The May 2020 issue of Lions Roar magazine features wisdom and meditations from leading dharma teachers on freeing yourself from the patterns that hold you back. Inside, youll also find a remembrance of the late spiritual icon Ram Dass; Gesshin Claire Greenwood on how to practice homestyle oryoki; an interview with renowned Buddhist thinker and environmental activist Joanna Macy; Buddhist book reviews; and much more.Editorial / Welcome to the Issue

The Secret Is Mind by Melvin McLeod

Freeing ourselves from our painful habitual patterns is the heart of Buddhist meditation. Inthis special section, 5 leading dharma teachers share their secrets to getting unstuck andbecoming free.

The renowned Buddhist thinker and environmental activist on the global awakening the planet needswhile we still have time. At heart, its a spiritual revolution.

Zen teacher John Tarrant on climate change, the Australian fires, and the magic of the primeval forest. These forests have suffered a great burning now, those places in my blood and my marrow, and I feel a tremendous sorrow in their loss.

Michael Stroud on what to do when meditation only makes things worse.

For 50 years he spread warmth and light in America. Sara Davidson remembers a spiritual icon of our time.

Feel the Love Inside You So many of us find it hard to love and care for ourselves. Heres a simple practice developedby psychotherapist and meditation teacher Ari Goldfield to give yourself the warmth and love you deserve.

The Old and the BeautifulIn Japan, wabi sabi is an aesthetic principle that sees beauty in imperfection and age. Can Kem McIntosh Lee see the wabi sabi of her own aging body?

Oryoki is the meditative way of eating practiced in Zen monasteries. Gesshin Claire Greenwood on how to bring the spirit of oryoki into our home kitchensand feel more deeply nourished.

In It for the TeaHilary Smith isnt keen about Zen, but she does need some company. Isolation and depression are the wolves at the door of her mountain cabin.

Buddhism Is Never Apart from Who I Am: Governor David Ige of Hawaii

Trying to Stay Afloat by Kamilah Majied

Does a Dog Have Buddhanature? by Koun Franz

What do you say when someone asks you why you practice Buddhism?

Roshi Joan Halifax

Buddha Takes the Mound: Enlightenment in 9 Inningsby Donald Lopez Jr.

We review Big Love by Adele Hulse, Just So by Alan Watts, Tara by Rachael Wooten, and more.

Lions Roar is a nonprofit. Our mission is to share the wisdom of the Buddhas teachingsto inspire, comfort, support, and enlighten readers around the world. Our aspiration is to keep LionsRoar.com available to everyone, providing a supportive, inspiring Buddhist community that anyone can access, from curious beginners to committed meditators. Do you share our aspiration? We cant do this without your help.

Lions Roar reaches more readers like you than ever before. Unfortunately, advertising and other revenues are falling for print and online media. We know we have something deeply precious to share with the world, and we want to continue this important work. Can you help support our efforts now?

Lions Roar is independent, unbiased, not-for-profit, and supported by readers like you. Please donate today and help the lions roar echo for readers around the world.

See more here:

Inside the May 2020 issue of Lion's Roar magazine - Lion's Roar

If youre looking for an album to give you courage as you peer out at the apocalypse from behind your living-room blinds, you could do worse than Sampa the Greats The Return (Ninja Tune). The Zambia-born, Australia-based artist released this sprawling, languid record last September, and its full of 90s beats, heart-on-the-dashiki rapping, and such a crowd of guest starsBrooklyn MC Whosane, Australian singer-songwriter Thando, Melbourne artists collective Mandarin Dreamsthat it feels as much like a family affair as a solo effort. Her crisp, catchy flow is down-to-earth and uncolored by Auto-Tune, whether shes dropping boasts about Afrocentric empowerment on OMG, lusciously rolling the syllables of mel-a-nin over her teeth on Final Form, or soaring toward enlightenment with Australias Sunburnt Soul Choir on Mwana. As is often the case with neosoul, Sampas music can start to feel overly earnest by the end of the album. She seems aware of this herself; the interlude Wake Up is an answering-machine message from a friend who declares, I dont think you have time for all this finding-yourself spiritual shit. But were in the middle of a life-altering time, when spiritual shit might be something we need. Its hard not to feel grateful when Sampa and London collective Steam Down end Summer by singing Im not afraid in ascending harmoniesthe power of their voices together makes you believe their message. v

Link:

Sampa the Great makes uplifting spiritual soul on The Return - Chicago Reader

The very first message I received after announcing the decision to suspend in-person worship at Claremont United Methodist Church came from Nora, a high school student who serves in worship most Sundays, often carrying the cross into the sanctuary as worship begins.

Do you think there will be Easter service still? I am very upset about the absence of church and what is happening in our world right now. I would be VERY upset if Easter was canceled.

Yes, dear Nora, there will be Easter.

Easter is alive in you right now.

Easter comes alive in every human connection.

Easter comes alive in all our senses, in our very being.

The triumphant sounds of brass ensembles, the vibrant sight of Easter lilies in the sanctuary, the cross lifted high, the Christ candle lit to shine through the darkness Easter lives in these shared experiences and memories. Memories of last Easter. Memories of any Easter we have ever shared anywhere with anyone. Memories of that first Easter morning that we share in sacred story every year on Easter Sunday.

Easter lives even in our longing now for these experiences.

Easter celebrates new life. New life that overcomes even our starkest moments.

Easter calls us to hope. To hope in one another, to hope in a future we cannot yet see or imagine.

Already on trees we see the buds and blossoms that we can imagine will be vibrant on Easter Sunday and beyond. Easter is alive in the natural world around us, inviting us to see beyond these earliest days of spring.

Our social rites of spring may be canceled spring sports, high school musicals, graduations, but Easter is not canceled.

Easter is alive in all the ways we reach out to one another across this social distance.

Easter is alive when grandparents video chat story time to grandchildren.

Easter is alive when the youth group meets on Instagram to share their highs and lows.

Easter is alive with every phone call made to connect with someone who lives alone.

Even in the midst of social distancing and sheltering in place, Easter lives in the new ways we are learning to show love and care for one another.

Easter is not canceled and neither is church.

The church is not a building.

The church lives wherever people of faith any faith share in love and hope.

The church lives in every social media post of beauty and words of encouragement.

The church lives in every text and phone call made to keep connection alive.

The church lives in new communications platforms like Zoom and old platforms like phone trees.

The pews were empty when we suspended in-person worship on Sunday, but the church was alive. The people prayed and sang in their pajamas from home. We offered gratitude for one another, and we confessed our fears. And in the many ways we experience and express our faith, we heard a holy invitation to receive new hope.

Our faith offers us an experience of strength and hope greater than ourselves. Our Higher Power. Our Divine Source of Life and Love. Our Creator. Our Christ. Our Holy Spirit.

And, the faith of many others in all the worlds religions calls them to experience strength and hope and love as well.

Passover is not canceled. Our Jewish friends will celebrate the freedom from slavery their ancestors in faith found when they followed Moses out of Egypt toward the Promised Land.

Laylat al-Qadr is not canceled. Our Muslim friends will celebrate the night the first verses of the Quran were received by the Prophet Mohammed.

Rama Navami is not canceled. Our Hindi friends will celebrate the birthday of Rama.

Wesak is not canceled. Our Buddhist friends will celebrate the Buddahs birth, enlightenment, and death.

