[Buddha-l] the advent of the meditation machine?

[Joy Vriens]

Richard,

>> Or perhaps it would be  
>> easier and simpler to discuss what religion is not. For starters, I would 
>> suggest religion is NOT spirituality. 
 
>That goes without saying. If ever there was a word in search of a meaning, it  
>is "spirituality." As far as I can tell, it has no meaning at all and  
>therefore applies to nothing. So if spirituality is nothing at all, then  
>surely it cannot be what religion is. 

I could start a charity for giving a meaning to Spirituality. I know that spirit it's not an easy word to push down the throats of Buddhists, but perhaps Montesquieu can offer some assistance. Instead of the letter and the spirit of the law, we could make religion the letter of Dharma and spirit-uality, the spirit of Dharma. Not good enough? What about this then? Since spirituality is nothing at all and lacks any meaning as you say, wouldn't that make it into the most perfectly safe word to use, unlike all the other words? Montaigne would have approved of it since it is not "all form'd of affirmative propositions" ('Apology for Raimond de Sebonde' II, 12: 443).   
 
>> (Still traumatised after walking into York cathedral and seeing statues of 
>> admirals and ex-voto dedicated to the British colonial army siding 
>> undistinguishably with saints and other religious figures). 
 
>I know what you mean. I'm still trying to recover from being born in a country  
>where children are taught to worship the flag and where heavy-jowled  
>non-denominational Protestant preachers sweatingly shout in huge churches  
>packed with thousands of slobbering and quivering faithful that it is every  
>Christian's duty to urge their political representatives to bomb Iran (with  
>nuclear weapons if necessary) and to support Israel so that Jesus will come  
>and send all those Jews to hell and to turn in professors who preach peace.  
>(Peace, you see, is a major threat, since it could delay Armageddon and thus  
>the "second" coming of Christ. It would be the second coming, of course, only  
>for those who believe there was a first coming.) For those of you who are not  
>familiar with waht I'm talking about, there was a good program on it  
>recently. See http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/profile.html 

Yes, I read the other article you referred to as well and saw a documentary about the Neocons and their intentions for Israel. I prefer to believe it's sheer madness professed by madmen and that most Americans don't take it seriously. I couldn't handle the alternative.

Joy