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What is Buddhism About?

Buddhism doesn't begin with a creator God who made
the world, nor is it very concerned with what
happens to us after we're dead. Buddhism begins in
fact with the basic truth that all human beings
suffer. To the Buddha, every other matter was of
secondary importance, and he suggested we consider
the case of a man who has been shot by an arrow.
The poor man lying there with the arrow plunged
deep into his flesh isn't going to begin asking
who made the arrow, what kind of feathers it has,
how long it is and questions like that. For him
the most important thing is to get the arrow out.

Basically the question is: How can you achieve
release from suffering? The Buddha found that
there are certain steps that can be taken.
Buddhism therefore offers its followers things
that they can do rather than things for them to
believe.

One thing Buddhists try to do is to lead good
lives by not causing suffering to others. They
also actively try to do good, be kind and helpful,
and if possible, put others first. They study the
teachings of the Buddha and test them out in their
ordinary lives. Finally, many Buddhists meditate.

Meditation

You must have seen pictures of the Buddha sitting
with his legs crossed, his back and head very
straight and his eyes half-closed. He looks very
calm. When people are meditating, they are not
frantically caught up in all the pictures and
thoughts that are milling about in their heads.
Rather, they are peacefully allowing these to
settle down. They do not, however, allow their
minds to go blank. In fact, they stay very alert
and watch everything that comes into their minds.

By doing this day after day for a very long time,
a person is first able to achieve great calmness
and clarity. He or she then begins to see into the
true nature of the world: To see things as they
are rather than as they appear. they see, in fact,
that everything is unsatisfactory and tainted with
suffering and that everything is impermanent and
subject to change. Finally they see that nothing,
including human beings, has any sort of underlying
soul or essence. They realize, in short, that
everything passes away and that nothing has any
sort of permanent self.

Proceeding in this way, it is possible for anyone
with enough persistence and determination to gain
for themselves the same enlightenment that the
Buddha discovered beneath the Bo tree at Budh
Gaya. Then they too can find peace and become
free, no longer touched by the pains and sorrows
of human existence.

From Buddhist Festivals by John Snelling: 1987
Rourke Enterprises, Vero Beach, FL pp. 12-15 ISBN
0 86592 980 7

I Ching

Date:    Sun, 23 Nov 1997 09:19:51 -0700 
From:   Robert Hastings <rsh@VIMANA.COM> 
Subject: I Ching - the most cost effective oracle

Twenty two years ago, I was a young man with some
young-man type difficulties, and I was depressed
and suicidal.  I was in my trailer, drunk and
morose, with a .45 pistol in my mouth.   I
decided, before pulling the trigger, to throw an I
Ching.   Hexagram 61 came up - with this message:

Wind blows across the marsh The superior man
weighs litigation carefully and stays all
executions.

I can't comment on the mechanisms or ultimate
validity of I Ching, but obviously I took the
advice, and have some fondness for it. As you
might expect, the hexagram launched an epiphany
and as depressed as I've been after that, suicide
has never been an option.

I've reflected on I Ching a bit, and have done a
bit of oracular taxonomy on it.   I Ching has the
following properties:

1) It is a self-reflexive system, that is, it
reflects the user's state, not the state of
external entities (e.g.: OUIJA reflects the state
of dead people, and to paraphrase an article from
GNOSIS, "Just 'cause your dead, it don't mean
you're smart").

2) It is a disintermediated system, that is, you
throw I Ching for yourself, you don't hire an I
Ching practitioner to do it, as in palmistry.

3) It is mostly a symbolic system, not a direct
communication system (i.e.: Most channeling
directly deals with specific dates and events, I
Ching requires interpretation, and you're never
sure you're 100% right on.

4) It requires no special equipment (other than a
book)

5) It's old, old, old - there's no doubt that it's
been around the block and is time tested, unlike
your commercial shopping mall style oracles (e.g.
alleged Nordic/Celtic Runes on Scrabble chips).

6) It's canonical, that is, there aren't 5 or 6 I
Chings running around with wildly variant methods
and interpretations, as in Tarot. Although I've
seen a couple English translations with slightly
different cultural twists, they agree on the
number of hexagrams, the formation thereof, the
two methods of hexagram generation, the strong
line variations, etc.

7) It's noncommercial.   I don't think anyone sees
I Ching as a business opportunity for their NewAge
(rhymes with sewage) product line.

8) It has TWZ embedded in it.

9) It's cost effective: even if it only keeps you
from drunkenly blowing    your brains out once,
the book paid for itself.

I can't say that I "believe" in I Ching, but I do
find its cultural and theoretical underpinnings
more satisfying than other oracular systems. And
no, I haven't tried other systems, and haven't
used I Ching in years.

Because it's a reflexive symbol system, it seems
to me that I Ching requires *neither* faith or
proof.  The salient questions are:

1) Do users get something out of it? 2) Does it
promote delusional thinking?

The answer to 1 is obvious, or nobody would use
it.

The answer to 2 is no.  I Ching deals in pretty
prosaic life situation stuff, which doesn't excite
feeble minds to get grandiose with it. Sure,
there's a few exceptions, this Terence guy may be
a good example ;> .

Because it's disintermediated, control trips or "I
Ching cults" don't arise around it.   I can't
think of anyone who ran their lives throwing
hexagrams for very long - most folks use it for
some period and grow away from it.