And for those who practice no faith, for the spiritual but not religious, for the lapsed and the lingering, no one has canceled human kindness.

For all of us. No one has canceled human kindness.

Compassion and hope live now.

Human kindness lives now.

And so, dear Nora, there will be Easter.

Ristine is senior minister at Claremont United Methodist Church in Claremont, Calif. Before moving to the Los Angeles area, she was the pastor at Mission Hills United Methodist Church in San Diego. She also is a former editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune. Claremont United Methodist Church has temporarily suspended in-person worship, reaching out across the social distance via Facebook and YouTube.

Karen Clark Ristine, senior minister at Claremont United Methodist Church in Claremont, Calif.

(Courtesy photo )

Continue reading here:

Commentary: Will there be Easter? - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Though Vermeule himself is not an originalist, he argues that it effectively existed only to give the conservative legal movement the intellectual cachet to join mainstream American legal thinking. This approach served legal conservatives well in the hostile environment in which originalism was first developed, and for some time afterward, Vermeule wrote. But originalism has now outlived its utility, and has become an obstacle to the development of a robust, substantively conservative approach to constitutional law and interpretation.

What, then, should replace originalism? Vermeule initially offers a vision of American constitutional law based on the principles that government helps direct persons, associations, and society generally toward the common good, and that strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good is entirely legitimate. All of this can be achieved without amending a word of the document as well. The sweeping generalities and famous ambiguities of our Constitution, an old and in places obscure document, afford ample space for substantive moral readings that promote peace, justice, abundance, health, and safety, by means of just authority, hierarchy, solidarity, and subsidiarity, he explains.

Later descriptions take on a more menacing air. At one point, he argues that the states power to compel vaccinations could be extended to combat pandemics and scourges of many kindsbiological, social, and economiceven when doing so requires overriding the selfish claims of individuals to private rights. Its never reassuring to see the word rights set off in scare quotes, to say the least. Thus the state will enjoy authority to curb the social and economic pretensions of the urban-gentry liberals who so often place their own satisfactions (financial and sexual) and the good of their class or social milieu above the common good, Vermeule concludes.

Its tempting, perhaps, for those on the left to read Vermeule as an expression of the secret desire lurking within every legal conservatives heart. He is not, however, an originalist or even a standard American conservative. He is a proponent of integralism, an arcane strain of Catholic political thought that draws upon 19th-century critiques of modernism and revolution. Integralists reject liberalism as a political philosophy, preferring hierarchy over egalitarianism and autocracy to individual rights. They eschew the modern secular nation-state in favor of something more closely resembling the confessional states of early modern Europe, or perhaps the Habsburg empires.

Originally posted here:

The Emerging Right-Wing Vision of Constitutional Authoritarianism - The New Republic

Im remoted in my condominium in Portland, Maine, all the way through an international pandemic. In my tumbler of rye whiskey there floats a big, sq. ice dice. Outside my window, the ice has retreated with the onset of spring, that famend Maine ice which at one timeno longer goodbye in the pastwas once amongst the Pine Tree States maximum winning commodities, like trees, like lobster.

Its uncommon that I take a look at the ice in my glass. Or, higher, its uncommon that I see the ice. Few folks do, no longer in the approach that anyone two centuries in the past would have. We dont recall to mind the mysteries of frozen water; we dont contemplate its provenance. Indeed, we all know the place it got here from: it got here from a plastic tray in the freezer, or it dropped into our glass once we driven the lever on the fridge.

With comfort comes familiarity. But on this case, familiarity doesnt breed contempt; it breeds blindness. Weve overpassed the attractiveness, the majesty of ice. We take it without any consideration, this dice, this small reminder of a substance that was once as soon as feared and respected. And our global is way the worse for it.

For ages we have been attacking the ice, chopping into it and carting it southward for urbanites to drop into their Manhattans. Indeed, the very state the place I now take a seat (ice additional melting in my glass) as soon as stood at the very middle of the 19th century ice business. Even as Texas cowboys in the 1870s drove their herds northward for slaughter, 25,000 males would amass each and every iciness on the Kennebec ice fields to carve up the river and retailer it for cargo to towns in the South.

But those that made their livings by means of reducing up lakes most effective gave the impression to support the romance. We knew the ice would no longer be really easy to keep an eye on. It have been right here a ways longer than us. It had, if truth be told, dominated this continent lengthy prior to people arrived. And when the glaciers, the ones historical behemoths, receded again to the north nation, they left most effective riddles for us to resolve, claw-marks in the shorn cliffs, the place some Old-Testament goliath had swiped the aspects from mountains. To those that first laid eyes on them, those glacial remnants should were stupefying. The Great Lakes and Niagara Falls. The making a song sands of Indiana and the waterfalls of Illinois Starved Rock State Park. El Capitan.

When people first got here to the North American continent, one can think they maintained nice appreciate for the energy and thriller of ice, at the same time as the frozen monoliths have been making their approach northward. The Iroquois believed that the ice spirit Flintadditionally identified merely as Evilhelped to shape the Earth, together with his dual brother, the writer god Sky-holder (Good). The Ojibwe informed of the wendigos: malevolent, ice-coated giants who gobbled males. The Cree, too, believed in cannibalistic ice giants, as did many different tribes: the Micmac, the Maliseet, the Passamaquoddy, the Abenaki and the Penobscot.

Many of the Europeans who arrived to displace and demolish the ones tribes sought peace via brutally enforced spiritual enlightenment. They present in the roughhewn panorama of America a New World that have been in large part shaped by means of historical ice. These new arrivals realized to let the land information them, and so they imbued those lands with their very own religious fervor. A brand new type of faith evolved, Transcendentalism, in which it was once taught that divinity pervades each facet of nature. Belief and nature merged. Today, even nonetheless, the small mountain lakes braided in combination by means of a unmarried circulatethe ones pristine ponds shaped ages in the past by means of glaciersare known as paternoster lakes because of their resemblance to a Catholic rosary.

Ice had a profound impact on the 19th-century American creativeness. Before Charles Darwin became the medical global on its ear together with his idea, it was once glaciers that ruled the dialog surrounding the Earths age and Biblical reality. In the early 19th century, many nice European thinkers had change into obsessive about ice, together with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who, together with being the father of German literature, was once additionally a glaciologist prior to the time period existed), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he of the ice-riddled Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Heres Coleridge on glaciers: Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! / Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven / Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun / Clothe you with rainbows? Coleridge, right here was once a man who knew how you can admire ice.

Meanwhile it was once a Swiss geologist, Louis Agassiz, who first disseminated the perception that Europe, Asia, and North America had as soon as been frozen lands. After the 1840 newsletter of his two-volume paintings tudes sur les glaciers (Studies on Glaciers), Agassiz started reporting on his findings to the Geological Society of London. In doing so, he ignited a firestorm.

The prevailing trust, pre-Agassiz, was once that the Earths shocking land formations have been shaped some 6,000 years earlier by means of the Biblical flood. But Agassiz and the glaciologists who got here after him have been ready to turn striations in the ice that proved those leviathans have been round a ways longer than the Earths meant age.

Then, Agassiz set out for America, and the famed geologistand by means of extension iceentered complete drive into American discourse, basically via connections Agassiz shaped together with his New World contemporaries. After turning Europe the other way up together with his theories, Agassiz settled at Harvard University, the place the Swiss geologist was once welcomed into the Saturday Club, an elite circle whose participants integrated the poets James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the botanist Asa Gray, the mathematician Benjamin Peirce, the novelist William Dean Howells, and the thinker and essayist Ralph Waldo Emersonin all probability the maximum necessary philosopher in America. At Harvard, Agassiz would move on to show a few of Americas brightest younger minds, together with Henry Adams and William James, and ice started to appear in the works of those luminaries.

