Rational Nation USA

It was 1970, my year of graduation. I recall one of the year's big events in Rockford Illinois was a twenty-five mile Walk For Hunger . A walk to raise money to help feed folks who were suffering from poverty and malnutrition. That year the world population was 3.862 billion. Today it stands at 7.795 billion, an increse of 201.838% in a relative very short 50 year period. One must ask themselves, is the human race racing to extinction. The result of mass famine and the bloody wars and destruction that will inevitably follow? All driven by ignorance, greed, and a massive lack opf compassion for otyher sentient beings on the planet. I recall 1969 and 1970. The youthful idealism of the Woodstock generation  and the anti-war protests against the United States illlegitimate presence  in a country we had absolutely no business being in in the first place. Looking at the 53 years since those heady days of  youthful idealism it is clear that this nation and its governments haven'...

 

  May the Spirit of This Holiday Season Continue On Into 2022 amd the Coming Years.  Also, May This Nation Overcome Greed and Ignorance and Find True Compassion and Goodness Towatds All.

Learn Religions : Buddhism is a religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who was born in the fifth century B.C. in what is now Nepal and northern India. He came to be called "the Buddha," which means "awakened one," after he experienced a profound realization of the nature of life, death, and existence. In English, the Buddha was said to be enlightened, although in Sanskrit it is "bodhi," or "awakened." For the rest of his life , the Buddha traveled and taught. However, he didn't teach people what he had realized when he became enlightened. Instead, he taught people how to realize enlightenment for themselves. He taught that awakening comes through your own direct experience, not through beliefs and dogmas. At the time of his death, Buddhism was a relatively minor sect with little impact in India. But by the third century B.C., the emperor of India made Buddhism the state religion of the country. Buddhism then spread throughout...

 

 

A New Theory Explains How Consciousness Evolved A neuroscientist on how we came to be aware of ourselves Ever since Charles Darwin published  On the Origin of Species  in 1859, evolution has been the grand unifying theory of biology. Yet one of our most important biological traits, consciousness, is rarely studied in the context of evolution. Theories of consciousness come from religion, from philosophy, from cognitive science, but not so much from evolutionary biology. Maybe that’s why so few theories have been able to tackle basic questions such as: What is the adaptive value of consciousness? When did it evolve and what animals have it? The Attention Schema Theory (AST), developed over the past five years, may be able to answer those questions. The theory suggests that consciousness arises as a solution to one of the most fundamental problems facing any nervous system: Too much information constantly flows in to be fully processed. The brain evolved increasingly sophisticat...

 

 

 

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  Cosmology : T he science of the origin and development of the universe. Modern astronomy is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which brings together observational astronomy and particle physics. an account or theory of the origin of the universe. Buddhist Cosmology : I s the description of the shape and evolution of the   Universe   according to the   Buddhist   scriptures   and   commentaries . It consists of temporal and spatial cosmology: the temporal cosmology being the division of the existence of a 'world' into four discrete moments (the creation, duration, dissolution, and state of being dissolved; this does not seem to be a canonical division, however). The spatial cosmology consists of a vertical cosmology, the various planes of beings, their bodies, characteristics, food, lifespan, beauty and a horizontal cosmology, the distribution of these world-systems into an "apparently" infinite sheet of “worlds”. The existence of world-periods (mo...

Lion's Roar - How can Buddhist practice help you find refuge from racism? Especially from the internalized sense of inferiority that lives within the minds and bodies of racialized people? Buddhist teacher Sensei Alex Kakuyo and Lion’s Roar Associate Editor Pamela Ayo Yetunde discuss.

Dalai Lama Urges Global Climate Action 

  Ran across this on my evening perusal of the web. I thought it reasonably well presented and accurate. Enough so it merited reprinting here. Wisdom burns its own flame. So does humor. So does this title, which makes fun of the notion of religious one upsmanship. Read beyond the title, if curious: If you don’t do Buddhism don’t worry, you’re not going to hell. *You’ll just endure countless lifetimes of cyclical suffering. 1. We’re not really a religion.  As the Dalai Lama said, if Buddhism and Science disagree, go with science. As the Buddha himself said, don’t believe anything I say unless it matches with your experience. We are however a path: there are teachings, meditation practices, rituals with meaning…but it’s all centered on one point.  Wake up. Be kind. Be present. Be genuine. Be generous to others. 2. We don’t go to war, much.  Historically, when we’re attacked, our anemic joke-of-an-army fights heroically while the rest of wherever we’re at flees, gets bu...