Another escape clause"

"Chant for what you need, not what you want."

So...if you chant diligently and bad things happen to you,
you neeeeed those bad things for your spiritual growth!

(Of course, if the bad things happen within Sensei's family those are
covered up.)

And while we should not chant to win the lottery, its quite OK
for the leader to get rich.

Some of us could do stand up comedy based on this stuff.

EX Cultie Caberet and Hot Spot -- how's that for a business?

Or stage Moliere's Tartuffe, making Tartuffe someone who shabuku's
a well placed company CEO who is itnerested in Buddhism and is tricked
into believing Tartuffe is practicing the genuine Dharma. The CEO is too busy to do his own fact checking.

He tells his admin assistant to fact check SGI on Google, but Tartuffe bribes
her to give a good report.

The CEO is enchanted by Tartuffe's promises of what chanting will accomplish, hires Tartuffe, and then Tartuffe hits on a gorgeous woman who just happens to be in control of a potential account desperately needed by the CEO's company.

She fights Tartuffe off, the CEO refuses to believe such a devout chanter could be such a horndog but the CEO's junior employees come in as witneses.

Tartuffe is dragged out by security, chanting away, then sues the company for religious bigotry by firing him.

But Tartuffe is found to have outstanding warrants in 3 states due to bigamy and failure to pay child support to three abandoned women and his kids.

He's arrested the courtroom.

See what we can do with this?

Combine fine arts with prevention education!

No copywright on Tartuffe, so we can do all sorts of things to stage it.

Just gimme credit for ideas if you print brochures..

Brilliant corboy! Didn't Ikeda write Tartuffe? Don Quixote would be another good one - with shinichi filling the role of Sancho Panza! I think the musical version would be appropriate - I can't wait to hear ikeda belting out "The Impossible Dream." And, of course, we have to incorporate a fan dance so that we can see him strut his stuff. All. That. Stuff.

It's perfect timing for the "chant for what you want" discussion; I just flashed on a memory from a couple of years ago. I had made it known that I wanted to move north to be closer to my daughter, and that started a stealth chanting campaign in the district to keep me here. When another member let that info slip, I was furious with the whole district. Even then, I didn't think that chanting would influence the outcome in any way, but it angered me that they were more concerned with the district's welfare rather than my happiness.

I was pissed enough to mention it to the ex-friend who'd shakubuku'd me - she said that I should feel flattered and told me not to worry, since "chanting doesn't work that way." Huh? How does chanting work, then? I mean, it does or it doesn't . . . chanting for something you want equals getting what you want, right? Once again - do they not hear what they're saying and how contradictory it is?

Sheesh.

"No copywright on Tartuffe, so we can do all sorts of things to stage it. "

Life imitates art...

After Tartuffe is being led offstage from the courtroom
in handcuffs by the bailiffs, we can arrange to hear
chains clink, a door slam, and rough voices saying

just one of a number of things:

"Spread your cheeks"


Or...

"Nice ass".

Seriously, I can't think of a single circumstance under which anyone would EVER say "nice ass" to Ikeda. I never thought about it until corboy mentioned it (earning my eternal gratitude, btw), but I can only imagine it as pimply and cheesy looking. Maybe he could be used to haze new prisoners? "Yo, newbie, you gotta do that, or it gets to do you . . ."

Just now re-discovered this link.

[www.ex-premie.org]

These are excerpts from the work of Professor Margarent Singer.

Well worth taking a look to see how one's group matches up.

Hope everyone had a happy 420 celebration yesterday. I received a text message from an unidentified person yesterday. I wanted to share it, along the ensuing text responses, with all of you here.

253218XXXX: Happy Easter to all and a happy 420 to you as well. Be blessed in your day and praise God in your day. Smoke tough and abide in Him all day today.

Me: I don't know who this is but... praise god? No fucking way! You obviously don't know me very well, sending such a dogmatic and offensive religious message to me. Fuck easter as well. Magical bunch of bullshit. There. See how it feels to get an offensive message?

I'll abide in the ganja god. Happy 420!

253218XXXX: That's a silly text. A religious dogmatic text? Praise god is your basis? You have a god that you serve whether you realize it or not. If it be yourself then praise to you. All is GOD. Sorry you are offended by that term and that you took the time to try and offend me just caused me to laugh at your foolish behavior. A simple... I think you have the wrong number would be more appropriate. My GOD is simply love. I serve no other master. I will delete your number though I know exactly who you are. It saddens me that you responded in this manner. Peace. Peter McWilliams

| (note to reader: Peter McWilliams is a deceased author and hemp activist that was tortured and murdered by big brother gov - for over ten years I have worked as a volunteer stage manager for a Hempfest stage named in his honor) |

Me: So you were "saddened" by my response? It sure made a lot of other un-indoctrinated people laugh hard (guess you were lying when you said it made you laugh - which one was it - laughed or sad?"

You actually signed your message as Peter McWilliams? What kind of fucktard game are you trying to play? It is totally chickenshit of you to send me messages without identifying yourself. Why are you hiding you identity from me? Does it make you feel closer to your magical man in the sky knowing who I am, while failing to identify yourself? Smug-ass troll behavior.

You claim love is your master. Love is nothing more than a human emotion (despite what christian dogma claims). Serving any master is enslavement. The shackles of love enslave people just as the shackles of greed do. Religion is a racket that preys upon the weak and the weak-minded. The best slave is the one that doesn't recognize their own enslavement. I am a slave to no god - for there is no god. THERE IS NO GOD !!!

