Prayer For Politicians, Meditation For The Mind

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/25/christine-odonnell-says-prayer-impacts-her-polls/
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/26/can-meditation-change-your-brain-contemplative-neuroscientists-believe-it-can/
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/25/meditation-focus-on-now/

I can’t believe Christine O’Donnell keeps making herself a target for my articles. It hasn’t been weekly, but she can’t seem to stop herself from succumbing to what must be some genetic idiocy that was recessive beforehand. Honestly, is she just addicted to this attention? I guess that would be an excuse to get into politics and have people shower you with praise. She was formerly a witch, so now she can relate to the pagan, but doesn’t know the First Amendment so she can make herself seem teachable (she’s not, it appears). Now she thinks people praying for her campaign actually affect the popularity she’s been gaining. You couldn’t be more narcissistic if you tried; to think that people praying to God would actually have effects on your political run for Senator is incredibly naïve, not to mention selfish. To think God cares about whether you win or the Democrats? This is the same ridiculous tripe that’s been persisting since the 50s when people thought that teaching that the U.S. was a Christian nation would beat the “Godless Communists”. Evidently Christine O’Donnell has bought into this alteration of history and culture that communicates what is to a neutral observer a laughable proposition.

The idea that our country was founded on supposedly unique Biblical principles fails on two levels. The first one I’ve brought up at least once before: why would God care about any nation if its kingdom is not of this earth or if it is, it’s got to be way better than any worldly government could promise. But apparently people, educated or otherwise, can be swayed by patriotism and emotional bondage to feelings of guilt to believe either: God either wants our country to prosper or that the rules of Judeo Christian religion should be given favor in law. This may not be the case with all conservatives, but it leads right to my second point. Even if the majority of the founding fathers were Christian, it follows in no way that they wanted to enforce Christianity as some favored religion or place its laws in a political context. The First Amendment alone gives any sensible person a hint that the writers of the Constitution did not favor Christianity in terms of a government and did not design the country as a “Christian nation”. If anything could be noted as a Christian property of the U.S., it’s demographics. There are more self professed Christians (Protestants, Catholics and Mormons altogether) in the U.S. than any other religion, so that’s the closest you could brag about America being a Christian nation. To say we favor Christianity any more in why we develop our laws is not only mistaken in terms of how jurisprudence should work, impartial to faith, but protecting its practice nonetheless, but selectively observes the monuments and such that exist in government centered buildings, like the Supreme Court and Arlington National Cemetery. Religion and ethics are not dependent on each other; in fact, you could say we develop the latter before we even care about the former.

Most importantly, though, I’m just disappointed that someone would really have any kind of regard for prayer in relation to things that are for all intents and purposes separate from what are genuine religious concerns: famine, disease, natural disasters, adoption, anything but whether a Democrat or a Republican wins an election! The fact that you depend on pleas to some deity, singular or plural, is pitiful when you direct even a fraction of your energy in begging that someone wins an insignificant election for an insignificant country.

On a much more interesting, though still a bit questionable, note is the growing field of contemplative neuroscience. To be brief, it is an area of psychology that specifically studies brain function in the process of varying forms of meditation. I myself haven’t done any persistent meditation beyond some Tai Chi and Wado Ryu breathing exercises, which I admit do have an effect if only by basic physiological observations of how we can calm ourselves without recourse to drugs. The studies are still new from what I’ve read, not to mention the samples are both small and potentially biased so that the brain could very well be tricking the subjects. The tests have shown that different areas of the brain are activated or function at higher levels based on the particular kinds of meditation they do, which range from mindfulness to concentration to empathy. What is of especial relevance is the somewhat agreed upon notion that the brain can be trained in a similar, though distinct, sense that we train our bodies. With the brain, it’s not as if you’re exercising muscles so much as you’re channeling neuron firings in ways that begin to affect the brain’s processing. The best example coming to mind is that of a computer and enhancing it through software that cleans or defragments various areas. Similarly, if you alter various habits that the brain has built over time, you can alter how the brain takes in information, processes it and affects our behavior in general with our environment, people and non people both.

