Participatory Spirituality for the 21st Century
An interesting new blog / video on Integral Life:
Why We Desperately Need an Integral Islam, by Amir Ahmad Nasr
The Child of a Fragmented World Gone Slightly Mad
It was sometime around early 2009, and to most of my friends, I was a cheerful happy guy, but what they didn’t know is that deep inside, I had never felt more mentally and emotionally tormented.
In just two short years, growing up religiously dogmatic in childhood up to the late 90’s had given way to a new reality in which my relationship with Islam was in shambles.
Blogging and the open vastness of the Internet had a lot to do with it.
From war-torn Sudan to oil-rich Qatar, I had experienced living in traditional, religious, and conservative societies that honored their tribal roots and heritage.
We enjoyed the fruits of modernity–cars, communication technology, and medical drugs–but most of us didn’t necessarily embody it as a worldview. In many ways, our tribal, traditional and modern identities were in tension and lacking in harmony and reconciliation, let alone deep coherent integration.
It got a lot worse when my family moved to Malaysia in 1997 and I got enrolled into a British international school with a liberal and Westernized environment. I was almost 11 years old.
For my parents, the move had its challenges for sure. For my siblings and I, the cultural and linguistic ordeals we confronted were on a whole other level.
All of a sudden modernity and post-modernity came crashing on us, and challenged our identities and worldview in ways that we were not prepared for.
They challenged a worldview I had inherited but never really critically conceptualized on my own. A worldview that wasn’t truly mine throughout a short unexamined life that hadn’t gotten thoroughly examined until much later.
The result should have been obviously predicable: distress, confusion, and anxiety. Then puberty hit, and boy oh boy was that fun. I am of course being sarcastic.
So I did what I could do: repress, ignore and continue as if nothing worthy of resolution was really going on.
That is until I accidentally stumbled upon the liberal Arab blogosphere in early 2006. Continuing to sweep doubt under the rug seized to be an option. Heck, the rug disappeared, and now I had to confront the persistent question marks head on.
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hi balder
well , i wouldn´t relay too much on double you bushes definitions of the world : ))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greater_Middle_East_%28orthograph...
the dark green IS the middle east , for me. the rest is bushs fantasy.and
i was refering to the old world . before islam arose. yeah i know löpon tenzin orients the origin of bonpo dzog chen in persia or present day afghanistan or there abouts (but also looooong before islam) But he aint a history scholar, last time i looked. my info comes from chögyal namkai norbu and he is , apart from being a dzog chen master , a historian and university professor for the history of tibet generally and dzog chen in particular, having worked years with the famous prof. g. tucci .
and the roots of bonpo dzog chen and buddhist dzog chen are different . so i was not referring to sherab miwo but to garab dorje, who is believed to have been teaching, 300 years after buddhas paranirvana, from dhumatala , capitol of oddiyana which is located by CNNR in the present day swat valley pakistan.
sherab miwo on the other hand was supposed tp teach 18.000 years ago by some accounts at the feet of mount kailash, reynolds and capriles have some ideas there , .....but actually i was just teasing you a bit , balder, : ))
in any case it is important to notice that bonpo dzog chen and garab dorje´s dzog chen are not the same thing.the lineage is different for one thing and a lot of other aspects as well.
in any case the thriving buddhist tantric civilization of that part of ancient india, all the way up the silk road with trusha (nowadays kirigistan or was it another of those ..-stans ?) being another wiped out tantric (anuyoga came from there) country. all of it was destroyed by islam.and very bloodily so. tamerlane (bostons calling) was from that region and raged there.
it seems to me and others that the sufis are those remnants of old buddhist tantric priest, who choose to camouflage their knowledge and hide it in plain sight , by overtly converting but secretly continuing to teach the real knowledge and given the devastating blow to those civilizations by an extremly intolerant and ignorant islam, they themselves probably after a few 100 years ,forgot their roots. in my sufi studies, undertaken when much younger , with for example the indian chisti sufi order it seems that some of the practises done were very similar to dzog chen (as i discovered much later)and in any case they do not originate from the koran since they are not common islam knowledge not teaching or in any traditional islamic scripture. sufis seem to be quite different from order to order some are also extremly intolerant and jihadistic so.......
i understand your attempt to see the good in all and sundry ,
but sometimes its necessary to be ruthlessly discriminatory.so we get some clarity and do not end up in kennys wishy washy all is the same sort of integral soup .
cheers
m
Balder said:
Yes, I agree it is time that the irrational and violent aspects of the religion need to be faced and addressed. I don't know how much Amir touches on these issues in his book, but I will find out soon, since I just purchased it.
