All quiet on the western front…analogies

This could be about the Great War 1914-1918, the ‘war to end all wars’, the war that all other wars that followed to the present were fought on account of, but it is not. It is about the analogies of the spiritual journey that are drawn from it, as they were recounted to me by one who was so familiar with it. If you would give some analogies to the spiritual not necessarily related to War...

Eastern front - birth, beginning of one’s special faith, initiation, promise of eternal service
Warfare - repeated tests of that faith, most die or go away along the line, but you go on
Allies
Going ‘over the top’ – distributing one’s treasure among those who attack it
Enemies
Machine gunning - fixing upon faith’s object by repetition, habit, determination
Trench –sensual or mental lapse, any impossible obstacle that must be overcome
Digging in - protecting the creeper from constant attacks
No man’s land – no engagement, no discrimination, no shelter
Western front – maturing bhakti for those who have survived so long, the most subtle and powerful tests, meeting death, entering the womb of a mother within Gokula Vrindavana, or going to any of the abodes where your own relationship with God thrives best (rasa)

Are these the words of Kim il Sung? The great and only true leader on this earth, who has been followed as great leader by his divine son?

The eastern front is of course the great satan itself the USA...

In general I hate militaristic analogies. It is one short step from the use of analogy to killing people. Onward Christian soldiers, fight the good fight, die for Allah and you will go to paradise, soldiers the beloved of Ra. Any religion in my view that resorts or has cause to resort to this kind of language is abominable.

GV is no better than the others and there are numerous examples of adherents behaving violently to people of other faiths. It is therefore just as depicable.

you mean like the Catholics butchering Protestans and vice versa, Muslims butchering Christians and vice versa, Jews butchering "pagans" and later Muslims and vice versa?

dude! study history and sense of proportions before you say things like that...

I was dismayed to read even of Buddhist violence after the tsunami. It seems inevitable that with strong sectarian feelings comes violence in some form, verbal or physical. Sad, really.

I do read history extensively - unfortunately nearly all religions are tarred with the fundamentalist "the other guy is evil and needs to be killed" brush

Sense of proportion - I could go further and say that preachers who belittle women are just as responsible for the domestic violence that women suffer in the home as the perpetrator who is taught that women are their property and are better if beaten into submission. That these same preachers are also responsible for the justification of homophobic violence by their adherents... Then there is violence against children - beating them to drive the demon's out, Like in the Climbie case here in the UK, and of course children catholic schools and orphanages and in ISKCON gurukuli and elsewhere - you want more examples of the evils of religion?

About the only religion which seems to me to take non-violence seriously are the Jain, which is why mostly they are traders as this is the one activity where there is less chance of them damaging another living being. My grandmother told me a story of a christian missionary in India (when she was a child) who showed a jain monk a microscope slide of the water he was drinking. The Jain saw the small animals in the water and from then on the monk did not drink or eat, and so died in a very short period. As the Christian missionary was quite aware of what he was doing I would class his actions as being malicious in the extreme.

Incidentally I am doing some freelance work for the Child Protection Agency looking into religious inspired violence against children. It is not a pretty picture. The more I see the more convinced I am that most religions have a capacity for perpetrating and promoting violence despite waht they say.

I find it interesting that most religions have a version of "those that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind" implying that impious behavior leads to unpleasnt reactions.

and what does that have to do with a sense of proportion?

are you saying that Old Testament based religion recommending death by stoning for homosexuality is just as bad as Manu Samhita based religion which recommends atoning for the sin of homosexuality by drinking milk?

like I said: you have no sense of proportions in your condemnations. there are HUGE differences between religions just like there are huge differences between different versions of "humanism". for example, Stalin also promoted humanism to replace religion, killing tens of millions of people in the process - do you want me to put you in the same category?

More examples since you seem to wish to have them...