It was once in large part on account of Agassizs superstar that frozen water was once imbued with a way of cheeky rise up towards won theology. Amid the flowering of the Romantic Age, Americas keenest minds turned into fixated on the perception that the Earths previous stretched again untold eons, into instances when the whole lot between right here and the horizon have been coated with a white, pristine sheen. The symbol was once sufficient to make even the maximum hardened New England Brahmin giddy with awe.

Over time, the American fascination with ice deepened. It was once just a century in the past that the nice age of polar exploration got here to an finish. For a lot of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans had ice on the mind. Urban manufacturing facility employees and housewives in the heartland marveled at the exploits of Byrd, Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and Peary. In their minds, they traveled up into the ones icy climes, shivering with the ones males, fearing the chilly with them, and, along them, falling in love with the chic great thing about the frozen global.

As on a regular basis readers adopted those polar adventures, ice goals filtered into our leisure. In 1936, the science horror author H.P. Lovecraft revealed At the Mountains of Madness, which recounted a disastrous 1930 expedition to Antarctica. In the e-book, the explorers in finding that the ice at the backside of the global holds terrors of such magnitude that their feeble human brains can slightly comprehend them. And readers believed. Because, over many centurieseven since the break of day of humankindwed been educated to concern ice.

Lovecraft himself had, as a boy, change into obsessive about the polar reachesno longer for his or her medical qualities, however for what the ice at the ends of the Earth represented. For centuries, frosty mountaintops and polar climes have been respected inside of the human psyche as unknowable puts, websites inhabited by means of ghosts and monsterseven gods. Thus, Lovecraft was once following in a grand custom. Edgar Allen Poes most effective novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, ends as the narrator disappears into the ice at the South Pole, the place a chasm threw itself open to receive us. A decade after the novels newsletter, lifestyles would echo fiction, as the explorer Captain Sir John Franklin and his expedition would vanish into the ice, by no means to be heard from once morethus sparking certainly one of the maximum intensive and romanticized seek efforts in historical past.

But in fact, Lovecraft and Poe have been taking their cues from the largest horror novel of all of them. It is not any twist of fate that, when Frankensteins monster tells his tale, he does so from inside of a glacial cave. The dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me.

Today, as were all too conscious, the Earths literal ice is melting. But the romantic thought of ice has lengthy been moribund, loss of life a sluggish loss of life by means of one million cuts. It died a bit of when Frederick Cook and Robert E. Peary squabbled over who had first came upon the North Pole. It additional succumbed when Roald Amundsen stabbed his flag into the South Pole. It withered when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summited Everest. It dies slightly each and every time we in detail {photograph} it from outer house, each and every time a strand of latest vacationers traipses throughout Everests peaks, each and every time we poke some other drill bit into the tundra.

But the true dying of ices energy got here with the invention of refrigeration.

While people were ready to make hearth since the starting of civilization, the skill to create ice eluded us till fairly not too long ago. Before refrigeration, the nature of ice pressured us to appreciate it, continuously killing those that dared discover it or tried to mine it. Hearty souls took their lives into their fingers, trudging into the northern geographical regions to noticed into the beast and cart items of it again to civilization, as though the frozen blocks have been rhino horns or leopard pelts.

But lately, at the same time as icebergs the measurement of Boston break away from Antarctic glaciers and go with the flow away like cubes in a colossal cocktail, we discover ice able handy in our houses. Perhaps, we pour too many pellets into our cup at the 7-Eleven, so we sell off the surplus out and hit the lever once more. Sometimes, in our freezers, we will be able to listen the ice creaking and cracking, as Shackleton should have. We might come across its rumblings in the most sensible of the device at the film theater. When we push the lever and the ice doesnt obediently drop into our cup, we develop pissed off. We inform the supervisor. Then we move take a seat in the air-conditioning.

And its that air-conditioning this is killing the ice maximum of all. By midcentury, the Earth is anticipated to have just about 6 billion air-conditioners, buzzing softly into the evening. As we take a seat by means of the window unit and sip our Manhattans, the ice at the ends of the Earth groans in ache. And some other city-sized chew drops into the sea.

REDISCOVERING THE ROMANCE

As a tender guy, rising up amongst the glacial plains of Wisconsin, John Muir, the nice American naturalist and long term founding father of the Sierra Club, was once obsessive about productiveness. The younger Muir invented a wide variety of clocks and contraptions, together with a table that turned around the e-book in entrance of the reader after an allocated time of finding out, and an alarm-clock mattress that tipped the sleeper onto the flooring when it was once time to evoke. Later, in his twenties, Muir would commute to Indiana to change into what we might now name an potency professional in a carriage-wheel manufacturing facility, the place he endured meticulously counting mins and seconds.

And then, all the way through a unprecedented overall sun eclipse in 1867, tragedy struckand Muirs lifestyles modified without end. While tightening a belt on a store device, he misplaced his grip and despatched a steel axe flying like a dart into his eye. As fluid from his eyeball dripped down his cheek, Muir became evenly to a fellow employee and mentioned: My right eye is gone, closed forever on all Gods beauty.

Hours later, Muirs different eye failed too. He lay in a depressing room for a month and a 1/2, till he turned into remodeled. He vowed that if he ever noticed once more, he would commute the Earth taking a look upon Gods advent. When he in any caseand miraculouslyregained sight in each eyes, he was once a unique guy. He now not concept in mins and secondsnow he concept in epochs. He left Indiana and walked all the approach to the Gulf of Mexico. Then he sailed to Cuba, after which onward to California, the place he made a lifestyles amongst a few of the oldest dwelling issues on Earth, the Golden States redwoods and sequoias.

In California, Muir refrained from short-lived humanity and started to consider glaciers, whose striations counted way more years than even the ones historical redwoods. He turned into satisfiedprior to somebody had conceived the thought about the areathat his new house have been shaped by means of historical glaciers. And he wrote of them, together with his thoughts became clear of lifestyless minutia and excited by the sluggish and mild passing of millennia, in which he was once however a mote:

In the waning days of this mountain ice, when the major river started to shallow and damage like a summer season cloud, its crests and domes emerging upper and better, and island rocks coming to mild a ways out in the major present, then many a tributary died, and this one, bring to a halt from its trunk, moved slowly again amid the gurgling and gushing of its bleeding rills, till, crouching in the shadows of this half-mile hole, it lived a feeble separate lifestyles. Here its days come and move, and the hiding glacier lives and works. It brings boulders and sand and superb mud polishings from its sheltering domes and caons, increase a terminal moraine, which paperwork a dam for the waters which factor from it; and underneath, operating in the darkish, it scoops a shallow lake basin. Again the glacier retires, crouching underneath cooler shadows, and a cluster of stable years allows the loss of life glacier to make but some other moraine dam like the first; and, the place the granite starts to upward thrust in curves to shape the higher dam, it scoops some other lake. Its ultimate paintings is completed, and it dies.