About my paper, I don't recall saying that Dzogchen originated in a somewhat Islamic country. But Afghanistan is indeed part of the Greater Middle East. When I received teachings on the origins of Dzogchen from Lopon Tenzin Namdak, I recall him saying with some vagueness that Dzogchen likely emerged in that general area, from present-day Afghanistan or beyond (in some region of northern present-day India). Perhaps recent scholarship has nailed down the locations better...? All this aside, though, the geographical element of my paper (which I wrote in a Wilber-3 or Wilber-4 context, by the way) was probably the least important part of it...
in any case
its kinda funny that we are comparing islam with dzog chen ........
one thing can be learned by that : all those buddhist /tantric/dzog chen countries were destroyed
by ...islam . there is no buddhism anymore in northindia because of the islam enslaught 1200 years ago
so what does that teach us ? IF we do nothing and just say : oh look they are sort of similar somehow and remain tolerant , well , that was the approach of the buddhist kingdoms : the result : they are gone , gone forever .
so.....
now i want to high light another fact , which is partially linked to the this "tolerance approach" of the green meme
check this out : http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/06/uk-muslim-paedophile-rings-are-an...
this is just the tip of the iceberg
we should never forget that islam does have a history , and a very bloody one it is,
it aint only some whooly theory .
here is what happened a few days ago to a camery team of the german state tv ARD /WDR.
they wanted to research something about islam and went to a mosque in offenbach , germany. there they got directly attacked without warning by some moslems .
http://www.pi-news.net/2013/06/video-moslems-attackieren-ard-kamera...
the funny thing is that the team had no idea that this could happen : )) since they belief as all green meme idiots do (i mean its the state tv´s (their own ) message since years)
that islam is peace : ))
AS this is the top state tv education line : that they now report about islams problems this means that
finally it has gotten so bad that they cant deny it any further.
sorry that it is in german : ) i search for an english version but so far no luck. anyway the beginning
speaks for itself. then the rest is about : how coudl this happen whjo would have thought uhuhu the imam chuckles about he had no idea since islam is peace and the point is more and more young german moslems go to syria to fight jihad against assad.
the real point is that the state education tv lies of" islam is peace " are starting to be revealed as the lies they always were by the ACTIONS of real life islam.
another more ironic aspect that is now happening is
in europe more and more headscarves woman turn up and in turkey the young woman fight on the streets for tjheir right to have no headscarve !!
right now they fight against the regime of islamofascist erdogan. irony is that the green meme idiots in germany ignore all the islamic oppression because critizising this would be " rascist". but now the turkish freedom activists are in german tv because they say that their message isnüt heard sop they translated their message from turkish into german and funny enough they speak perfect accent free german : ))
wow i was very surprised because usually german moslems of migrant origin cant speak german well even in the 4th generation , they usually speak something called "kanaksprak" its a terrible slang of mixed turkish and garbled german OR if they speak german then with an accent. there is a lot of rap songs ion that lingo like "isch figge disch un deine mudda " or so
so i was very surprised to see turkish young woman without headscarves , looking just like any modern person ,speaking perfect german, but coming from turkey being raised and living there. hey so it is possible , there exist intelligent turks, what a surprise ,who can actually master a foreign language. just not in germany. it seems. then it became clear.these young people are not moslems , they want modernity and live it and now they fight on the streets in istanbul for it.
have hardly ever seen our social pädagoges (and we have 2 million !! social immigration workers in germany alone) with sooo much egg in their faces !!
it is becoming ever more clear now that the only problem that these kids have integrating into a modern society is called ...... Islam.
As a tangent, a similar principle applies to some kennilingus political strategy when it comes to US Republican regressives, which is today pretty much the entire party. We don't need to include their ideas and be nice about it; we need to declare political war and defeat them at every turn to combat their regressive, hateful and incredibly harmful policies to most of us. Not incidentally, many of these regressives are also religious fanatics but of a Christian variety.
here is what
mutti merkel (german chancellor)
has to say about germany becoming an islamic state :
http://europenews.dk/en/node/35714
it is in english
this is the very real background to the concerns abut islam .it is not theoritical.
sure
but the christian fundamentalists as a rule do not teach their disciples to blow themselves up in an atheists
schoolbus, so we need to differentiate in more depth. i am here really in line with sam harris.
it is true that we need to confront the religious belief nuts on all grounds BUT not in an indiscriminate way.
generally the 3 desert religions (called also the abrahamites) are the worst offenders but there again islam
is by far and i mean really by very very
far the absolute worst.
and of course religious freedom needs to be maintained but we do need some rules as to how far that can be used
this term "religious freedom" is in europe the weapon islam is using to establish its monoculture
everywhere
and since for the modern not much knowing atheist all religions are of the same gobbledigoock he couldnt care less
what they mean by religious observance as long as they vote for him at the next election.
but what about the religious freedom of the azteks for example ?
would that be the red line even an atheist would see .......or would he be willing to supply the necessary
living human bodies to be heart harvested to be sacrificed to quatzopotlwaknaduu each day so the sunrise can come?
