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Sankara's Daily Memes 0032

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Simply disagreeing with a man does not make him wrong. A man is made wrong when you show he doesnt agree with himself.

Male vanity and female vanity are two different things. But while women can spot both, men know only one.

Challenge people beyond the capacity of their reason to digest a horror, and they will succumb to your irrationality.

The mediocre rarely suffer excellence.

It is only fair that those who are given the power to pardon never be eligible for pardon.

Fate was first invented to justify failure, responsibility for success.

All successes and failures are temporary.

Wisdom is never lucky.

One can never succeed or fail at genuine duties. Duty only knows success.

The dishonest never recognize when honesty is the worst policy.

The Catholic Church was the first mafia.

There is the commonly known slavery that chains the body, and there is the little known slavery that frees the mind.

America, land of the fancy free few.

Only the suicidal want to live forever.

The tendency to address the mere symptoms of social decay is now systemic.

Rights are like muscles; they atrophy without exercise.

Common sense is a gross misnomer.

Nothing like a Christian to make one doubt in the omnipresence guidance of Jesus Christ.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0031

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT

As dumb as monotheism is, a blind atheism is not much better.

Existentialism has everything going for it except conscience and the expansive inclination at the human heart.

No experience is so rich that it cant be turned into rags by memory.

If an experience does not expand the self, repeat it with a different attitude.

Bad memories only provide sustenance when we are already bloated.

The problem with explaining yourself is that you have to then explain why you are explaining yourself.

Millions of people prefer exploitation to staying home on Sundays.

Cause and effect do not need to cheat.

Human beings are whatever they leave in their wake.

We screw, therefore we are.

Greed means to spend the earths wealth of a thousand years in seventy-two.

There is no fate but thinking makes it so.

Fate is neither an excuse nor an explanation. It is merely a stab the dark.

Admitting to many faults is actually more egocentric than admitting to none.

Individuality is the foundation of ignorance.

The best antidote to fear is disbelieving in it.

Fear is a habit, hence the need to foster the habitual fear of bad habits.

The wise can both fear war and be fearless in war.

A prostitute is a professional skilled at removing the road block of wooing in the way of fornication.

There is a time for foolishness too, and it is always yesterday.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0030

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Women�s looks make for bad books.

There are fools who will question nothing, there are fools who must question everything, and then there are the devout who do both at the same time.

Live the self that can live with your greatest living dread.

It is a strange thing that while knowledge removes foolishness, lack of knowledge does not cause foolishness. Foolishness is caused by being too smart to listen to your gut.

The faith that requires no proof would actually be killed by it.

The card of faith gives license to mystify everything.

The family is a practical and efficient natural. It is no more worthy of divinizing than an ant colony.

A potent curse: May you have a big sister in your next life.

The great dont require press releases.

A fanatic is a barbarian that got religion.

Belief is not hereditary, it is of the herd.

Zealots do not follow the will of God; they inform God as to why his will should follow them.

The best Americans must often be practically anti-American because the worst political movements usually wrap themselves in the flag of Americanism.

To murder one human, then another, and even a third, is the work of a very weak man, and hardly deserves the attention we give it. Capital punishment should be saved for those who murder thousands with the stroke of a pen.

Politically execute the rich and powerful criminals, and you will in one swift stroke have removed much of the causality for petty crimes. And by both reducing and sending a message to their misguided progeny, such executions are the gift that keeps on giving.

All the wise must wish, from time to time, that they were simpletons once again.

It is a silly thing to mistake a silent fool for a wise person.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0029

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Blessed are the children of baby boomers, for they shall inherit the dearth.

Some alcohol sometimes creates families; too much alcohol destroys them.

Everything is a drug in large enough quantities.

Nothing is absolute. Even the mass murderer must somehow be providing positive service to the human race.

You know you are getting to know your duty when you know you dont know anyone elses.

Duty is a popular defense for desires.

Habits will also save energy in the repetition of activities that waste time.

Economics is the foundation of all institutions of centralized power, meaning they are all, at bottom, economic centralizations.