Maybe we, too, can forestall for a minute to think about the ice tinkling in our glasses. Think of ways arduous its been to return by means of, what number of centuries it took to triumph over it and relieve it of its romance. Perhaps, as we sip our Manhattans, we would possibly recall to mind how this translucent stuff as soon as dominated this continent. We would possibly recall to mind how the substance inside of this tiny dice has the energy to transport mountains, how staying cool has come at the expense of one thing grandone thing everlasting, even.

Next time, we push that lever on the fridge, perhaps we will be able to consider the cubes that come clattering out. Maybe we will be able to recall to mind the ones misplaced souls, long-ago frozen on the poles, and of the monsters and witches that after inhabited the Earths ice caves. Maybe we will be able to flip off that window unit and concentrate to the night, sipping our cocktails in silence. And perhaps, in our minds, we will be able to as soon as once more commute northward.

See the article here:

How the Ice Cube Lost Its Mystery - News Parliament

The talk about Coronavirus which has hit the world below the belt is what fills airwaves by the minute, by the hour and every day, whether here in our country or overseas. Newspapers are in the forefront. There is updating of reports by digital publications on the ravaging ruthless pathogen by the seconds. It is all in the efforts not to keep the world in the dark. In terms of the speed at which it sweeps through any land it berths and the fatalities it leaves on its trail, COVID-19 has struck alarm in the hearts of governments and put all peoples in an inconsolable panicky mode. It is unsparing in its choice of targets. Today the statistics of its victims are unflattering. Understandably, neither the government nor the governed have been able to shift attention to any other subject other than on how to defeat this invisible and yet powerful enemy which has the capacity to do battle on several fronts within countries and across oceans at the same time. It is devising existential strategies which has pre-occupied minds. Yet, we must begin the process of rolling back the currents of fear and panic that have gripped the world. Fear and panic driven into life and activity have their own consequences. I will come to this point presently.

At this juncture, the admonition of Prof. Chima A. Onoka last week could not have come at a better time. He said the world had changed and doubted if it could ever be the same again. He believes that COVID-19 has brought unprecedented times and it was time to end the blame game and wake up to fight a fight of faith and strategy. It is time to take responsibility. Counseling against fear, Prof. Anoka listed what he thought everybody should stop doing now: Fear and Panic (this is unhelpful); docility and finger pointing; blaming government, blaming hospital managers; blaming China or other countries. He went on to say that Nigerians should stop blaming people travelling into this country (citizens or foreigners).

It is generally known that when a person panics or knows fear, his thinking faculty experiences difficulty and he is unable to think straight. He begins to make mistakes. In the event he is an accused person, he begins to make statements that even implicate him. In such a situation, it is not uncommon to find a police officer who is interested in the truth and justice trying to calm him down.

In the mechanisms that govern life and our world, fear and panic obstruct the spiritual currents of help that seek to envelop a man in order to protect and uplift him. In other words, a man who is gripped by fear in the time of personal trial or national calamity is severed from him. Help being spiritual is of the Light, but panic or fear emits a dark ring of radiations. The luminous helper approaching him is unable to connect with him from the sheer reason of lack of incompatibility in radiations. The Light being thus withdrawn so that it will not be soiled. Didnt William Shakespeare tell us that cowards die many times before their death? The counter currents of courage make the fearless to be an overcomer.

Experts admonishing us of precautionary measures to take speak about protecting the nose, mouth and eye as they are entry paths of COVID-19 into the human body hence the imperative of our having to wash hands frequently and rub them sanitizers. In the body the dangerous virus attacks the throat and hampers respiration. From the throat it moves to the lung to embark on its last stage of destruction. The body structure is made up of cells. From one cell, in the course of the building of the body by nature beings in the womb of the expectant mother, other cells emerge fanning out to form different organs. Among the components of the cell is the nucleus in which cellular respiration is regulated. The unseen other components of the cell are spirit motes which stream down into the material world from the highest spiritual realm. In the material world, they give rise to elementary particles which give human body its physical firmness, as well as to atoms. Atoms are in cell molecules. The core of the atom is surrounded by shells of electrons. Expectedly so, given its origin.

Since the atoms are spirit particles wrapped in material substance, they make contact, through attraction, with the human spirit. The spirit which is the core of man as we know him, which, indeed, is the real man in the school that the earth is seeking to be a conscious human being of value. The human spirit, through its radiations, is expected to bring animating pressure on the cells and different organs which in themselves consist of spirit motes from the Heights.

Because we human beings have made material pursuits the primary purpose of life, the expected radiation influence of the spirit on the body and its organs for radiant health is dimmed and weakened. And given the imbalance in the development of the brains with the attendant suppression of the hind brain, cerebellum, which is the spiritually receptive part, the body of man is distorted. This made man to suffer from double jeopardy. Consequently, human beings have left themselves susceptible to invasion by viruses and to all manner of ailments. For example, because of failure of cellular respiration, and absence of radiation influence on the organs which is also to strengthen immunity in the body, we human beings are laid readily open to cancerous attacks.

From the foregoing, it is not difficult to see that the world-wide attack by COVID-19 pandemic can be largely attributed to imbalance in the body structure, change in lifestyle and crass material pursuits. Man has moved away from the pathway charted for him by the Almighty Creator to live. Writing on The Immune SystemThe bodys armoury in the innate and acquired resistance to infectious diseasein New World Magazine, Sally Kenyon states: Optimal function of the immune system requires that immune cells and cell products interact with each other in a sequential, regulated manner. Protective immunity requires powerful cellular responses that must be tightly regulated in order to minimize damage to the host while allowing the destruction of pathogens. Lymphocytes are the key cells in immune response and with the other mature cells involved in the response develop from cell stem cells and originating from tissues such as the liver and bone marrow.

The former Egyptian Member of Parliament I referred to last week spoke eloquently about what we human beings have made of a world made out to us for our spiritual development. It is devastation. What has been regarded as value has been found worthless and not able to save man in the greatest hour of need. Man has rebelled against the lawfulness placed in Creation to govern all the worlds. The cleverness of the human being has been made to replace the wisdom of God, the Almighty, and the Author of life. Today mankind has been humbled and brought down on their knees. Over 500,000 cases of COVID-19 affliction have been confirmed, and fatalities keep rising. The figure in France rose on Tuesday by 499 deaths within 24 hours and Italy saw additional 837 fatalities. Lockdown is the order of the day in most states of America and in several parts of the world. The question on the lips of a great many is: what is the way out? The Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, throwing up his hands in helpless resignation, said: Cant understand what more to do. Our only hope remains up in the Sky. God, rescue your people. The world is in dire need of healing, yet the supposed sanctuaries of God, mosques and churches are shut with security operatives roaming the streets, some lurking in the shadows and the alleys to drive away the beseeching ones seeking to supplicate the Most High for deliverance.

Given the alarming rate COVID-19 is spreading, the enlightenment by the various authorities and health experts, borne out of love is justifiable. In many counties including our own, there is daily briefing by presidents, chancellors, prime ministers, governors and mayors. There are jingles on radio and television; the artistes have risen to the occasion with drama plays. Cartoonists from the family of artistes are not left out. Turn right, the talk is about coronavirus; turn left, the sing song is about COVID-19. The air is filled with the talk about COVID-19. Is there any delirious implication about saturating the whole atmosphere with the outcry and campaign about Coronavirus? With the knowledge of the lawfulness that governs our lives and the entire Creation, there is no gainsaying that there will be serious implications perhaps worse than the world is experiencing at the moment in the hands of Mr.COVID-19.

