Master Xu Yun’s Discourse on Master Yin Guang (1952)

When sense-organs disengage from sense data, his attainment will be similar to that achieved by a reciter of the Buddha’s name when his training becomes effective and when the Pure Land manifests in front of him. In this state, noumemon and phenomenon intermingle, Mind and Buddha are not a duality and both are in the state of suchness which is absolute and free from all contraries and relativities. Then what difference is there between Chan and Pure Land?

Superficial Zizek

The racist aspect lies with the fact that Zizek either knows about – but chooses to ignore – indigenous Asian culture, or that he is not interested in any interpretive narrative that lies outside of the scope of a Eurocentric thought. In short, Zizek is a postmodern bourgeois thinker, masquerading as a post-Marxist thinker. How did the dialectical forces of history create this Zizek figure?

Oliver Cromwell and the Abolition of State Sanctioned ‘Christmas’

Oliver Cromwell was a very civilised, intelligent and progressive individual. He was also a devout Christian. Why, then, did he agree to ‘ban’ Christmas? He carried out this progressive measure because he thought that it was a great evil for the State to ‘enforce’ a religious celebration upon its citizens. As a consequence, Cromwell oversaw the legislation that ‘banned’ the State sanctioning of a national holiday that had, in his and many other Christian’s eye, no connection with legitimate Christian practice.

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