Neither virtue nor evil are possible without economizing.

If you want to be rude toward a subject, offer a degree in it.

Poetry is superior to prose in expressing self-knowledge.

All newborns are secular humanists.

Education, at its base, is learning to teach yourself.

The only worthy method to teach religion is to extract the universals.

Mortality is the only apparent epistemic limitation for the human being who knows how to read, write, think, and self-reflect.

Colleges and education are now almost nearly antithetical.

Evil is a theological conundrum only to those who could also then be classified as theological conundrums.

The first concern of laws is providing a living to those who would rather not work.

Ignorance of the past makes it easier to obey present laws.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0028

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Knowing and doing what is right are both functions of self-knowledge, not law abiding.

Self-knowledge is alpha and omega of every social science.

Effort is that which establishes a new pattern; great effort is to establish a pattern contrary to an established pattern.

The hallmark of the entertainment era is the demise of expansive feelings.

A strong endurance can just as easily be ones downfall.

The wise forgive, the fool forgets.

Enemies are stronger than will power in that they will shape us as strongly as does company.

Hide your mistakes from most everyone but yourself.

Revolutionaries are people whose country has become their enemy.

To succeed, everyone else must succeed; but win, everyone else must lose.

Every nuts shell can be cracked.

Envy is self-hate, and so is pity.

It is self-evident that all men and women are not equal, and there is no evidence that they are created.

Global warming is caused by the rule of standards.

Truth is dangerous in small portions.

Ex-monastics are the worst critics of monasteries.

Admitting you were wrong is also admitting you are right.

These days, there is something fishy everywhere.

An intention can be good and still be shortsighted.

Extremists are good for target practice because they never move.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0027

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The dilemma of the human race is in not being very smart and not being dumb enough.

Many eight year olds would be safer drivers than many eighty year olds.

As a rule, there are extremely few extremely good extremists.

Extremism is a position that admits no other.

A human without condition is the noblest work of God, and vice versa.

Parenting is the root of most evil and some good.

Facts are never absolutely provable, but that should never stand in the way of us being insulted by them.

Circumstantial evidence is strongest when it suits our cause.

When some live their faith, others are made to die for it.

Faith without doubt and doubt without faith require the exact same kind of effort.

There is reasonable faith and unreasonable faith, and only statistics can distinguish between the two.

Since faith is largely concerned with death, it is necessary that someone dies for it.

Technically, we are all meat-eaters, especially when we fast.

In the dark ages, the narrow self was called evil, and quite a bit of it was called good.

More complex organisms evolved not because they were more likely to survive, but because the sense of self, requiring that an organism has a more sophisticated intuitive capacity, must evolve too.

Good examples are often terrible reminders.

Excess helps determine what is not excess, but some cant help but make that determination excessively.

Every being is at bottom an idol posterior to being.

It is more offensive to quietly lie behind the back than loudly speak the truth to the face.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0026

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT

When I hear the word �culture,� I immediately ask who died.

Conformity is good for communication, not for expression.

What is samadhi? It is, of all religious, spiritual, scientific, and mystical ideas, the only intellectually honest impossibility that human existence is absolutely meaningless.

Culture is your cult writ large.

Many courtships have cost couples their marriage.

Cowardice is facing the unknown and not being the least bit interested.

The survival, not merely the salvation, of the human race lies in the widespread mimicry of creative genius.

There is no greater crime than to obey every law.

You know you wholly identify with others when you spare them no criticism.

When I seek culture in America, I order frozen yogurt at McDonald�s�drive thru.

Custom and tradition are to be weighed irrespective of their weight.

Only doubters should be tasked with being missionaries; the work of convincing others is wasted on those who already believe unquestioningly.

What is spam to one is a spark to another.

To cease questioning is to die before one�s time.

Owe to own if you must, but to owe is to be owned.

The best way to deceive others is to say whatever it takes for them to deceive themselves.

The longevity of effects is exponentially greater when actions are performed with enthusiasm.

Preaching saps the life out of doing.

It is easier to do great than to do good.