Furthermore, you don't "know exactly who I am" or else you wouldn't be sending me christian crap filled messages (pagan or buddhist - acceptable). Anybody that actually knew me would know better than to send me any kind of message containing DOGMATIC RELIGIOUS BULLSHIT. "All is god" my ass.

And yes, I do find "praise god" to be an offensive term. Of course, being a smarmy superior god worshiper, you can't see the truth in that can you? I do not accept your shallow and insincere apology, and find further offense in your claim and false presumption that "I have a god to serve". You can be a happy little slave to god, love, or whatever else you need to worship, but I have thrown off the cult shackles of worship to false god(s). So don't try to tell me who I serve. Again, you don't know me at all. Whoever the cowardly fuck you are.

I agree with you on one thing - DELETE MY NUMBER FROM YOU LIST.
And whenever possible, keep your fucked up god delusions to yourself.

Spartacus



Perhaps I could have been more tactful and less abrasive, but this anonymous person contacted me first, and I was not feeling too much like a cute little easter bunny - ready for the chocolate slaughter, so I pulled my Yosemite Sam six guns and let 'em spit some fire. Gall-Dang varmints!

>>chows down on popcorn<<

One of my closest friends and I have a difference of opinion. When the Jehovah's Witnesses come to his door - and knock until someone answers - he is polite and kindly toward them, as they mean no harm (as he puts it). When those asswipes come to MY door, I may take what they hand me until I realize what it is, and then I call them back and give it back to them with a "No thanks." Or, if I recognize them right off, I might respond with a "What are you, 5 years old?? Get lost!"

He feels I am unconscionably rude. I abide by the principles of the great freethinker H.L. Mencken, from the Aftermath section of his reporting on the Scopes "Monkey" trial (where a teacher was defending his right to teach about actual SCIENCE, i.e. evolution, despite being surrounded by butthead Christians):

Once more, alas, I find myself unable to follow the best (neutral) thought. What the (friend)'s contention amounts to, at bottom, is simply the doctrine that a man engaged in combat with superstition should be very polite to superstition. This, I fear, is nonsense. The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.

True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can't disarm their enemy.

II

The meaning of religious freedom, I fear, is sometimes greatly misapprehended. It is taken to be a sort of immunity, not merely from governmental control but also from public opinion. A dunderhead gets himself a long-tailed coat, rises behind the sacred desk, and emits such bilge as would gag a Hottentot. Is it to pass unchallenged? If so, then what we have is not religious freedom at all, but the most intolerable and outrageous variety of religious despotism. Any fool, once he is admitted to holy orders, becomes infallible. Any half-wit, by the simple device of ascribing his delusions to revelation, takes on an authority that is denied to all the rest of us.

I do not know how many Americans entertain the ideas defended so ineptly by poor Bryan (the prosecutor defending the Christian creationist view - bottom link), but probably the number is very large. They are preached once a week in at least a hundred thousand rural churches, and they are heard too in the meaner quarters of the great cities. Nevertheless, though they are thus held to be sound by millions, these ideas remain mere rubbish. Not only are they not supported by the known facts; they are in direct contravention of the known facts. No man whose information is sound and whose mind functions normally can conceivably credit them. They are the products of ignorance and stupidity, either or both.

What should be a civilized man's attitude toward such superstitions? It seems to me that the only attitude possible to him is one of contempt. If he admits that they have any intellectual dignity whatever, he admits that he himself has none. If he pretends to a respect for those who believe in them, he pretends falsely, and sinks almost to their level. When he is challenged he must answer honestly, regardless of tender feelings. That is what Darrow did at Dayton, and the issue plainly justified the act. Bryan went there in a hero's shining armor, bent deliberately upon a gross crime against sense. He came out a wrecked and preposterous charlatan, his tail between his legs. Few Americans have ever done so much for their country in a whole lifetime as Darrow did in two hours. [www.positiveatheism.org]

[en.wikipedia.org]

When I was a member, I always hoped jh's would come ringing my door-bell and I'd stuff a bunch of sgi crap into their sweaty little paws. Now I like to think I'd treat them as untimely trick-or-treaters, costumed as sgi ymd or Mormons and give them a lecture of some sort. Perhaps with a demented gleam in my eye (kind of natural to me these days) and make them a little afraid of ringing that next bell . . .

It's been decades since I've seen any of those twerps. I guess I really feel that had door-knocking shakubuku been on the scene when I was a member, I would've been out annoying people, and being yelled at by someone would just be something I could turn into an "experience" to demonstrate how we really need to band together against the enemies of the lotus sutra. I don't think it would deter me or make me think that what I was doing was stupid.

An ex-friend (member) was staying with me earlier last year, and we took my dog to a local park for a walk. We struck up a conversation with another dog-walker - you know, innocuous dog-talk. On the way home, Bev made sure she gave me a few nam cards and urged me to go back and try to shakubuku the woman we met in the park. I was so creeped out at the idea of actually going back to stalk this woman, manipulate the conversation and shove a card in her hand. I'd be furious (and a little scared) if someone did that to me, but it's such a typical tactic!

Freedom of religion is meaningless unless it includes one's right to be
free *from* religion if one has no desire to be involved with it.