Every thought, every speech and every action is a seed planted in the soil of life. Every thought attracts similar thoughts or is attracted by others flowing in the universe. They take on form in accordance with the contents of the thoughts. The thought-forms are continually nourished and reinforced. Every thought is connected to its author through ethereal threads which if not countered and severed through pure thoughts come to the authors heavily laden, pressing for manifestation for the individual authors harvest. The fruits of the thoughts return unfailingly for harvesting in multiples after going through maturation processes in the ethereal world. The harvest could be treasures, sweet or rotten fruits depending on the nature of the seed sown. As it is with thoughts, so is it with speeches and actions. They produce fruits.

With an endless talk and discourse, with thoughts flowing out of us about Coronavirus, it can be seen clearly that a plaque carrying its content, even if the manifestation is different in form, will return to menace the entire world in future. In view of the intensification and acceleration of events and experiences of these times, it will not take the accustomed 100-year cycle to return. The meteorologists, the modern-day star gazers, have looked into their crystal balls to advise us of what the sky has in store for us by way of apocalyptic rains. If we add that to the report card by scientists, our universe is in for a very long night. The scientists say many measurements have shown that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was never as high in the last 800,000 years as it is today. There is imbalance in ecological equilibrium. Soils because of prevalent nature of agriculture, for instance, have lost their ability to store carbon and have themselves become CO2, all combined to tear off the ozone layer protecting the earth.

What I am getting at is that while the loving enlightenment on COVID-19 may be necessary, to stem future consequences of the discourse which has filled the world, it will have to be left to individuals to begin to wind down and better, still, to switch off from it, put on our thoughts the toga of positive thinking as a shield and think or indulge in matters which are uplifting. According to the revelations in higher knowledge spreading on the face of the earth today, the outworking of the perfect and immutable Divine Laws governing the whole Creation pays no heed to preferences or ignorance of mankind, their likes or dislikes. Adamantine is the law! Man needs knowledge to heal our world. All other steps in the end will amount to no more than palliatives!

Read the original post:

Positive thinking modeOpinion - Guardian

Tommy Lisbin via Unsplash

Where is God in all this? Why is God allowing COVID-19 to happen?

Ive written about Gods role after other deeply unsettling events like 9/11, the Newtown shootings, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Las Vegas massacre. Im now pondering my words again, trying to make sense of what has become an ever-expanding tragedy, one that will take more lives than all the previously mentioned events combined.

Lets start by looking at God and the Christian belief, via St. Augustine, that God is love and love is God. But how can that be true today? If God is love, COVID-19 is hate. If God is light, COVID-19 is darkness. Why has God not interceded to protect us? If our God is a loving God, where is God now?

In The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr quotes the philosopher/priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who said that love is the very structure of the Universe. Like de Chardin, Rohr believes that love (and alternately, God) is an energy that attracts all things and beings toward one another, a universal language and underlying energy that keeps showing itself.

When we are aligned with this energy and secure in the world, love becomes our North Star or moral compass. Love is the reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other in a happy and hopeful way. Love connects our hearts with our heads. Love grounds us by creating focus, direction, motivation, even joy.

Rohr tells us that in this love, we find God, the place from where all love emerges into the Universe. In the moment that we encounter love, that is where we also find God and vice-versa. God equals love and love equals God.

Theres another side to the God argument and it comes from people who question the existence of God, like Princeton Bioethics Professor Peter Singer. He has publicly argued that if we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good.He must be either evil or a bungler.

He says that Christians often try to explain away suffering by saying that all humans are sinners and deserve their fate. Or that humans can live forever in heaven, so the suffering of this world is less important. Or that since God gave us life, we are not in a position to complain if our life is not perfect. He concludes this still fails to explain why an all-powerful and all-good god would permit (suffering).

Rohr tells us that suffering is a part of life just like love is a part of life. They are both integral elements of the human experience. If we have never loved deeply or suffered deeply, we are unable to understand spiritual things at any depth. It is during these times, the highs of great love and the lows of great suffering, that we drop the pretenses of everyday life and connect with the vulnerable, true side of ourselves at our core.

Rohr sees love and suffering as Gods primary tools for human transformation. As with love, suffering leads to enlightenment for the self, and compassion for others. It ties into his belief that Christianity is more about unlearning, letting go, surrendering, serving others than self-development. It leads us to the knowledge that life is not just about us, its also about the well-being of others. When we hurt, we are better able to recognize the pain in others.

Taking Rohrs ideas to the next level, we can see how suffering and love are related. Think about the thousands of medical workers on the front line of this pandemic, as well as the thousands coming out of retirement to selflessly lend a hand during this crisis. Their North Star activated, they commit themselves to helping and healing others.

Theres a quote from Mr. Rogers that I think applies here. He once said When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

Sure enough we see the helpers today, led by the people who are doing what they can to assist the sick and dying, despite a shortage of personal protection equipment and at great risk to the health of themselves and their families. They are not the only helpers we see today. Former President Obama recognized this in a recent tweet:

During this crisis, our grocery store clerks, delivery drivers, transit and utility workersalong with so many othershave been selflessly getting up every day to make sure we have the things we need. And for that, we say thank you.

Maybe, in times like these,God appears to us in human form, in the state and local officials who guide us, in the health professionals who heal us, and in the friends and family members who comfort us.Is this the presence of God here on earth?

Or maybe, in the words of Paul Tillich, God is not a being but being itself. This is not the almighty God that some Christians pray to, but a God of everyday life, permeating the good and the bad, love and suffering. This God is with us at our highest highs and lowest lows. This God is everywhere at once, with me and you and all of mankind, right now.

The rest is here:

Is the God of Love also the God of Suffering? - Patheos

When you ask those born in this age of the internet about the concept of royalty or monarchism, you should expect mixed answers. Anything from the latest Disney movie to the fairytales of the British royal family seem to be the accepted definition. The world has forgotten that just about a century ago, most of human civilization was governed by monarchies.

From the moment of birth, a monarch was taught to be a leader for the rest of his or her life. Today, many members of these ancient families have been reduced to footnotes in history. We know of eminent persons such as Dom Duarte Pio, the king of Portugal; Constantine II, the king of Greece; and Simeon II, the king of Bulgaria who do not administer their countries but retain certain rights according to international law. Though they lost all the pomp and circumstance, have they also lost their sovereign right to rule?

The Definition of Sovereignty

Sovereignty is one of the most important concepts of political science and international law. Many believe that no other term has given rise to more discussion and confusion than the word sovereignty. It is used in a variety of ways which are not clearly distinguished from each other. The word sovereignty is derived from the Latin word superanus which means supreme power.

Definitions of sovereignty are numerous and varied. French jurist and political philosopher Jean Bodin was the first Western writer to develop a systematic doctrine of sovereignty. He defines it as the supreme power over citizens and subjects, unrestrained by law. Dutch humanist, diplomat, lawyer, theologian and jurist Hugo Grotius, defines sovereignty as the supreme political power vested in him whose acts are not subject to any other and whose will cannot be overridden.

The ultimate authority to rule within a polity is known and commonly accepted at present times as a definition of sovereignty. Historically, the ultimate authority within a polity was vested in the person of the sovereign, a monarch whose rule was granted by divine right or local custom, and often by a good deal of force.