Well-timed defeats are superior to most any victory.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0025

Sat, 7 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMT

It would have been much better had the Republican Party legally lowered the age of consent in response to the Foley scandal instead of legalizing torture, nullifying habeas corpus, and allowing unrestricted wiretapping in response to the Bush scandal.

A counterculture is no longer counter when it�s culture.

In India, you are the long lost brother of every shopkeeper.

The way to undermine organized religions is to simply render unto religions the things which are religions�.

George W. Bush is one of the few American presidents whose cant didn�t shame him into can.

Faith and insecurity are synonymous.

Current forms of censorship are devoted to keeping bad ideas loud and good ideas quiet.

A woman�s celibacy is far more wasteful than a man�s.

Unlike Christians, most children know they are pretending.

At its best, religion is ethics. Ethics is the general development of self-awareness and is not to be contrived in particular decisions made by particular individuals with particular opportunities in particular circumstances using particular tools. Turning contraception and abortion, not to mention evolution, entertainment, and divorce into ethical litmus tests was a colossal overstep religions have no place surviving.

Since past revolutions were incited by thin people against fat people, modern plutocratic states invented fast food to keep thin people fat.

The Constitution knows no castes, but only caste members are permitted to enforce it.

Competitiveness is a very personal feeling. If it helps you to feel it, then do; if it doesn�t, then don�t. It is not to be expressed toward others without solicitation.

In a disposable society, the wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that belongs to the tossed bike.

Greed is when those that can cure mental illness invent mental illness, those that manufacture pills manufacture dysfunctions, and those that build bombs also build global resentment.

For the vast majority of people, religion and spirituality are fillers for a shallow mind.

Consumerism fosters the freedom to behave like everyone else.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0024

Sat, 7 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMT

When salvos of platitudes can�t hide pretended salvation, salvos of bombs salve a wounded ego.

Mammon has more devotees than God without any scriptures.

That extremes invariably meet is one of the surest indications that this world is infinite.

Beauty is never useless; the self is always doing something with it.

A perfect world would have been wasted on Don Quixote.

Pulchritude is in the whole package, not just the ribbons.

If Hitler was a strikingly handsome man, history would have been left with a conundrum.

Even the dangers of belief are unbelievable.

Humans have the inalienable right to think they are free whenever they like.

Tertullian believed because it was impossible, but I don�t believe because it is improbable.

As love is always a trajectory of self love, it is the greatest threat the world faces today.

Hate and love are not opposites; they are equals. Their opposite is self-sacrifice.

The devout believe that he who spares the Bible spoils his neighbor.

Noble blood is not purple.

Flesh must become words before words become flesh.

Good books are tiring; bad books are trying.

Too many people are reading too many books written by too many idiots.

If the cosmos had to be either a big YES or a big NO, I�d have to say it�s both emphatically at the same time.

Since Jesus said the dead should bury the dead, what pretenders are erecting all the crosses in cemeteries?

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0023

Sat, 7 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Jesus salves.

Repent ye, for the kingdom of getting over yourself is at hand.

Revelation is a smashing excuse for a bad idea.

Since it is impossible to be relatively good unless absolute good is inherent in existence, the ontological absolute is the only question of human absolution.

Saints not only do not call themselves saints, but they do not call others saints either.

With his insight, Freud would have added an i to MLK to discover King did a body good.

Ignorance is the sum total of habits that keep one from looking inward.

Judaism fixes what is not broken and Christianity breaks what is not broken. Not to be outdone, Islam breaks what is not fixable.

Salvations through means other than reason are always at the expense of others.

Science without ethics is lame; ethics without science is blind.

Music is the greatest art, the voice is the greatest instrument, and song from the heart is the greatest melody. And wouldn�t you know, everyone can sing from the heart without practice.

Tossing out the television is a more powerful political statement than marching.

Those who quickly change the subject when praised love the praise too much.

People who light the way for others are always aware of the shadow they cast.

Bend yourself before time breaks you.

In ecstasy, I am the truth, and sometimes I get around to telling it.

Inanity of inanities; the Bible is inane.