maybe he would think : "oh good we have too many POOR old people anyway so look here, we provide for your exercise of religious freedom the necessary bodies as long as you vote for us . these old folks, they can do one last service for society."
or would he finally realize the plain fact that some religions are and always were
actually INSANE ?
and the whole green meme mass media and university professor pose .....would they relativize it all again
as they do right now with the daily koranic terror ?
like along the line of "what a dignified death" isn´t that so much better then fade away in a boring old age home .....sacrificed for the good of all to quatlzabblidiguugk for the greater good , oh how noble a death etc etc
.of course just making sure that their own old folks stays in some privatly paid old age home , safely tucked away....
you see in europe we have now this phenomenon:
the very people who are screaming all along "rascist nazi" at any islamcritical person
are the first to move their kids into a moslem free private school (we have in germany now a booming private schoolsector due to this ) rather then let their little bobby or maryjane share the same school witjh the local moslem kids . in the public sector many schools now have a saturation of 50 -90% of moslems migrants in public schools .
so the rich green meme öko´s hypocrite idiots ....as usual drink wine but preach water,
and the poor green memer´s, always full of bright eyes about the multicultism of their neighbourhood,who cant afford a private school, as soon as they have kids move house into a predominatly nonmuslim zone of town , even as far as the town periphery ,so their kids .......well , äh, dont have to experience "the most peacefull religion of all times" in action in the schoolyard ,exercising their right to free religious activity ( in this case terrorizing and robbing the kuffar kids, since they are in the minority in the public school sector in all big cities now) on the back of their kid.
sorry i have gotten very sarcastic seeing this charade happening since years. it is sad that the green meme proves to be a lot more moron then the orange one preceding it. in fact i doubt nowadays that that colourscheme even has any validity. a meme that acts as dumb as the green meme is doing here in europe, well, its hard to see where this is evolutionary more advanced. it might be that their theories are very .....advanced , but on the road test ,where it really matters,it is just .....acting dumber than shit . so far pomo seems more like a dead end then a higher progression.
its policies promote and actively create ,right now in all of europe,the conditions of a
cultural mass suicide
"But the christian fundamentalists as a rule do not teach their disciples to blow themselves up in an atheists schoolbus, so we need to differentiate in more depth."
Did I say anything to that effect? No, I did not, so I wonder who needs some depth here. What Christian fundamentalists in Congress do though is push to reduce or remove food stamps for the poor as one of many examples of literally killing us softly instead of with bombs. Killing Obamacare is another, actually taking away a poor person's ability to see a doctor in the early stages of disease, instead of having to go to an emergency room when it is too late. And no, I don't paint all Christianity with this broad brush, just the regressives. There are plenty of progressive Christians and I am constantly pointing them out when they fight their own religion's regressive branch.
"and the whole green meme mass media and university professor pose .....would they relativize it all again" and other so-called green meme and pomo rants. Again, who is the one lacking depth here, painting the entire mass media, university staff and postmodernism as relativists? Me thinks you're drunk on the kennilingus strawman ale here.
here is an essay by a swedish blogger woman about the changes in sweden ,another very green meme ruled european country
http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/06/we-changed-our-lives/
its haunting essay about the cultural mass suicide green meme politics create
that is a swedish woman shows it is a european phenomenon not limited to only one country or nation.its happening in all 26 EU member countries to various degrees.
i just found a translation of one of the rare german academics who have understood the threat islam poses,m.kleine - hartlage, in fact he is quoting from his book . being a sociologist in his book he analysed islam as social system and how it works , quite interesting, especially since the guy used to be leftist
a post he wrote regarding the recent islamic deadly terrorist attack in london :
http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/06/london-violence-and-islam/
since this thread started with the call for an integral islam
here is a glimpse of an analysis of what any reformer will be up against ....
taunting.
well
i dont know american politics very well but the european situation definitly . so there are some differences.
you can see from some of the later posts.it is a big and global mess. and of course i am generalizing, no doubt, maybe i am even wrong.....
theurj said:
"But the christian fundamentalists as a rule do not teach their disciples to blow themselves up in an atheists schoolbus, so we need to differentiate in more depth."
Did I say anything to that effect? No, I did not, so I wonder who needs some depth here. What Christian fundamentalists in Congress do though is push to reduce or remove food stamps for the poor as one of many examples of literally killing us softly instead of with bombs. Killing Obamacare is another, actually taking away a poor person's ability to see a doctor in the early stages of disease, instead of having to go to an emergency room when it is too late. And no, I don't paint all Christianity with this broad brush, just the regressives. There are plenty of progressive Christians and I am constantly pointing them out when they fight their own religion's regressive branch.
"and the whole green meme mass media and university professor pose .....would they relativize it all again" and other so-called green meme and pomo rants. Again, who is the one lacking depth here, painting the entire mass media, university staff and postmodernism as relativists? Me thinks you're drunk on the kennilingus strawman ale here.
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