Re: [FairfieldLife] Martyrs (was Re: Voodoo TM or TM Program)

[Vaj]

On Jul 18, 2006, at 11:02 AM, TurquoiseB wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "jim_flanegin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I don't think you are giving the hopelessness and impotence  the 'credit' it deserves when spawning terrorism. It is not the  hopelessness and powerlessness borne of individual circumstances, or  a run of bad luck, such as most of us in the wealthy and powerful US  might imagine.  It is a culture of generations of no hope, no power and no change. A  culture that has grown to mistrust any authority or have any  possibility for personal redemption, socially, culturally or  economically. This situation is fertile ground for religious extremists, seeking  power, who then trade the offer of meaning in the form of zealotry  to these hopeless people in return for their lives. Hence terrorists  are born. Well said, Jim. This is something that people who live in our time and were raised in the affluent West really don't understand. I've often thought that the best thing that could ever happen to America and Americans is to have some kind of "compassion draft," in which every citizen is required to travel in third world countries for a year before they are allowed to vote and  become citizens. Most of them have never seen the conditions they speak so glibly about. Or do like Roshi Bernie Glassman does with his students, do a street retreat: live as a homeless person (really a street person, since it is temporary) for a week or two on the city streets...while deeply into meditation and other practices... http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/images/peter/bernie/street.html http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/images/peter/bernie/washington.html