It was poor conduct to exempt preaching right conduct from taxation.

Humanity is in the home stretch when journalists are the last refuge of warmongers.

In the weak mind, a meme is cue ball that strikes idols and takes their position.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0022

Mon, 2 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Strong national identity is synonymous with global facelessness.

Power � can't live with it, can't live without it.

To the true believing Catholic priest, the raped boy who complains must simply be ungrateful.

The very fact that the Gospel must be communicated from person to person, thus lending a holier than thou position to the evangelist, means that it is not of God but of men.

False prophets are honored only in their own country.

Bombs, pills, and heavens are all intended to ward off fears invented.

If I were God, I would read the thoughts of human beings at a random moment of the day and take that as their solemn prayer.

Ignorance for most people is a matter of safety first.

Lesser prophets like Gandhi and King confront society�s intolerable institutions. Greater prophets engage society�s reputable ones.

When science is used to avoid consequences that healthy living would have avoided, it creates unavoidable consequences.

An argument from faith hopes people share similar fears; an argument from reason hopes people know arithmetic.

If your religion does not expand your sense of self, then you must expand your religion.

If religion didn�t centralize power, it would be made to.

Religion is the mystification of the uncomfortable.

Anthropomorphizing the infinite is the commonest blasphemy.

Religions belong to the only species that dies out as it evolves.

Religions are reactions, not initiations.

Let�s be honest, please, there has been a hell of a lot more religions persecuting than religious persecution.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0021

Mon, 2 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMT

If all human beings knew old age would take them at no later than 50, they would fight in wars at no earlier than 50.

Thinking was never people�s strong suit.

Virtue isn�t in not being offensive; it�s in not being offended.

To the devout, the minor misconduct of an unbeliever is often unforgivable while the believer�s crime against humanity may be beatifying.

Proverbs says political leaders shouldn�t drink alcohol, lest they forget the law. But that warning would not have applied to George W. Bush, who considers himself above the law even when he�s sober.

Moderates threaten fundamentalists a lot more than do atheists because moderates represent an alternative point of view not so easily dismissible. Meanwhile, atheists threaten moderates a lot more than do fundamentalists and mortality threatens atheists a lot more than do moderates for precisely the same reason.

Human beings have yet to come up with something that threatens their mortality.

Fundamentalists are probably more reasonable than moderates else they would not have to compensate for their lack of faith with such zealotry.

Family bonds are strongest in locals and cultures where liberal education is weakest.

Politicians, the people most needing to identify with the entire human race, are the least likely to.

Proponents of the separation of church and state have the situation backwards. It is precisely because trustworthy religious politicians separate their ambition for public office from their religious conviction that their religious conviction influences their execution of public office.

It is one thing to shine, another to stand in the light.

If a Christ-like figure sought the US presidency, he�d be branded the devil by the fundamentalist right, air headed by the spiritual left, impractical by progressives, and a lunatic by conservatives.

Life has enough facets to fit most prognosticative utterances, and if not, the utterance will supply the facets.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0020

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

It appears predictable that teachers must sacrifice doing what is right in order to teach what is right.

Humanity�s permanent mark on existence, if it will have one, will have nothing to do with its technological achievements and everything to do with the human body�s genetic structure, which is capable of intuiting a sense of self more sophisticated than might be seen on a million million worlds. Hence, humanity�s legacy will ironically only be decided by what it does with a capacity for self-awareness, for which it is not in the least responsible.

To survive, human beings must evolve from being an animal reasoning to a reasoning animal.

It is better to fornicate than to burn.

Sheer ignorance of the magnitude of the universe is a basic requisite for most religious superstitions.

That there are no more miracles of biblical proportions must lead the honest person to suspect that there never were any.

Once the solid evidence for religion�s veracity, now miracle stories are the obstinate embarrassment religion can�t avoid.

If God performed miracles in the distant past, then they are wasted, for they produce only doubt in the scientific mind and divisiveness in the religious mind. No, if there was ever a time for God to perform a miracle, it is now.