If Christine O’Donnell wants to improve anything with her campaign, maybe she could advocate people combining meditation with their faith journey with God, Jesus and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Not that she would eschew prayer, but suggest that people also look inwardly as well as outwardly. Maybe she could even try it herself and figure out how to save herself from such a grand disappointment that may be around the corner. One can only imagine the future of these polls already starting a week or so ago. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

On the (Gated) Wall Between Church and State

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39740538/ns/politics-decision_2010/

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/19/odonnell-gets-coons-for-constitutional-law-101/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20101019/pl_yblog_exclusive/church-state-and-the-first-amendment-what-odonnell-needs-to-know

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/20/my-take-odonnells-and-americas-first-amendment-ignorance/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101021/ap_on_re_us/us_christian_flag_defenders

This story dragged me into speaking about it, however politically apathetic I am. Seriously, how many other candidates for office don’t know the basics of the Constitution, like the 1st Amendment? I don’t claim to be an expert myself, though I do have a copy. But doesn’t it seem out of character for someone who wants to represent the United States, and has even promised to follow the Constitution as a Senator, to not know the text and political thought concerning even the very 1st Amendment of that Constitution?

The only one so far seems to be Christine O’Donnell, who I spoke about only two weeks ago in a commentary on how her claim that Satanism and Witchcraft were the same reflects badly on the U.S. pagan population. She’s not making herself any more vote-worthy, though I can’t say I’d buy into a political system that has generated so many hypocrites and doesn’t even seem to be generally united under anything, not even the Constitution so many speak of as sacred scripture. But I shouldn’t blame those that misuse politics in my rejection of it as generally useful today. A Latin phrase I take to heart as much as possible is “abusus non tollit usum”. The basic translation is; “Just because something is misused doesn't mean it can't be used correctly,” This applies quite well to both the situation here with senatorial candidates who don’t seem to know much about the Constitution beyond what benefits them and a related story that has been in the news for a while now on a Christian flag being fought over as to its legality of being flown on public government property. With both of these events, there is an intersection of two contested areas; these being church/religion and state/politics.

First, we have Christine O’Donnell’s ignorance as to the proper way in which the more private religious sphere should interact with the more public political sphere. Thomas Jefferson, one of the originators of the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” has much to say on the subject. He wrote; “Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle,” which seems to suggest he believed that however genuine one’s devotion to a faith may be, it does not mean that they have a right to enforce that faith as something everyone else must follow and vice versa with the government in telling the governed how they should worship. Christine O’Donnell has personal issues with homosexuals, claiming they choose to be that way by social conditioning, opposes virtually all abortion and doesn’t see it as a violation of the Constitution to teach creationism in public schools. This exemplifies what I’ve spoken on as a persistent problem: candidates for public office don’t seem to have more than a passing knowledge of either religion or the Constitution’s stance on government sponsorship of it. This has been shown by people like Ron Ramsey and Lou Ann Zelenik saying Islam is either a cult or a political movement, not a religion, and Christine O’Donnell making an amateurish analysis of Satanism and Witchcraft, saying they’re essentially the same, without understanding it beyond what she thought was a date on a Satanic altar. If candidates had mistaken beliefs like this, but shared similar political positions to their constituency, I could forgive the masses for voting for them in spite of their willed ignorance. But I can’t imagine a sensible person voting for O’Donnell after finding out that she didn’t know the wording in the First Amendment that the government should not permit any sponsorship of religion of any kind in publicly funded areas. O’Donnell’s response to her opponent’s criticism was that teaching evolutionary theory in schools was violating that same principle that she apparently only knows enough to point fingers at the “secularists,” She confuses the scientific theory of evolution, separate from any particular religion, with secular humanism, recognized by the U.S. government as an official religion, which happen to believe in it. There are Christians that believe in evolutionary theory as well, so clearly it is held in common by both religions without it being a matter of either of their belief systems. It seems like Ms. O’Donnell feels threatened by evolution as it “forces its way into public schools” in her view. If she really wants to do something about Christianity’s supposed suppression, maybe she could advocate schools teaching about Christianity in history or as a literary tradition. It would be both beneficial to her campaign and would be quite legal on both counts.

