In 2003, and for many years after, the BBC clearly pursued a blanket ‘anti-Taliban’ policy in all its coverage. The death of every British soldier was treated with abject sorrow, and their loss was presented through an air of great respect. Britain is a relatively small island-country that draws its men and women for its foot-solders from its working class. These young people, who come through a modern education system, are then trained to fight in modern warfare, and then sent as combatants to far-flung areas of the world to act as cannon-fodder for political wars started and supported by the bourgeoisie. Today, the Western forces have withdrawn from Iraq and left its people open to attack from all sides. Nothing was achieved other than the removal of the Ba’ath Party, which in its time of tenure, served to keep in check all Islamist extremist tendencies.
Tag: West
Tiananmen June 4th, 1989 – the Making of a Modern Myth
The simple fact of the matter is that nothing of any real relevance happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989. The Western media was present at a minor demonstration that was eventually dispersed by the Chinese authorities. Contrary to Western misrepresentation, people are allowed to protest in China, and exercise this right all the time. There have been many such protests both before and after Tiananmen in China, many of which could be construed as far more significant for various reasons as that which occurred in Tiananmen in 1989, but which the Western press have completely ignored.
On Seeing Behind the Eyelids – A Marxist Critique of Buddhism in the West
The Christian monastic tradition, as manifest through Western Christianity, has generally combined a stringent discipline with voluntary poverty and celibacy. The idealised image of the Buddhist monk, as it has entered the Western psyche, is one of a man who has abandoned what is here (real material life), for what is over there (imagined religious realms). Of course, as what is over there, by definition, is never here and now, its presence can never be empirically confirmed. The Buddhist rules followed by monastics and the laity take the place of Christian piety in the West, but are adhered to by most Westerners with a similar fanatic attitude that completely misses the point the rule is assumed to be designed to achieve. The physical practice of Buddhist meditation is of course the act of Christian prayer wrapped in saffron robes. Western converts meditate as if they are praying to a divine being, but with the added titillation that the divine being in question is their own imagined self-essence – or god removed from his heaven and relocated into their own head. Chanting mantras – the holy syllables of the East – replaces the singing of hymns and the chanting of monks, and sutra reading is bible study by other means. Just as god in heaven can never be logically verified, enlightenment in the head can not be seen in the environment or known to exist.
Charles Luk (1898-1978) Ch’an Buddhist Scholar.
‘In the mean time Charles Luk was training in the Tibetan Buddhist (Vajrayana) lineages of Kagyu and Gelug under one teacher – the Tulku of Xikang – namely the Venerable Hutuktu, who was of Mongolian ethnic origin. Xikang is of course Xikangsheng (西康省) which is sometimes written as ‘Sikang’, and translates as ‘Western Abundance Province’. Now no longer in existence, it was once a province of easternTibet(Kham) controlled by the forces of the Republic of China. Today, part of this former province is in eastern Tibet, whilst the other part is in the western Sichuan province. This area, although comprised of a Tibetan majority, is known for its small Mongol ethnic grouping. During this time, Charles Luk was initiated into the secretive technique known as Phowa – or the method of the transference of consciousness at the point of death, to a Buddhafield (i.e. rebirth) of one’s choice. His other great Buddhist teacher was Ch’an master Xu Yun (1840-1959) – from whom he inherited the dharma of the enlightened lay-person which is believed to go back to Vimalakirti – an enlightened contemporary of the Buddha.’
The Transformative Psychology of Enlightenment.
‘Psychology in the West is a relatively new field of study. As such, there is no ‘one’ agreed approach to the theory of ‘mind’ in the Western tradition. Viewpoints vary from that of the neurologist, who views every attribute of human, conscious creativity as being nothing more than a mixture of chemical reactions and electrical impulses, to the psychotherapist, who works with the thought processes, so as to achieve a ‘balanced’ and culturally ‘agreed’ state of mind. Needless to say, virtually every other view of the mind fits somewhere inbetween these two broad perspectives. This dissertation will examine the many facets of the mind, as viewed from both the Western and Eastern traditions and the consequence of this combined knowledge for the modern and post-modern human condition.’
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 