The Concepts of Sovereignty

Things were quite simple and defined up until the Middle Ages. God was sovereign, and that is all that mattered. In the Book of Psalms, Psalm 24:1 writes that the earth is the Lords, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein offered soothingly emphatic confirmation of this. Few temporal leaders would dare usurp Gods position at the top of the

body politic. This gave the Church a central place and enormous influence in all affairs of the state. Eventually, God was good enough to delegate. He kept things simple by investing sovereignty in monarchs. Now they, and they alone, had absolute power within their territories. And they were at pains to stress that this monopoly of sovereignty was a divine right. Laws may now have emanated from human words and deeds, but for anyone thinking of causing trouble, such laws were still seen to be the expression of Gods will.

Similarly, the Quran affirms that the term Sultan meant moral or spiritual authority. It was used later by Muslim sovereigns to represent political and governmental power. This was written in the Surah ar-Rahman 55:33 which roughly states that O assembly of the jinn and the human! If you have power to penetrate through the diametrical zones of the heavens and the earth, then penetrate (go through them)! You cannot penetrate through them except with a Sultan (authority)!

As the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment took Europe by storm, the world of absolutes began to slip away. The concept of sovereignty started to mutate and increasingly became more complex. Ideas of popular will, individual rights and parliamentary sovereignty slowly gained a foothold across the region. Things were no longer simple.

What is de jure and de facto sovereignty?

Sovereignty being a query of fact, a contrast is sometimes made between de jure and de facto sovereignty. The de jure sovereign is the legal sovereign and the de facto sovereign, is obeyed by the people whether he has a legal status or not. A de facto sovereignty may rest purely on physical force, where de jure sovereignty has the legal right to command obedience.

The distinction between the two comes out abruptly in times of revolution or usurpation. Some developments mean a mere change in the personnel or organization of government, while others result in a complete destruction of the old legal sovereign and the establishment of a new one.

How long does a de jure sovereignty last?

Under the principles of public international law, a ruler who is deprived of the government of his territory by either invaders or revolutionaries remains the legitimate de jure sovereign of that country while the de facto regime set up by the revolutionaries or invaders is considered a usurper, both constitutionally and internationally.

The question of how long a de jure sovereign may continue in this status is answered by the book Synopsis of the Law of Nations written by Johann Wolfgang Textor, which states that de jure sovereigns retain their status as long as they dont surrender their sovereignty to the de facto government. A dispossessed royal family may keep their claims alive by filing diplomatic protests against the usurpers as required by International Law. That claim can only be abandoned when the protests are stopped. The failure of royal heirs to prosecute or assert their claims may disqualify them from any consideration to the inheritance. This corresponds

to Emmerich de Vattels legal treatise The Law of Nations: Or, Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, which states that only when such protests cease does a prescription arise against the de jure rights of a legitimate claimant. When this occurs, the sovereignty passes back to God, who gave it or may be passed in some cases to the de facto government which at that point would be legitimized and will acquire the full de jure rights of the former sovereign.

Such legitimate claimants are de jure sovereigns and, as such, remain head of the government-in-exile of their usurped territory.

Public international law towards the legal validity of objections against the usurpation of sovereignty applies to both republic and monarchical states. Prof. Stephen P. Kerr in his academic paper entitled Dynastic Law states that The United States of America refused to recognize the 1939 Soviet usurpation of the three Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This facilitated the maintenance of Governments-in-Exile of the Baltic Republics and the maintenance of embassies in Washington, D.C., which persisted through the Cold War Era until these countries managed to recover their independence. Accordingly, matters pertaining to de jure Governments-in-Exile are matters of public international law. The de jure sovereignty of a state which has been usurped by a foreign conqueror is not extinguished by such usurpation but survives as long as such sovereignty is kept alive by competent diplomatic protests.

Conclusion

Non-reigning or dispossessed monarchs, who, as de jure sovereigns, may continue to exercise their sovereignty. This conforms with public international law fully taking into consideration that they do not surrender their sovereignty to the de facto government. This is legally supported for as long as such sovereignty is kept constantly affirmed with strong diplomatic campaigns.

Resulting from this, any monarch that has been relieved of his power yet continues to perform his birth right across the globe does not lose this immutable sovereignty.

Related

Read the original:

Born To Rule: Sovereignty in International Law - Modern Diplomacy

The concept of angels exists in almost every religion and culture on the planet. The Greek word for angels is angelos which means messenger and derives from the Hebrew term malakh which means shadow side of God. In ancient Sanskrit angiras means divine spirit. The Persians called these winged messengers angaros which means courier. In the Judeo-Christian history, angels were created before we were and the great war in heaven occurred before our world was created.

What do angels look like? In Ezekial 1:4-5, He writes, out of the midst came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance, they had the likeness of man.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that there are nine orders of angels determined by their closeness to God: the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels. He also broke these nine orders into three houses: the angels of contemplation, the angels of the cosmos, and the angels of earth.

Angels of the earth (Principalities, Archangels and Angles) are intricately involved in the daily lives of humans. They handle Divine revelations, justice and karmic balance. Like the powers, the angels of earth are said to look just like us except they have wings. The Principalities deal with political issues. Some are said to be patrons of certain cities or countries. They also handle the assignment of the archangels and angels. The archangels primary job is to carry out Gods will. They help answer prayers. Guardian angels exist within and around our world and are tasked with overseeing our day-to-day lives. A guardian angel is assigned to every living person, place, and animal on Earth. Their job is to help expand their persons consciousness so they can commune more closely with God.

Our guardian angels are here to teach us spiritual lessons, to guide us to be more patient and tolerant and to help us learn to love in all its forms. Its believed that everyone has at least one guardian angel thats with us from birth to death and beyond. Their job is to guide us to the light and keep us on our path.

Every society has the concept of a guardian angel. The Greeks called them daemons. The Romans called them their genius and the Egyptians called them the ba or ka. Islam teaches that we each have four guardian angels two to watch us during the day and two to watch us at night. The Hindu versions of guardian angels are called gandharvas (male angels) and apsaras (female angels). Buddhist have Bodhisattva whose name means beings of enlightenment. They can appear in human or celestial form.

The third century mystic origen said guardian angels are invisible protectors assigned to us by God at birth to guide us in thoughts, words and deeds. He said it is through prayer that they make themselves known to us. He believed we each have a guardian angel who helps us choose to always follow freely Gods path for us.

Mystics and saints through the ages have long believed in their guardian angels. St. Patrick said his guardian angel was named Victor and frequently appeared to him. His first experience is when he was kidnapped and became a slave in Ireland. He said his angel gave him detailed instructions on how to escape.

St. John Bosco believed his guardian angel appeared in the form of a large grey dog who often showed up to protect him from his enemies. St. John nicknamed this dog Grigio which means gray one. This dog appeared throughout his life and never appeared to age.

Padre Pio, the 20th century saint who performed many miracles and received the stigmata, wrote and spoke often about his guardian angel. He said his angel often helped him and even assisted in translating the1000s of letters from people around the world asking for help so Padre Pio could read the letters.

In 1968 Pope Paul the sixth created a group called the Opus Sanctorum Angelorum the work of the holy angels. Initiates had to pass through three stages where they promised to love and work with their guardian angels.

Many famous people throughout history have claimed to receive help from their guardian angels. William Butler Yeats believed strongly that his angel helped him with his writing. Before his death, Thomas Edison believed so much in the world of spirits and angels that he was working on a telephone device that would allow us to phone heaven. Charles Lindbergh believed he made his historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an unseen angel by his side. Henry Ford, General Patton, and J. Paul Getty all believed they were helped by their guardian angels. Sir Shackleton who explored the Antarctic said he was always aware of one more that traveled with them.