Secondly, concerning the controversy surrounding a Christian flag, the solution seems quite simple, however much veterans are making this an issue not unlike the “Cordoba Mosque” in New York. However insulted you might feel that the government is telling you that it is not legal to raise a Christian flag on federally funded property, it doesn’t mean that they mean any disrespect towards you or Christianity. Selling the property for the flag hanging area to the veterans’ association would make it private property and fit for demonstration of any religious symbols. This misuse of the freedom to practice religion shouldn’t make one think that any demonstration of religious belief in public life is illegal. It’s just that when you start making your religious beliefs as they relate to public politics something people have to automatically respect, it’s gone too far. You have every right to believe as you will about the afterlife, deities or Deity, ethics and vote accordingly in elections, but only to the extent that you do not use that system to legislate those beliefs on others that don’t share them. I certainly don’t want veterans to feel like they can’t honor their fallen Christian allies, but there’s no reason to force the public to sponsor that when they don’t all share those beliefs about religion or patriotism. Here’s hoping this will blow over like the desert cross I spoke about a few months ago. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Christine O'Donnell and the 14th Dalai Lama?

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/22/gop-candidates-witchcraft-dabbling-worries-wiccan/






http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/23/review-the-14th-dalai-lama-a-manga-biography/

Again, I’m trying a split topic blog like I did last week. Firstly, we have the questionable conflation of Satanists with Wiccans, witches and other pagans of various stripes by GOP candidate Christine O’Donnell. Not that she doesn’t have other controversial claims, but this one is especially relevant with the consideration that the general term “pagan” applies to at least a quarter of a million people in the U.S. alone, according to Selena Fox, head of Circle Sanctuary, which associates with pagans across the world. The demographic numbers for self identifying pagans allegedly ranges from 500,000 to a million in the U.S. alone. I’m reminded of a prediction by a writer of a questionable work on Wicca and its supposed evil beliefs, Steve Wohlberg, that Wicca would be the third largest religion in the world by 2012. If that’s the case, then it’s true what Rev. Fox (yes, that’s the title apparently) says: we need to further educate people about pagans and how the vast majority are not crazies who kill animals and drink blood.

The political implications are not nearly as relevant, since most people would forgive O’Donnell for past teenage mistakes. The problem is how seriously someone would take her claim that she both “dabbled in witchcraft” and “dated a Satanist”, potentially confusing people into equating the two, when they are pretty distinct systems, holding clearly different perspectives on divinity as well as ethics in particular. The whole notion of a Left Hand Path originates in Satanic thought, whereas Pagan thought is commonly an attempt in some way to return to one’s cultural roots. This is especially true for Pagan Reconstructionism, which attempts to derive the ancient religious practices and create structures based around them to bring the pre modern practices into the modern world. I only hope that this article and the issues it has brought up become more widespread knowledge. This is especially so for those attempts of another GOP member, Bob Barr of Georgia, to illegalize Wicca in the military twice, both times failing. It’s a great accomplishment that America recognizes the diverse, but also remarkably aligned pagan tradition, represented on veteran graves by the pentacle symbol, not to be confused with the pentagram, which is a reversed pentacle, associated with Satanists and Wiccans alike, but in reality only used by Satanists commonly. Here’s to the future of paganism in one way or another, since people will always look back to the past for virtually any religious significance, be it the more mainstream religious texts or the archaeological history that is rooted in many pagan faiths. They’re both just as valid, even if sometimes people fill in the gaps with their own ideas. But that’s how religion is, an ever evolving story.

Onto more bright things, there is a manga adaptation by Tetsu Saiwai of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso’s life that I may consider purchasing. It reminds me of the collection of Buddha manga by Osamu Tezuka I’ve had sitting in my bookcase for at least a year now. I want to reread them eventually, to remind myself of what really made me like them. Historical accuracy, the legends that are injected, and the potential misunderstandings about Buddhism that people could draw from it aside, the graphic novels are astounding. I would probably spend nearly an hour sometimes without even realizing it just reading through half of a novel, if not an entire novel in one sitting. The art is presented in such a way that you feel like a kid, but the subject material isn’t exactly something a kid could really appreciate. There’s death, tragedy, a lot of really serious scenes, and literally a lifetime of a single man encompassed in 8 graphic novels, thousands and thousands of pages no doubt. With Tenzin Gyatso as a subject, the adaptation will no doubt be a shorter series. But from what I’ve read, it presents a perspective on the man’s life that will make you want to read more into his thoughts about life, and Tibetan Buddhism’s perspective as related to other Buddhist sects that exist in Asia. The book releases September 28th and I imagine Amazon will be the place to pre order or order it when it arrives in stores and in publication lists. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.