RELIGION or POLITICS - Why Buddhism????? (Cont'd)

Hi good people, after having a good short week, I trust you are now enjoying the weekend, what with the Universities starting their 2010 football season, most of them today. I am a Gator fan, being a half century Floridian, as opposed to Florida State and Miami.

I am also an avid baseball fan, and having a heck of a year rooting for the RAYS, as well as the San Fran Giants, whom I have rooted for and followed for many decades. Whooooeeee!

Ya know, timely was my blog of the past day or so, touching on the differences in the views of HELL between the Christian religion, and Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism.

Then today I watched the repeat showing of the 9/11 terrorist's attack on New York City. I could only watch in awe as the planes hit the World Trade Center buildings and the subsequent devastation. But, more to the point, could you think of anything more of a HELL than this?



As I watched I could only think that I, for one, would feel betrayed if they allow the Muslims to establish their Mosque anywhere near that area. I say NO, NO, and NO.

To further exemplify Hell. In 1944, Primo Levi, then a young Jewish chemist, was transported. along with 650 others, old men, women, and children, from a detention camp in Italy to a labour camp near Auschwitz. On arrival most of them went straight to the gas chamber. Those left, maybe 100 or so left, were taken to the camp. Levi has said............

The journey did not last more than 20 minutes. Then the lorry, their transportation, stopped, and we saw a large door, and above it a sign, brightly illuminated (its memory still stikes me in my dreams) Arbeit Macht Frei, work gives freedom.

WE climb down, they make us an enormous room that is poorly heated. We have a terrible thirst. the weak gurgle of the water in the radiatiors makes us ferocious; we have had nothing to drink for 4 days. But there is also a tap - and above it a card which says that it is forbidden to drink as the water is dirty. Nonsense. It seems obvious that the card is a joke, 'they' know we are dying of thirst and they put us in a room, and there is a tap, and Wassertrinken Verboten. I drink and I incite my companions to do likewise., but I have to spit it out, the water is tepid and sweetish, with the smell of a swamp.

This is HELL. Today, in our times, hell must be like this. A huge, empty room: we are tired, standing of our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen. What can one think about? One cannot think any more, it is like being already dead. Someone sits down on the ground. The time passes drop by drop.

These are two pictures of hell right here on earth. Who needs this imagined Hell, that no one can ever experience, or at least, no recorded experience. Hey, we need something that will allow us to surmount the hells right here on earth. Are you ready? Where? Why, Nichiren Buddhism of course.

I gave you a list of the 10 Worlds that Buddhism lives by, with more than half are worlds we live in each day. HELL is first on the list. As I present others and how they fit into everyday life, and how our Buddhism teaches us how to handle all the worlds, you will readily understand why we are in ABSOLUTE HAPPINESS.

Cheers y"all, be back soon.       CJ