There are many ways you can connect with your guardian angel. The best way is through prayer requests. Because we all are bound to the law of free will, its important to ask for help from our angels. A traditional prayer for help is guardian angel, my guardian dear, to whom Gods love commits me here, ever this day and night be at my side to light and guard, to rule and guide. When we pray for our angels help, we will often find feathers as a sign that our angels are working with us.

Many people have connected with their angels in dreams and report being given guidance during a dream state. If you want to connect with your angel in this way, you can write down a question or problem you need help with. Tuck it under your pillow and pray that your angels connect with you in the dream state to give you assistance and guidance.

Often our guardian angels will connect with us through gentle, repetitive thoughts. For example, while looking for a new job, you might keep getting the thought to call an old friend. When you make the call, you discover the friends company is hiring and you get the job. These repetitive thoughts are accompanied by feelings of peace and serenity. When we have repeating thoughts that make us nervous or anxious, this is often our ego mind worrying for us and is not a message from your guardian angel.

Pope John Paul II recommended praying to other peoples angels too. When he was calling for an end to the arms race in the 1980's, Pope John Paul II prayed to Ronald Reagans guardian angel before meeting with him. If you have an important event coming up like a job interview consider taking a moment the night before to pray to everyones guardian angel who will be at the meeting.

Angels are known to speak the language of synchronicity. Pay attention to synchronicities in your life because often your guardian angel is behind this. For example, a woman named Rachel was dealing with stomach pains, but doctors couldnt find a source for her problems. She prayed about this and later bumped into an old friend who recommended she see a man named Dr. Max OConnell. Soon after, she met a new neighbor whose last name was also OConnell. The next morning at the park, she heard someone calling for their dog whose name was Max. She took these as signs and called Dr. OConnell. He was able to correctly diagnose her. Could this be coincidence? Maybe. But it could also be her guardian angel at work helping to guide her to the right doctor.

You can also pray to your guardian angel for protection too. Theres a well-known story of a doctor who was called out late at night to assist a farmer at his isolated cabin. When the doctor arrived, no one was at the farm. Years later, he was called to speak to a prisoner who was getting ready for his execution. The doctor was confused because hed never met this man and had not had any dealings with the prison. When we met the condemned man, the criminal told him that all those years ago, it was he who had called and asked the doctor to come out to that lonely farm. He was intending to rob him. Why didnt you? the doctor asked. The criminal told him it was because he saw a large angel with huge wings walking beside him.

Our guardian angels are here for us. Its their job to assist us on our journey to a closer relationship with spirit. But we have to request their help and work to foster a closer relationship with them. Reach out to your guardian angel, pray for your angels help, intervention and protection, and you will always be guided and held in their light and love.

Originally posted here:

What Are Guardian Angels and How Can I Connect With Mine? - Beliefnet

The horrifying tragedy that is unfolding before our very eyes worldwide but particularly in God fearing traditional Christian countries such as Italy, Spain, France, U.K., Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and Sweden and the USA, raises fundamental questions not only in respect to humanitys capacity to combat the spread of the coronavirus that has taken a huge toll of over 44, 000 fatalities and over 800,000 infections up to date, but also on the very existence of GOD on whom so much faith and trust has been placed by billions of people adhering to Abrahamic religions such as Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Is the colossal damage being done globally by the Coronavirus pandemic evidence of Gods wrath or of Gods non existence?

Have any Church authorities up to date announced and stated that the Coronavirus Pandemic was nothing but a demonstration of Gods wrath and punishment for the sins of the victims? In the aftermath of the Lisbon Earthquake (1755) Church leaders did exactly just that. Explained away the destruction of Lisbon by a trio of natural disasters as a manifestation of Gods wrath.

Is the God defying Coronavirus a form of Karmic Retribution targeting especially a number of select western countries that have a shared sordid past over a period of 500 years of rapacious colonialism all over the world, committing Genocide and Mass Murder against native people?

Let alone Crimes against Humanity, what about Crimes against innocent animals which continue to this day in countries like Spain and Portugal where the barbaric Bull Fighting is treated as a popular sport and shown on prime time TV.

Is this not an appropriate time for reflection and catharsis on the part of humanity all over the world, and particularly in countries badly affected by the Coronavirus pandemic ?

The purpose of this brief article is to open and explore significant religious and philosophical issues that have arisen in the light of the bewildering and catastrophic Coronavirus Pandemic that continues to rage havoc with no end in sight.

Points for reflection:

1)Treatment of Animals

a)What we do to animals ruthlessly and brutally the Coronavirus is doing likewise to humans, generating so much fear, alarm and anxiety. Do humans deserve pity, when we have no pity for innocent animals, who are eternal victims of our cruelty and inhumanity?

b)Should the yardstick of judging a civilization and its progress, be based on massive development projects, technological inventions and innovations, political achievements, literature OR how it treats all creatures, big and small, on earth humanely to the maximum possible extent?

c)It was Mahatma Gandhi who said that a countrys progress should be judged by the way it treats its animals and all other living creatures. When someone asked him what he thought about Western civilization, his reply was: Its a good idea.

d)In other words, what Gandhi meant was that the West was not truly civilized, in a moral sense. If the West was civilized, would it have conquered, occupied and exploited Asian, and African countries and decimated the native people in the two Americas and Australia until they were almost extinct? And committed Crimes against Humanity, Mass Murder, and Genocide including Cultural Genocide?

e)Many condemn racial discrimination, caste discrimination, and mistreatment of vulnerable communities but hardly bother to refer to abhorrent treatment and mass killing of animals on an industrial scale. Are these non human living beings meant to be expendable at the discretion, whim and fancy of human beings?

f)Recent expose of Wet Markets in Wuhan and other parts of China showed obnoxious eating habits and brutal slaughtering practices that by any definition would be classed as barbaric and primitive. Some Animals were shown plucked from the super market shelves and eaten alive. Anything that moves on legs, crawls, wriggles or swims (live or killed) is deemed fit for consumption.

g)No health authority including the WHO has stated that flesh consumption is essential for human health survival. On the contrary there is enough evidence to show that meat consumption is the prime cause of many Chronic diseases such as cancers, type II diabetes (T2D) and cardiovascular diseases (CVD).

h)The biggest problem is that all those who consume and support the flesh consumption culture take the view uncritically and unscientifically that the earth belongs to humans and all other non human living beings have no rights to live out their natural life to the fullest except to serve human needs and requirements including sacrificing their precious lives to fill the stomachs of humans.

i)This indefensible view is largely influenced by the Biblical Injunction Kill and Eat Flesh.

j)Ethically speaking it is an unsustainable argument. Buddhism in its very first precept rejects that view without qualification.

k)The Buddhist approach of peaceful co- existence between man and animal is supported by Jainism and several Western Philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Albert Schweitzer (philosopher, theologian, organist and physician, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 )

l)Albert Schweitzer made a remarkable statement when he said that Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

m) Spain is one of the major victims of the Coronavirus Pandemic. As much as humanity would like to extend its moral support to the people of Spain to overcome this crisis without further suffering, it would be tantamount to a dereliction of moral duty if the very humanity were not to raise the issue of Bull fighting in Spain. Bull fights are not fair fights but a highly staged form of Spanish Govt. subsidized animal cruelty that projects the misleading view that torturing and killing animals for fun and amusement is acceptable. Animal cruelty of this kind should have no place in our world today, even though it is presented as a deep rooted Spanish cultural tradition and sanctioned by the Spanish Supreme Court.

