I kind of feel sorry for the right wing losers of the world.

[Locut0s]

Last edited Tue Oct 10, 2017, 01:19 AM - Edit history (1)

Ok sure I often hate their guts for the cruel, inhuman world they wish to force upon the rest of us. The wish to regulate women's bodies, the unwillingness to view people of colour as human, the cold dog eat dog Darwinian world they want us all to live in. I mean I kind of get it, the world IS cold and dark, cruel. But it doesn't HAVE to be, ALL the time.

I myself am an atheist and I draw the greatest comfort in life from the realization that this world IS random, that there is no purpose to any of this. That we are all born without a purpose, that we are all inconsequential specs of nothingness. To me man's humbleness, his inconsequentiality, allows us to be humble once fully accepted. Indeed fully accepting our fate, the nothingness of the hereafter, the nonexistence of the hereafter. For me that is a great calming and centring realization, it lifts such an existential sense of anxiety off ones shoulders to realize that they don't have any singular THING to live up to. Just be what you are. That IS the point of life. The journey is all there is. And I understand that there are plenty of religious people on the left and I'm not trying to disparage any of you. That's great that you find purpose in your religion, but I find my purpose in having none. I find my purpose in humanism. And very few people on the right wing are humanists.

I feel sorry for right wing people who can't look at a gay man or woman and potentially see a life long best friend. I feel sorry for the right wing person who looks at a homeless person and feels disgust for a person who hadn't achieved their potential. Instead of wanting to know their life story. What happened to you that got you to where you are. Cause life is tough, and painful, and I'm sure I have not had to run the gauntlet you have had to, which is precisely why, and ONLY why I am not with you on the street. But I want to hear your story, because I know what it's like to be lonely, and to hurt.

I have difficulty understanding how anyone can enjoy all the wonders of man's artistic endeavours without this fundamentally compassionate outlook on life. How can you look at the great paintings down through history and see the beauty that's there if you can't connect with the suffering that is the muse that inspired so many of them. The same with literature, and music and so so much more.

Don't get me wrong I don't want to hold hands and hug my fellow right wing douche bags. Indeed I want to slap them in the face.

But what a cold world they must live in!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Many of them are angry all the time, which must be exhausting.

It takes a lot of effort to constantly look for enemies and worry about who is "victimizing" you. Life is so much easier if you don't spend most of it angry.

[kacekwl]

2. His supporters are either rich and realize they have a puppet president or

they are poor sad sacks who listen to Limbaugh,Levin,faux news and think they are somehow the real Americans and come hell or high water they will show the others they are the promised one's and no one will take their God or guns or freedom and liberty ( I think that means they can shoot off fireworks any time they want ) They are told daily that liberals are weak feminine snowflakes that can't get women or some such nonsense. So they support the tough guys who grab women by the pussy take away welfare from those too weak to make it on their own and all the other God awful crap the GOP and trump stand for. When these actions affect them they always have the colored folks, the damn Mexicans and those pesky sissy liberals to blame. I'm not kidding here this IMO is who we are dealing with.

[WhiteTara]

3. The Dalai Lama says those are the ones who need prayers the most

as their karma is very difficult

To me this is probably the deepest spiritual message I have ever received. It is called the Heart Sutra. It was a teaching by the Buddha Sakyamuni on Vulture Peak.
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-heart-sutra-450023

In this sutra, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is speaking to Shariputra, who was an important disciple of the historical Buddha. The early lines of the sutra discuss the five skandhas -- form, sensation, conception, discrimination, and consciousness.

The bodhisattva has seen that the skandhas are empty, and thus has been freed from suffering. The bodhisattva speaks:

Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness; emptiness no other than form. Form is exactly emptiness; emptiness exactly form. Sensation, conception, discrimination, and consciousness are also like this.

What Is Emptiness?

Emptiness (in Sanskrit, shunyata) is a foundational doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism. It is also possibly the most misunderstood doctrine in all of Buddhism. Too often, people assume it means that nothing exists. But this is not the case.

His Holiness the 14th Dailai Lama said, "The existence of things and events is not in dispute; it is the manner in which they exist that must be clarified." Put another way, things and events have no intrinsic existence and no individual identity except in our thoughts.

The Dalai Lama also teaches that "existence can only be understood in terms of dependent origination." Dependent origination is a teaching that no being or thing exists independently of other beings or things.

In the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha taught that our distresses ultimately spring from thinking ourselves to be independently existing beings with an intrinsic "self." Thoroughly perceiving that this intrinsic self is a delusion liberates us from suffering.

[Locut0s]

4. It is interesting that you reference Budhism because...

Because I feel that in recent months I've almost had something of a spiritual awakening. Well not exactly. I still hold to being a strong atheist but in recent months and years I've matured and developed in ways I never thought I would. Indeed in ways I did not know I was not mature.

Let me lay the groundwork by saying that I was raised in a HYPER sheltered and indeed smothered environment. My entire life I suffered from social anxiety and depression. My childhood though easy technically was wrought with a lot of pain due to being a shy, sensitive, fragile kid ill prepared for the world. That led me into being an overly fearful, timid, though highly intelligent "adult". I say adult in quotations as I did not indeed start to spread my wings until into my 30s. I still remain highly inexperienced, shy, and anxious ridden still to this day.

However since moving out on my own and learning what it means to be ME in this world, I've had a series of wonderful realizations. Much of this is simply the process of "growing up" so to speak. However I meet a lot of people in my daily life who have never grown up, if this is what it means to grow up. I suppose because of my somewhat cloistered and protective upbringing I turned inward to explore the world of my inner self. So growing up I was always a child of the sciences, literature, video games, indeed anything that allowed me to escape into my own internal mental world.

What that means is when I started to explore who I was in the world and started to question my fears is that I spent a lot of introspective time thinking about myself. Some of that lead to some unpleasant realizations about my upbringing and other issues. But over the course of the last years it's also led to an almost strange zen like calmness that has come over me. Some of this is of course due to the fact that I took up using cannabis as well, although cannabis itself has helped me immensely to have some of these realizations. And I will not apologize for my use of it.

I've realized through a series of greater and greater eureka moments that the world really isn't about you. I think part of what has allowed me to come to this freely was the fact that getting out on my own gave me physical distance from my smothering and anxiety riddled upbringing. That physical distance immediately engendered a sense of calm and peace I never had before. And then I slowly went through a series of realizations that I could gain even greater distance from my problems. I could take a kind a dispassionate step back from my physical self, from my own feelings and examine myself from a bit of a 3rd party perspective. If I immediately felt panicked or angered by something I didn't HAVE to be the slave of my own emotions. I could actively choose to step back and question WHY I was feeling the way I was. The very act of questioning diffused so much anxiety in my life that I previously felt. So much has since simply slid off my back like water off a duck.

[WhiteTara]

5. Contemplation definitely helps understanding

and is one of the teachings. It's called Vipassana or awareness meditation.

You might really enjoy this magazine. It's a bit pricey, but you get online articles and you can just sign up for their online editions.
https://tricycle.org/

The other is called Lions Roar and I really like this magazine also.
https://www.lionsroar.com

I feel I am so fortunate because after a long long time, my teacher is here. He is a Tibetan geshe and it has made all the difference in my being able to make any progress in my practice. If you can find a Buddhist center, you would really like being among like minded people.

There are many different Buddhist traditions. The one I study is called Mahayana of the Geluk school. This is the tradition of the Dalai Lama and my teacher. I don't know that one is better than the other, this is just where I am and it feels very right.

Let me know how it goes for you.