You have to define terms when talking about such things, which usually makes talking about them on internet forums hard, and that is why I stopped commenting there because I saw the conversation tending to be negative.

While the nature of Buddhism is complex, no doubt, I garner most of the basic precepts of Buddhism. For instance, Karma, is not part of divine salvation but of ones life. There is nothing a higher power can do to restore you Karma as it is the direct action of your life. Karma is one of the essential elements of the rebirth cycle, so the fact that it is the direct consequence of your life, forgiveness (for an over all moralistic stand point, not living at peace with your neighbor) isn't available.

More over, Buddhists do not believe in the unchanging soul. An idea steaming from Dharma, that there is no such thing as self. This is a small but important point as this basic notion isn't really applicable to most people whom live in the west. Self reliance, determination, and ultimately identification all point to a one unique self...it is just the western way. This doesn't go to say that an American couldn't be a Buddhist, but the culture here is very toxic to it.

Anyway, mostly, from my perspective, Buddhism is about fundamentally different ideals that Christianity. Christianity stresses the need for an external power to rescue you from yourself. The Buddhist doesn't belief in self, or salvation, and as a consequence, forgiveness (we are talking about moralist forgiveness not about your neighbor stealing your car). I think this is where my point was being missed. Of course most every religion has a "golden rule", be at peace mindset, that wasn't what I was addressing though.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
I have always found Buddhism rather neat personally. But I have to draw issue with your statement of forgiveness as a fundamental precept. The middle path doesn't usually care about forgiveness because it leads with the idea that people owe you things. The middle path is separate from such concerns. The real problem I would see with most Buddhist interjections into the life an any American is really, we don't want a middle path. We want stuff, to be the best, to life for this life! Buddhism isn't about that, it is about the flow of this life into the next, preparing yourself for the next phase. Living for the moment, and being a sports super star is incompatible with that world view...imo.

And what I heard from Hume was concern, not looking his nose down. Think of it from his perspective, he really things Christ could help this persons life, and that is how he said it. He thought, either in ignorance or wisdom, that Buddhism couldn't save him from his current situation and offered an answer. One could say it is out of place of a news anchor to not read news from his sheet however...but news hasn't been about that in ages.

And you don't hear about Buddhist extreamist because the media you listen to doesn't care.

http://www.tamileelamnews.com/cgi-bin/news/exec/view.cgi/1/1557

i dont think you truly understand buddhism my friend.
many people take a myopic approach when dealing with different religions.it is really just a perspective thing i would presume.but buddhism is a far more rich religion than you are alluding to in your comment.
so just like christianity may have many variables,facets and understanding for you due to you actually BEING a christian,buddhism in all its variables offers a rich contextualization of theosophy.

while never confirmed by tangible evidence but only by hints and historical references there are some theologians that believe that jesus not only studied with the assenes and greeks but also buddhists.which if you read the gospels it is not so large a leap considering much of jesus's teaching have a buddhists element.
and yes..forgiveness is paramount.

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
I have always found Buddhism rather neat personally. But I have to draw issue with your statement of forgiveness as a fundamental precept. The middle path doesn't usually care about forgiveness because it leads with the idea that people owe you things. The middle path is separate from such concerns. The real problem I would see with most Buddhist interjections into the life an any American is really, we don't want a middle path. We want stuff, to be the best, to life for this life! Buddhism isn't about that, it is about the flow of this life into the next, preparing yourself for the next phase. Living for the moment, and being a sports super star is incompatible with that world view...imo.

And what I heard from Hume was concern, not looking his nose down. Think of it from his perspective, he really things Christ could help this persons life, and that is how he said it. He thought, either in ignorance or wisdom, that Buddhism couldn't save him from his current situation and offered an answer. One could say it is out of place of a news anchor to not read news from his sheet however...but news hasn't been about that in ages.