n)Every year, approximately 250,000 bulls are killed in bullfights. The countries where this cruel practice still takes place are Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador. All of these Catholic countries are reeling today under the onslaught of the Coronavirus Pandemic in varying degrees of intensity.

o)The detoxification of these countries to get rid of the coronavirus must also extend to scrapping the inhumane cruel practice of Bull Fights, falsely categorized as a Sport and which has brought nothing but shame and disgrace on both the Government and people of Spain.

p)The lock down all over the world has confined the vast majority of humanity to their homes. It is discomforting and frustrating being caged, metaphorically speaking. Is this not exactly what humans do to animals by forcing them to live within small spaces in cages in a vast prison euphemistically called a Zoo for the whole of their natural lives? To serve a life instance without committing a crime. When will this injustice to animals be undone?

2. Do Prayers work?

Do prayers work? Is God listening? How does one explain the silence of God at a time of mass upheaval and sorrow among believers who are dying in their thousands? Is the appeal to God through prayer to save the flock an exercise in futility? These are valid questions.

Atheists, Agnostics and Pagans (their numbers are rising rapidly in Europe) are least troubled by these questions. The latest coronavirus related tragic events are an affirmation of their skepticism. It is more a challenge for the Believers.

We in Sri Lanka have faced similar questions and underwent this exercise in the wake of the Easter Sunday bombing last year.

On 21 April 2019, Easter Sunday, three churches in Sri Lanka and three luxury hotels in the commercial capital, Colombo, were targeted in a series of coordinated Islamic terrorist suicide bombings. Later that day, there were smaller explosions at a housing complex in Dematagoda and a guest house in Dehiwala. Two hundred and fifty-nine people were killed, including at least 45 foreign nationals and three police officers, and at least 500 were injured. The church bombings were carried out during Easter services in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo.

Like in the currently unfolding Coronavirus tragedy where the vast majority of the victims are citizens of predominantly Christian countries of Europe, the majority of the victims of the 2019 Easter Sunday Attacks were ardent followers of Christianity, and praying in some of the hallowed Churches in the country e.g. St. Anthonys Shrine (dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua and designated a national shrine and minor basilica), located at Kochchikade, Kotahena, Colombo 13.

These acts of violence targeting mainly Christians on a special Christian holiday inside Christian churches invariably raised legitimate questions on Gods benevolence and its powers of divine intervention. Why did God fail in his own house i.e. the Church? And on one of Christianitys holiest days i.e. Easter Sunday, where church attendance in Sri Lanka is very high.

3. Does God Exist?

Lisbon Earthquake (1755) and the Fall out on changing religious beliefs in Europe

It is said that one of the first modern atheistic movements in Europe commenced after this tragedy, renouncing religious ideologies as basis of critical thinking.

We must go back in time. A terrible tragedy similar to the unfolding COVID 19 Pandemic in Europe and other Western countries took place on a much bigger scale in Europe nearly 270 hundred years ago when Lisbon (capital of Portugal) was subject to a series of cataclysmic earthquakes on the morning of Sunday November 01, 1755, which was All Saints Day and many people were attending the Churches whose architecture and building structure was not resistant to seismic tremors.

The earthquakes caused massive damage to the city of Lisbon and demolished around 12,000 households, killing over 60,000 people.

This unfortunate coincidence of the earthquake on a Sunday was definitely one of the factors that had contributed to the extremely high death toll in this event, as the Christian devotees that stood between the weak walls of the churches were crushed in large numbers.

The city walls, houses and buildings were not able to escape the 8.0 magnitude of the earthquake. Almost 85% of Lisbons buildings were reduced to rubble.

The earthquake had reportedly lasted about 5 minutes, causing 5-meter fissures in length which split-opened in the city center.

In addition the tremors triggered three (3) tsunamis of 6 meter wave length which were flooding the region wave after wave, drowning and killing even more people.

Fires broke out soon after the earthquakes killing a lot more people. The flames lasted for 5 days and destroyed many important documents and personal records of the Portuguese people. Many had died from inhaling the smoke and collateral damage.

The resulting chaos forced the citizens, including prisoners that used their chance of escape, to flee the city.

Survivors soon began questioning Gods existence and his absence at a time when Gods help was most needed to save lives. The scale of suffering opened up many issues among thinkers, the clergy, politicians, and philosophers.

On the other hand, the Church authorities in Lisbon did actually announce and state that the earthquake was indeed a demonstration of Gods wrath and punishment for the sins of the victims.

Amusingly, the sinful Lisbons red-light district had suffered only minor damages while the churches despite the purported piety were completely obliterated.

The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 exerted a great cultural, religious and political impact. Europe was stunned by the merciless destruction of one of the continent's most opulent cities. Leading intellectual and philosophical figuresVoltaire, Rousseau, Pope, Goethe and Kant, among othersbecame fascinated by the question of divine intervention in human affairs. Lisbon, still home to the Inquisition, had been immolated: was this evidence of God's wrath or of God's nonexistence?

The Lisbon Earthquake also opened the door to new genre of literature questioning God and wisdom of relying solely on God and engaging in recital of prayers. Renowned French writer and philosopher Voltaire produced a classic piece of satirical writing called Candide (1759). The events discussed in the novel are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers. Candide satirizes various philosophical and religious theories that Voltaire had previously criticized including the belief in God. . .Portugal and Spain were the two main centers of the Catholic Inquisition, which lasted for several centuries.

Though confined mainly to Europe, the Portuguese nevertheless introduced the Inquisition to countries in its Asian Empire such as Goa and Ceylon (later known as Sri Lanka). The Inquisition is infamous for its persecution of heretics which extended to Muslims and Jews in Europe, and Hindus and Buddhists in Goa and Ceylon.

Though both Portugal and Spain amassed great wealth during their hey days as empire builders they remained backward countries slow to evolve morally and ethically and distance themselves from barbaric cultural traditions such as Bull fights. Unlike their neighbours in Northern Europe which broke away from the diktat of the Vatican, both Portugal and Spain together with Italy were unfortunately held captive for a long time in a stranglehold of religious dogma.

There was an intellectual aftermath of the Lisbon Earthquake disaster all over Europe. The cataclysm resulted in widespread Enlightenment discussions about God and the natural world.

Conclusion

The tragedy of the Coronavirus Pandemic has already rocked the world prompting wide ranging intellectual debates about the natural world and Gods place in human affairs. A new world order is emerging that can be expected to be vastly different to the one that is being left behind.

It is already attracting widespread attention and speculation among thinkers and policy makers. Would God continue to remain at the apex of the moral and spiritual world despite rising misgivings in the mono theistic Abrahamic world?

Buddhism has shown that it is possible to establish a highly effective and admirable ethical system for humanity with benefits for all living beings seen as members of one moral universe, without reference to an all mighty creator God.

What will replace God if the belief in God becomes increasingly unsustainable in the wake of catastrophes such as the Coronavirus Pandemic?

-Asian Tribune -

The rest is here:

Why has God forsaken humanity in the time of the Coronavirus Pandemic? - Asian Tribune