To the mythological mind millenniums ago, a literary inconsistency was cause for much awe. Now it is much cause for an editor.

It�s time for bloody revolution when merely paying your taxes implicates you in murder.

You don�t need Jesus Christ to save you from original sin. All you need is a good translator of Greek.

It�s the scientist, not the theologian, who earns the right to use the word mystery.

Sentimentality is a form of self-torture.

The length to which social systems are rigged in order to oblige children to support their elderly parents is evidence that such a filial responsibility is not natural or even healthy.

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Three Quarter Truths

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On Religion �

Exceptionally successful religions are those that require the least exception from their followers for them to feel exceptional.

It takes no talent to don phylacteries.

Rejecting dogma takes some effort, but wholeheartedly embracing it ... now that takes devotion!

It's a limited intellect that needs to reinterpret a Bible passage to justify doing the right thing; a limited heart that interprets to justify wrongdoing.

The Hindus claim there are potentially as many gods as human beings. The problem is there are potentially as many devils too.

Jesus Christ is not a "he," but an "it."

What a preacher buys, the congregation will go out and sell.

Some Jews like to pray in languages they don't speak for the same reason that some people like to listen to operas in languages they don't understand. It minimizes the embarrassment.

Theology yields to philosophy, which yields to mortality, which yields to theology.

Faith practically means faithfully deceiving oneself.

The war is not between faith-based and evidence-based outlooks. It's between people who are willing to challenge their interpretation of the evidence and people who aren't.

The struggle is not between serving God and serving money; that's the fable. The rich instituted that God in order to protect their money.

If it's written down, it can be abused.

If Jesus Christ will abandon ninety-nine good sheep to search for a single stray, then he's going to hell.

The Bible Belt needs to be unbuckled before it nooses the nation.

When God is a generalization that talks to political leaders, war is brewing.

Religion is the craft of referring to self-flattery as faith, on mass.

A degree in religion is a degree in the history of bigotry. A degree in divinity is a degree in the bigotry of history.

A little-known saying of Jesus: Those who use as little of their brains that can fit through the eye of a needle will never enter the Kingdom of God.

Working toward God's greater glory is almost always immoral.

A God distanced from humanity is the greatest ploy of the powerful.

Martyrs and movie stars are famous for really very little.

Reason: There is no God but thinking makes it so.

Faith: There is no thinking but God makes it so.

Siva is not the god of destruction, but deconstruction.

The preacher's Lord is my shepherd; the preacher shall not want. I shall be eaten.

The good Samaritan did good and was immortalized without ever hearing one Christian fable about good Samaritans.

The truly faithful reject religion.

Odd that so many Jews have not yet figured out that for there to be anti-Semitism, you first need Semitism.

Forget the cancer gene, isolate the authoritarian gene!

The fool's profession of faith: "There is no god but my god."

God is commonly fashioned to yield high dividends for the believer, which is why so much of the planet is broke.

A man that can forgive sins will invent sins.

On Perspective �

Children are imitators, unfortunately.

Biographies are often hagiographies.

Even in a desert, cemeteries are a waste of land.

What an amazingly immaterial feat of science to discover a minor atmospheric detail of a distant planet, which its every inhabitant would surely know.

Boil war down, and its residue is the lifestyle of the few.

Reality is sparsely populated.

Oxygen ages the body.

It was a blind man who invented billboards.

Details are often invented so someone can make a living.

Neuroscientists are powerful fakirs. They effortlessly fly over the chasm separating sensory awareness from self awareness as if it's not even there.

These days, the chief product of professors is professors.

Every source of light gives off waste.

Children are right. We are invisible when we conceal our eyes.

Human beings may be the only animal that murders its own kind, but animals fight each other all the time, only without weapons. If they had weapons, animal murder rates would certainly rise. So it's no use glorifying animals or berating humans in this department. We are merely animals with weapons.

It is easy to offend a racist.

Shrinks are symptoms of their diagnoses.

The view is often better when we're sitting on the fence.

Only the level-headed marry the people they proposed to.

People choose the past of least resistance.