Homosexuality is not a sin. It is inborn like being female, black or asian. Another religious distortion since you want to pick up on that. In some societies like the polynesian and some native american groups, homosexuals were honoured members of society and formed a priesthood before the Christian missionaries got at them.

But to return to the Manu Samhita and its followers..

Is being a woman a sin? To read the purports to Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita as it is it is clearly stated that women are a lower form of life, less intelligent, and are inherently lustful=sinful.

The virtuous woman should become sati on the death of her husband, that is immolate herself on her husband's funeral pyre. Otherwise historically the only way for such women to support themselves was to resort to prostitution.

Is being black also a sin? The word varna (used for caste) literally means colour. Those of darker skin colour are lower caste and therefore outside the pale and not to come into contact with the pure, their very shadow being polluting. Killing them is justified if they attempt to come into the temple to worship or if they "purposely" pollute those of the Dvija (twice born) castes, stoning being one of the favoured methods as it avoids the "pollluting" touch. There are several recent cases in India that I can look up and give you the links to if you so wish.

Westerners, indeed anyone born outside India are of course unclean "mleccha"- outcastes according to vedic principles.

Are Gaudiya Vaisnava "exalted" devotees justified in throwing muslims out of a moving train?

I would say that communism (stalinism and the offshoots) and fascism present in their own ways an alternative belief system to which blind adherence is required by followers, in that they are no different to other "religious" beliefs.

All religions and belief systems have a dark side. We need to be aware of that and consider whether those belief systems have a place in our hearts. Is reform needed? Perhaps. Should I crusade to do it? Perhaps not, but I can ask the uncomfortable questions of the adherents and quote examples from my life experience, and then maybe those adherents will think more carefully about the potential damage that their words can cause. There are always vulnerable people who can be, and are, damaged by such unthinking, or in some cases calculated behaviours. I do challenge these behaviours and it does not always make me either the most popular person or the most comfortable to be around. So be it. If I can influence one person to be more compassionate and caring, more humane even, then my job is done.

I personally try to treat all people I work with, meet or associate with, with respect, and discover that by so doing you can give them a feeling of being valued. There is always hope, even for the most degenerate, despairing, and dissipated individuals. I personally have been responsible for lowering the annual death rate among homeless drug and alcohol users locally. In a cohort of about 100 people, many ex-military we were getting about 15 deaths a year through suicide, drug overdose and similar causes. This reduced over two years to 5. How was this accomplished? Usually by listening and understanding. The causes were usually rooted in family break-up and loss of structure in their lives after leaving the army resulting in low self esteem and self destructive behaviours. These men, and they are predominantly men, came back to the one place where they had structure and a sense of worth, indeed where they were last "happy"; The army base in Aldershot, Hampshire "the home of the British Army".

I do not condemn people for their lifestyle choices or for the circumstances in which they find themselves. All I do is provide a listening ear and use my knowledge of the "system" to prod those in "authority" who should be there to help to fulfil their statutory duty. The reward I get is seeing these people once again becoming "useful" members of society. What can compare with the reward of being able to go home at night and having the satisfaction of knowing that you helped one real person to make their life better if only by an infinitesimal amount?This led once to me being intensely embarrassed. It was at a major public function with the local Member of Parliament (MP), local authority staff and elected officials and a couple of Central Government Ministers. The MP was giving a speech, droning on as politicains do and I was half asleep, when he called me to come up to the podium. He then proceeded to praise me for the work I was doing in the locality, much to my horror, he actually called me the most poweful person in his constituency!!! Some time afterwards I received a letter from Buckingham Palace stating that I had been nominated for an "honour". I declined, because the reward I got from doing my job as it should be done was sufficient. There were other reasons which i do not wish to go into.