And you don't hear about Buddhist extreamist because the media you listen to doesn't care.

http://www.tamileelamnews.com/cgi-bin/news/exec/view.cgi/1/1557

i dont think you truly understand buddhism my friend.
many people take a myopic approach when dealing with different religions.it is really just a perspective thing i would presume.but buddhism is a far more rich religion than you are alluding to in your comment.
so just like christianity may have many variables,facets and understanding for you due to you actually BEING a christian,buddhism in all its variables offers a rich contextualization of theosophy.

while never confirmed by tangible evidence but only by hints and historical references there are some theologians that believe that jesus not only studied with the assenes and greeks but also buddhists.which if you read the gospels it is not so large a leap considering much of jesus's teaching have a buddhists element.
and yes..forgiveness is paramount.

In reply to this comment by littledragon_79:
Thanks for the heads up.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Tiger-Woods-Needs-Some-Christianity

no prob.someone duped your TDS vid so i was able to make it even LOL.

Thanks for the heads up.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Tiger-Woods-Needs-Some-Christianity

Brit Hume just moved himself up the Fox News crazy ladder.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
I have always found Buddhism rather neat personally. But I have to draw issue with your statement of forgiveness as a fundamental precept. The middle path doesn't usually care about forgiveness because it leads with the idea that people owe you things. The middle path is separate from such concerns. The real problem I would see with most Buddhist interjections into the life an any American is really, we don't want a middle path. We want stuff, to be the best, to life for this life! Buddhism isn't about that, it is about the flow of this life into the next, preparing yourself for the next phase. Living for the moment, and being a sports super star is incompatible with that world view...imo.
And what I heard from Hume was concern, not looking his nose down. Think of it from his perspective, he really things Christ could help this persons life, and that is how he said it. He thought, either in ignorance or wisdom, that Buddhism couldn't save him from his current situation and offered an answer. One could say it is out of place of a news anchor to not read news from his sheet however...but news hasn't been about that in ages.
And you don't hear about Buddhist extreamist because the media you listen to doesn't care.
http://www.tamileelamnews.com/cgi-bin/news/exec/view.cgi/1/1557


Show me one case of Buddhist extremism other than the monks in Vietnam setting themselves on fire in protest of the war. I think there were some Buddhist monk protests in some country a while ago, but there sure as hell weren't any bombs going off.

Buddhism is about forgiveness. It's about letting go, among other things, and to think that Christianity has the market cornered on that front is nothing short of arrogance.

And if you think Brit Hume really means what he says, you should make absolutely certain that you never take candy from strangers.

You're not really paying attention, and you haven't looked at either Buddhism or Hume's character very closely at all.

I have always found Buddhism rather neat personally. But I have to draw issue with your statement of forgiveness as a fundamental precept. The middle path doesn't usually care about forgiveness because it leads with the idea that people owe you things. The middle path is separate from such concerns. The real problem I would see with most Buddhist interjections into the life an any American is really, we don't want a middle path. We want stuff, to be the best, to life for this life! Buddhism isn't about that, it is about the flow of this life into the next, preparing yourself for the next phase. Living for the moment, and being a sports super star is incompatible with that world view...imo.

And what I heard from Hume was concern, not looking his nose down. Think of it from his perspective, he really things Christ could help this persons life, and that is how he said it. He thought, either in ignorance or wisdom, that Buddhism couldn't save him from his current situation and offered an answer. One could say it is out of place of a news anchor to not read news from his sheet however...but news hasn't been about that in ages.

And you don't hear about Buddhist extreamist because the media you listen to doesn't care.

http://www.tamileelamnews.com/cgi-bin/news/exec/view.cgi/1/1557

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Salvation is a very real experience in many peoples lives. My aunt who has been doing hard drugs in a life destructive way (coke, meth) has been transformed, reborn if you will. I commend Brit for what he was trying to convey, that there is hope and restoration in salvation. Likewise, it is hard to walk the middle path when you are the best golfer in the world...not very middle path at all really.


But you don't have to believe in Jesus or be a Christian to accomplish that.

And, true to form, Brit Hume is an ignorant fuck-head espousing untruths with reckless self-assuredness.