With miracles, it's not "seeing is believing" but rather "believing is seeing."

A book is deep when its surface suffices. A poem is superficial when its depth suffices.

Poverty may be a source of crime, but excessive wealth is a source of poverty and crime.

Half of knowledge is in knowing what to call things.

Artists are those who would pay to do what they do, or at least be willing to have someone else pay.

On Practicalities �

A deep sorrow is worth in inspiration any million pleasures.

If you are healthy but are habitually concerned over your health, you're not healthy.

In this world, God is more seeking truth than truth itself.

Indignation can help in mastering technique.

My late grandfather always told me that the more I learned, the more I'd earn. What he didn't tell me was that if I learned too much, I wouldn't be able to earn anything.

People do not have favorite colors, but rather favorite associations.

Noise pollution is the bell that ever tolls.

And Some Unsolicited Advice �

Instead of drinking to world peace, abstain.

Every person contributes to the overall self of humanity.

Serve with enthusiasm, and enthusiasm will serve you.

You can trust the majority on many things, but not on anything major.

If you must write down your conversations with God, please spare us book II.

Instead of lighting sixteen birthday candles, light seventy-two and let the youth blow out sixteen.

If you want to commit suicide but don't want to become a statistic of suicide, conform.

It is hard to turn your one thousand dollars into two because it is so easy to turn one billion into two.

Never brag about who loves you, only about who hates you.

Anyone obliged to another is not free, so it is best to be obliged to everyone.

If you don't project high hopes onto your future, you may yet have one.

It is imperative to reply to nonsense without showing off.

In pointing out blame, the farthest we can go is our finger tips.

If you want to be assured of failure in mastering the mind, become a psychologist.

The maladjusted are our only hope, so long as they are not adjusted.

Students of spirituality are smart to study psychology, stupid to earn a salary from it.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0019

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

This age craves a centralizing figure, and it would have one were it not for the centralized powers that actively resist one.

It can�t be coincidence that humans are taught everything except how to parent.

Modern science has clarified how the world works to the point where the only things left to confuse people are living and dying.

If only the religions of the world admonished people to identify with one another, instead of merely to love one another, they would avoided so much wiggle room.

With the way Christians talk about love, you�d think Jesus invented it.

Hatred and love for humanity are not incompatible.

For all it is, love still requires and reinforces objectification.

Many a narrow self that intended only for the good of the world justly ended up in jail.

A prison minister serves the same function as a church one. He�s there to insure his flock of jailbirds flies back soon.

Flowers are beds of sex, Nature�s first love.

If you tell your sweetheart that she is sweet, she might complain that you don�t tell her that enough; but if you give her sweets, she will accept the compliment without analysis.

Sex is prior to love even as death is prior to life. Hence, revelry in sex and death will exalt or debase to greater extremes than will relishing love and life.

A cerebrally developed monkey is no excuse for the human race.

There is a cosmos infinitely bigger than every god human beings created, imagined, believed in, argued over, worshiped, and fought and died for; to that cosmic being, human religions must be abominably puny.

The greatest mistake human beings ever made, greater even than genocide, was perforce to give mistakes an ontological life and consequence of their own. That mistake, for which there is no single perpetrator or possible restitution, causes the silent suffering and hellish oblivion of billions.

A mind preoccupied with sin can bake a cake and sit to have a piece with a friend, all the while concocting murder.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0018

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Fundamentalists that are not hypocrites are far more dangerous than fundamentalists that are.

Considering what Christ said about priests, Christianity should have been a priestless religion.

Monotheists, unlike the Hindus, never quite figured out that the deathless, immortal part of us also has to be birthless.

The permanent death of the individual, if not the ineluctable death of the planet and the human race, might reduce to vanity all temporal striving, but that is still better than an afterlife that relegates all to corporeal violence.

Since it is impossible to conceive of eternal heaven and hell, it is impossible to believe in them. What is possible is to coercively refer to them, much like a dog trainer might use liver treats and a choke collar.

The idea of immortality is only safe in the mind of an immortal being, who will perforce have no conception of killing for it.

