[Buddha-l] Re: Magic

[Joy Vriens]

Hi Eric,

>> Technology concerns the links between material events. Magic, as you say, consists in manipulating things called people by means of rituals and witchcraft. With technology we can produce the most awesome arms. With magic we can manipulate the citizens of a country to actually use those arms on others and through witchcraft and rituals we can actually get the younger citizens to hurl them at them. Cause and effect. The magic worked thousands of years ago, the same magic still works nowadays.  
>It doesn't, Joy, that's the problem. You can go to a christian science  
>meeting or have your cakras healed, but at the end of the day you still  
>have the same symptoms, only surgery or medication helps.

Not exactly what I was saying, but I will try and go along with your points. 
I wonder whether the 2,039 million Christians, 828 million Hindus, 364 million Buddhists and 232 million Shamanists all agree. And I am not even counting in the New Agers.
As for the symptoms, what symptoms are we talking about? What is our society sick of? Stress, depression, intolerance, limitless greed, righteousness, fear of the other, disenchantment, consumerism, individualisation and lack of solidarity? What surgery and medication would you suggest?

> Tibetan Lama's  
>know this, they claim to be expert magicians, but revert to western  
>medicine if they're really ill. Even if you consider the advertisements  
>and spindoctors the magicians of today, they cannot turn the Irak war  
>into a succes, they tried to magically create weapons of massdestruction  
>over there, but it turned out to be impossible.

Be patient and wait. Bush and Blair keep repeating that History (God) will tell us whether it was a right decision or not. If the Western point of view prevails, then History, written by rishis and aedes will tell us it was. Humans are herd animals and will stick to their kin.
  
> If magic worked we would  
>have had planes and computers thousands of years ago. 

Why? What is so good about planes and computers? They didn't need them, they had magic. Look at the success of the whole virtual reality business. People crave magic. The appeal of magic doesn't disappear with the appearance of planes, computers, surgery etc. Why is that?

>> Cause and effect never fail.  
>Magic and witchcraft work by association of ideas, not by causality. 
>> If you look back, those in power have always been assisted by magicians, tantric wizzards, mandarins, cardinals, propaganda wizzards and spin wizzards.  
>And failed. Every general could tell you that. Maybe Macchiavelli can  
>convince you. 
>> Technology is a detail. Ok you need it to make clay pots and to sharpen your stones to produce arrows. But magic deals with what really matters and what really happens in our lifes. It shapes our opinions, our wishes and dreams. And we wish and dream what those magicians want us to wish and dream. 
   
>Read Marx, or Bauman, or Virillo, or Baudrillard or McLuan and learn.  

Do the the 2,039 million Christians, 828 million Hindus, 364 million Buddhists and 232 million Shamanists read them too? What can those knowing few do against the magic? 

>Many a war has been won by technology, for example the Chinese didn't  
>have anything to touch the British iron steamboats sailing up the  
>Yangtse river. 

Where are those British iron steamboats nowadays? Still on the Yangtse river? What was it that was won exactly?

>> The wizzards of the NRA can tell you all about the magic of worshipping a hand gun and the feeling of safety and commuinion with ones *real* compatriots and with the founding fathers (ancestors) it procures. The ancestor cult has real causes and effects. 
>Yes, the Iranese children in the war against Irak thought they were  
>invincible, because they were protected by Allah, but ...oops. How sad,  
>belief doesn't stop bullets! 

Those Iranese children still live in the hearts and minds of the Iranese and their magic is still active.

Joy