If I have one blind spot it is that I find those that do take a judgemental, fundamentalist approach hard to understand. They to me seem to have suspended their critical faculty in favour of being spoonfed a system of belief which is at variance with the reality of people living in the world. Perhaps this trait is inherited. One of my great uncles died in Dachau for being a socialist and perhaps for being 1/4 Jewish. One of my grandfathers was reduced in the ranks from major to private because he questioned orders given on the Somme in the the First World War. At another time or place it is quite likely that death by some unpleasant method would have been my fate too instead of being able to blather on here.

As you may have gathered I am bit of a mixture, one great grandmother was Indian, one grandmother was Irish (pagan - worshipping the mother), another great grandfather was half German, half Jewish. My mother's father served in the Indian Army (he was the one who was reduced in the ranks) as did his father and my father and his family before him were British Army. There is nothing like a military family for being anti militaristic - grin. I consider myself fortunate to have had such a multicultural background and being taught from an early age never to accept blindly anything I was told but look at and to question everything.

Apologies to the moderators for any "preaching" content

actually, I wished you would adress the issue of real differences between various religions when it comes to the question on hand.

we can find problems and holes in any religion, philosophy or ideology. so what? are we to reject all such things? not really.

it is precisely in the relative differences between such religions or philosophies where all the most important answers are.

the world never was, and never will be, uniform. people will always make all kinds of choices and there is no one answer to their problems. that is why there will always be relative differences and that is why such relative differences MUST be evaluated.

so, one more time:

are you saying that Old Testament based religion recommending death by stoning for homosexuality is just as bad as Manu Samhita based religion which recommends atoning for the sin of homosexuality by drinking milk?

yes - they both see homosexuality as a sin.

if you were actually to live under the rule of one or the other law you would make a choice in a heartbeat but because that is not an issue, you can spin BS yarns about how they are both equally bad... that is both fake and intellectually dishonest. you refuse to be objective in order to make a grandioso point...

I say throw all the tribal crap out and learn from the long history of violence committed by those who would save our souls in the name of god.Click to view attachment

agreed

Sex attacks blamed on bat demon

Some believe a bat turns into a man at night
Men in parts of Tanzania's main city, Dar es Salaam, are living in fear of a night-time sex attacker.
A BBC correspondent says the attacks are being blamed by some on a demon called "Popo Bawa" meaning winged bat.

Some men are staying awake or sleeping in groups outside their homes. Others are smearing themselves with pig's oil, believing this repels attacks.

Reports of the demon's existence have been common for many years in Zanzibar, where locals claim it originated.

The BBC's John Ngahyoma in Dar es Salaam says not many people actually believe that the demon exists and there have been no sightings.

But Mbaruku Ibrahim, who hails from Zanzibar, says the story of the demon is common there and people in his village on Pemba island sleep beside a huge fire outside their houses whenever it is said to appear.

The story goes that the bat is able to transform itself into a man at night and it has also been blamed for rapes of women.

Sheikh Yahya Hussein, a prominent astrologer in Tanzania, claims that the demon is a spirit that is unleashed by witches to torment their opponents.

Belief in witchcraft and superstitions is widespread in Tanzania, especially in rural areas.

Source BBC

Any religion which can advocate the death of someone for offences against it is bad, be the victim untouchable, homosexual or otherwise.

I believe the real point is, even if the rules don't target you as heavily as another, if others are supposed to suffer serious consequences it is no more desirable than other oppressive religions. Just the list of who gets the worst punishments changes, not the concepts of punishment and sin. So yes, they are equally bad, just not in this one respect. The whole has to be taken into consideration.

Tanks Tapati for your succinct summary

Boy, I am making a simple group of analogies, using war but not indicating war, indicating another thing that is a kind of metaphysical paralell, and you take it in a way that was not indicated in any way. But alot of points were brought by you and I believe in each and every one another thing is indicated that you are taking in the wrong context, or viewing from an impossible angle. Everyone, will, according to their own position within nature's qualities view any subject from that quality. I don't think you want my view, since you think you know me as the mouthpiece of Kim Jung Ill, but I think could give an alternative opinion that could make some sense of the otherwise senseless literalism, but it is a hard point to take and maybe this isn't the place for hard points.