Forgiveness is a fundamental precept in Buddhism, and as someone has already pointed out, you never hear about Buddhists turning suicide bombers or waging holy war crusades.

You also won't hear many Buddhists sticking their noses into Tiger's business or passing judgment on him with condescension.

Did you see this? http://www.videosift.com/video/Brit-Hume-to-Tiger-Woods-Turn-to-Christianity

tiger woods needs christianity like brit hume needs a chlorine enema.

At 2:20 he makes a logical error. You can never attest to the likelihood of something's truth, as Hume pointed out in his evaluation of induction. At 6:30 he kind of addresses this. It also goes to show that you can't actually prove positives in science, science only deals with negatives. The only way to test is try and draw out the contradiction, but the contradiction isn't known until it occurs. There is no logical reason to believe any scientific "proof" is ever fundamentally true, only that it isn't false...yet.

Even so, fun video and worth an upvote enough though I think it still propagates a few misconceptions.

Some of the notable peace prize winners from my lifetime, there's a lot more than Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. Sorry Joe but not everything on Earth is about hating Bush or America:

MARTTI AHTISAARI
KIM DAE JUNG
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS (MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES)
JOHN HUME
CARLOS FELIPE XIMENES BELO and JOSE RAMOS-HORTA
YASSER ARAFAT
SHIMON PERES
YITZHAK RABIN
NELSON MANDELA
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH GORBACHEV
ELIE WIESEL
DESMOND MPILO TUTU
LECH WALESA
MOHAMED ANWAR AL-SADAT
MENACHEM BEGIN
BETTY WILLIAMS
MAIREAD CORRIGAN

>> ^bluecliff:
A nice protestant free-for-all. Capitalist to the core.
Your greatest gift, Stephen, was and for ever shall be poetry. It's amazing that such a boringly imperialistic, and philosophically lukewarm people (except Hume and Hobbes) could produce the likes of... well the list is too long (but beats any other nation in Europe)


The UK is about as imperialist as it is religious. The United States has more resemblance to our Red Coat past than GB does now. Always seemed like a bizarre irony that the Founding Fathers might be more at home in modern day Britain.

I think the "Intelligentsia" are a much more dominant class in the UK which may stem from the relatively high proportion of people going through higher education and University. As a result our nation is characterised by sceptics and cynics. We export them to be judges on Talent Shows, everybody needs at least one Brit on their panel now. Our television is full of them too, mostly thanks to the leftist BBC, our comedians poke holes in every minutiae of society and politics, we must have THE monopoly on investigative journalism and Nature documentaries were invented by Attenborough. So yeah, we end up giving a lot of empirical minds with eloquent voices a spotlight while in other countries they struggle to be heard. Mythbusters had to disguise its scientific methodology in explosions.

A nice protestant free-for-all. Capitalist to the core.
Your greatest gift, Stephen, was and for ever shall be poetry. It's amazing that such a boringly imperialistic, and philosophically lukewarm people (except Hume and Hobbes) could produce the likes of... well the list is too long (but beats any other nation in Europe)

The correct term is "Sissy Hawk" :

Armchair Warriors - the Sissy Hawk Brigade

A Sissy Hawk Cheer:
“All-out war is still our druthers,
Fiercely fought, and fought by others!”
-Calvin Trillin, 'Obliviously On He Sails : The Bush Administration in Rhyme'

In his list of Sissy Hawks he forgot to mention :
- Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense and intellectual guru of the Bush regime - no military service
- "Dick" Cheney - no military service
- George Tenet, CIA Director, no military service
- Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor - No military service. -
- Jeb Bush, Florida governor - No military service. -
- Rudy Giuliani, Former NYC mayor - No military service
- Pat Buchanan, MSNBC commentator - No military service.
- Ann Coulter, writer & commentator- No military service.
- Sean Hannity, Hannity & Colmes host - No military service
- Brit Hume, Fox News anchor - No military service.
- Rush Limbaugh, Radio talk show host - No military service.
- Bill O'Reilly, O'Reilly Factor host - No military service.
- Michael Savage, Radio talk show host - No military service.