Anyway, when you add up all the features of I
Ching, it has the reliability, availability and
maintainability that make it more durable and a
better bargain for today's value conscious shopper
than than any other sport utility vehicle in its
class.

(from  NOVELTY mailing list) --------




meta-tags

Have you ever wondered why your website is not
turning up in some of the Search Engines no matter
how many times you submit it, or how often pages
totally unrelated to the subject you are searching
show up at the top of the results?  Chances are,
the answer has to do with a not-widely enough
known mechanism called Meta Tags.

a good meta tag resource, and a meta tag primer
and still more on meta tags 

after you have properly meta-tagged your webpages, 
use this great tool to tell
you how well your site ranks on various search engines.
And here is the ultimate guide about search engines 
and how to benefit from them!



Ted Calls for Green Activist Media

"American media need to take a more active role in
saving the planet. Reporters, editors and
executives must lead the charge on protecting the
environment and rally different cultures together
to improve the lot of the have-nots, [CNN chief
Ted] Turner said....Population growth harms air
quality and depletes the world's food supply, he
said. Turner said the United States and other
countries should convene a global conference and
look hard at family planning, perhaps adopting
China's policy of one child per family.
'Voluntary, of course,' he said. 'I had five
kids,' Turner added in one of the many asides
Friday that typify his speeches, 'but I had them
30 years ago I didn't know.'" Arizona Republic
reporter Abraham Kwok on Turner's speech in
Scottsdale to the American Magazine Association,
October 25.

from NOTABLE QUOTABLES November 17, 1997 (Vol.
Ten; No. 23) L. Brent Bozell III, Publisher Brent
H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors




voyeur

Specificity on parade... imagine random web search
keywords flashing across the screen in real time as
they are actually typed in to search engines by users.  
one continous poem that automatically refreshes every 15 seconds.




HTML online guide

here is one of the best HTML online guides,
and one for those nifty Javascript rollovers,
and a very cool resource for building websites

you may have been hearing a lot about Dynamic
HTML.  it was a promising development, but
inconsistent implementations in browsers led to
reluctance on the part of developers to rely on it
in 1997. Still, it is the future for user
interface design and additional client-side
functionality.




the growing power of chat

About 25% of online users now visit

chat rooms. (Investor's Business Daily 23 Oct 97)

 

with the exception of IRC and AOL, most internet

chatting is now web based. here are some of the

better established and highly populated zones:

 

WebCrawler

 

The Globe

 

Yahoo

 

iChat

 

yack

 

skateboarders & friends

 

hotwired's talk.com

 

gay & bi

 

prodigy's celebrity chat

 

online guide to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) this is the biggest and the most densely populated chat network in the world, but it is not web based-- relies on your IP to have the IRC server, and for you to have the IRC client software.

tree-free paper of all kinds:

>My company is making paper out of Bananas, Coffee
>Beans, and Tobacco Leaves. 
>I don't know how elseto put this, other than that 
>this is unique in the world and a new approach towards 
>environmentally responsible products. 
>I would like to get your opinion as a socially conscious 
>person.  Could you please visit our new web site, 
>and give your honest opinion about it? 
>Let me thank you beforehand..... 

>Alvaro E. Siman 
>Director 
>Costa Rica Natural 
>alsiman@msn.com
>www.costaricanatural.com


interested in custom made paper from flowers?  or
beets?  or grapes?  or carrots?  or seaweed?  try
the Church of the Living Tree 



John Perry Barlow's confession

John Perry Barlow publicly admits he is a
"shameless pot-smoking, acid-addled slut."  Barlow
says the upside of this confession is that his
opponents are forced to oppose his ideas on their
merits, rather than strategically revealing his
here-to-fore hidden depravities. Shame is no
weapon against the shameless.  He has also
admitted the existence of his notorious 
B a R L o W F R i e N D Z 650 list.  you know who you are!



China and India watch

CyberIndia! It also has an extensive
spiritual section with lots of interesting links


this new site is uploaded from China, 
and of course government censored, but interesting
none-the-less.  meant to attract foreign business
to China. 




make your own custom music CD's

burn your own custom cd's on the web with any
music you like? 



Inside Passages

paddle your way to enlightenment in the seas of
Alaska? 



Jobs commutes in style

according to Wired Services, Steve Jobs will pay over a 
quarter of a million dollars to commute between Pixar and 
Apple by helicopter and cut 90 minutes off his 2 hour
commute by car.



poetic navigation of the web

Rather than selecting sites by name, topic or
author, navigate your way around the web from poem
to poem? or a new poem every day at Poetry Daily 



search the newsgroups

Searching websites with a conventional search
engine is one way to get information.  Another
very useful and very cool research tool is Deja
News, the search engine that plows through the
universe of conversation on newsgroups and usenet.




white South Africa confesses

A website established by Bishop Desmond Tutu's
Truth & Reconciliation Commission is accepting confessions
and apologies from white South Africans.




Ars Electronica

Ars Electronica is an international forum for

computer supported creativity in art, science, and

entertainment. In Linz, Austria, The Prix Ars

Electronica, a $100,000 + cash prize, is given

yearly to the best websites, animations,

electronic music, and interactive art.

Save Tibet!

You may have seen Kundun, and/or Seven Years to
Tibet.  Now take a few minutes for some online
action to help save Tibet




do you have the vapors?

if you have heard about the new vaporizers for 
lung friendly herbal imbibing go here to order one.
.