Why use war for your analogy?

Maybe try a flower and it's unfolding.

Much sweeter and more palatable

Apologies. I did not mean to hurt, but for me war has so many unpleasant connotations as a pacificist and committed to not causing harm to others. I have seen first hand guerilla warfare and been shot at, and hit.

In my mind there ain't no such animal as a just war, and religion or ideology is so often used as an excuse or support. That was the immediate link I made.

The are other analogies like homer says - a flower forming and then blossomming and producing seed - the care of a mother bringing up her young.

No Man Can Find the War
Tim Buckley

Photographs of guns and flame
Scarlet skull and distant game
Bayonet and jungle grin
Nightmares dreamed by bleeding men
Lookouts tremble on the shore
But no man can find the war
Tape recorders echo scream
Orders fly like bullet stream
Drums and cannons laugh aloud
Whistles come from ashen shroud
Leaders damn the world and roar
But no man can find the war
Is the war across the sea?
Is the war behind the sky?
Have you each and all gone blind:
Is the war inside your mind?
Humans weep at human death
All the talkers lose their breath
Movies paint a chaos tale
Singers see and poets wail
All the world knows the score
But no man can find the war

This is the song that even Hitler could not ban for it's anti war sentiments

Vor der Kaserne
Vor dem großen Tor
Stand eine Laterne
Und steht sie noch davor
So woll'n wir uns da wieder seh'n
Bei der Laterne wollen wir steh'n
|: Wie einst Lili Marleen. :|

Unsere beide Schatten
Sah'n wie einer aus
Daß wir so lieb uns hatten
Das sah man gleich daraus
Und alle Leute soll'n es seh'n
Wenn wir bei der Laterne steh'n
|: Wie einst Lili Marleen. :|

Schon rief der Posten,
Sie blasen Zapfenstreich
Das kann drei Tage kosten
Kam'rad, ich komm sogleich
Da sagten wir auf Wiedersehen
Wie gerne wollt ich mit dir geh'n
|: Mit dir Lili Marleen. :|

Deine Schritte kennt sie,
Deinen zieren Gang
Alle Abend brennt sie,
Doch mich vergaß sie lang
Und sollte mir ein Leids gescheh'n
Wer wird bei der Laterne stehen
|: Mit dir Lili Marleen? :|

Aus dem stillen Raume,
Aus der Erde Grund
Hebt mich wie im Traume
Dein verliebter Mund
Wenn sich die späten Nebel drehn
Werd' ich bei der Laterne steh'n
|: Wie einst Lili Marleen. :|

Hans Leip 1915

A rough translation

At the barracks compound,
By the entry way
There a lantern I found
And if it stands today
Then we'll see each other again
Near that old lantern we'll remain
As once Lili Marleen.

Both our shadows meeting,
Melding into one
Our love was not fleeting
And plain to everyone,
Then all the people shall behold
When we stand by that lantern old
As once Lili Marleen.

Then the guard to me says:
"There's tap call, let's go.
This could cost you three days."
"Be there in half a mo'."
So that was when we said farewell,
Tho' with you I would rather dwell,
With you, Lili Marleen.

Well she knows your foot steps,
Your own determined gait.
Ev'ry evening waiting,
Me? A mem'ry of late.
Should something e'er happen to me,
Who will under the lantern be,
With you Lili Marleen?

From my quiet existence,
And from this earthly pale,
Like a dream you free me,
With your lips so hale.
When the night mists swirl and churn,
Then to that lantern I'll return,
As once Lili Marleen.

Of course it's quite natural for devotees to make use of the war motif; after all the Bhagavad Gita is supposed to have been spoken in the 'midst of a battlefield.'

But I agree that there are more gentle and appealing ways to communicate the message of Bhakti - it can all sound a wee bit too CLICK at times.