holy and pious people will for sure be awarded the salvation or the reward … or whichever word in their dictionary … that they were promised.

When we take a quick look at the state of world today, it is quite obvious that there are dangers all around, all of which are manmade, or exacerbated by mankind’s actions …: with the blessing, or at least under the blind eye of religions …

It is also quite obvious that no nation or religion can claim to be the “best”, that can be taken as a model to follow,

Nations and cultures have done good in some areas and bad in others, one can argue …

The “good” and “bad” are their own,

Seen by others, they might be differently graded …

The world is now becoming so small, physically connected and quickly visible,

The virtues that each nation and religion believe to have been the foundations of their success in the past: need to be expanded to shine outside their borders …, so that the world set itself on the road of less dissensus and a more cooperative future,

Religions and nations have to start thinking as one humanity