Islam describes the perfect wives in store for devout Muslims in paradise, never the perfect husbands.

We are afforded a little sense of justice in this world with the concept of rebirth, and absolutely none without it.

For all of the wisdom randomly tossed into Jesus�s mouth, the Christian religion has always been perfectly compatible with a conquering secular fascism.

For how much good are religions really responsible when the good they do to people who already deserve good can�t be counted and the bad they do to people who deserve good counts double?

�Knowledge puffeth up,� sure, but it�s also terrible for church fundraising.

�You know what you are� is an improper question and a perfect statement.

Laws can only serve their masters.

Leaders are never elected, though an elected official in the past might have, once or twice, become a leader.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0017

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Some Unsolicited Advice�

Every person contributes to the overall self of humanity.

Serve with enthusiasm, and enthusiasm will serve you.

You can trust the majority on many things, but not on anything major.

If you must write down your conversations with God, please spare us book II.

Instead of lighting sixteen birthday candles, light seventy-two and let the youth blow out sixteen.

If you want to commit suicide but don't want to become a statistic of suicide, conform.

It is hard to turn your one thousand dollars into two because it is so easy to turn one billion into two.

Never brag about who loves you, only about who hates you.

Anyone obliged to another is not free, so it is best to be obliged to everyone.

If you don't project high hopes onto your future, you may yet have one.

It is imperative to reply to nonsense without showing off.

In pointing out blame, the farthest we can go is our finger tips.

If you want to be assured of failure in mastering the mind, become a psychologist.

The maladjusted are our only hope, so long as they are not adjusted.

Students of spirituality are smart to study psychology, stupid to earn a salary from it.

On Religion�

For all their sworn religious duty to convert the world, believers can�t appreciate the solemn secular duty to educate them.

The reason there are so few Christian humorists is that the religion is so comical, believers have no recourse but to take themselves and it deadly seriously.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0016

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

God is commonly fashioned to yield high dividends for the believer, which is why so much of the planet is broke.

A man that can forgive sins will invent sins.

On Perspective �

Children are imitators, unfortunately.

Biographies are often hagiographies.

Even in a desert, cemeteries are a waste of land.

What an amazingly immaterial feat of science to discover a minor atmospheric detail of a distant planet, which its every inhabitant would surely know.

Boil war down, and its residue is the lifestyle of the few.

Reality is sparsely populated.

Oxygen ages the body.

It was a blind man who invented billboards.

Details are often invented so someone can make a living.

Neuroscientists are powerful fakirs. They effortlessly fly over the chasm separating sensory awareness from self awareness as if it's not even there.

These days, the chief product of professors is professors.

On Practicalities�

My late grandfather always told me that the more I learned, the more I�d earn. What he didn't tell me was that if I learned too much, I wouldn't be able to earn anything.

People do not have favorite colors, but rather favorite associations.

Noise pollution is the bell that ever tolls.

And Some Unsolicited Advice �

Instead of drinking to world peace, abstain.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0015

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On Aging and Time�

Alone, till death do us part is a trivial pursuit.

Native Americans saw more land in a glance than modern Americans see in their entire existence.

The dominant institutions of martyrs and entertainment stars are both symptoms of social decay, though it is not entirely clear why they often confuse themselves for the other.

Teen mind and teeny mind are not cognates, but they might as well be.

The proper question is not How old are you? but How cold are you?

Youth is not wasted on the young, since the wise in a youthful body would immediately behave like they were young again.

The human race would progress much faster if it didn�t take so long for people to die.

Breathing is the one fulltime occupation we pay with our lives to do.

Early to rise and early to bed means just an earlier time zone in the head.

American history teaches us that when you attach a name to a set of principles, contrary principles can be attached to the name once the name takes precedence.

Yesterday is in the custody of billions of minds; a decade ago, millions; a century past, thousands; and hoary millennia, a handful.

On Art�

The coming death of our society will be the birth pangs of art.

These days, artists mystify themselves as much as priests, and then win a prize for going to the trouble.

Real art is drinks of demystification, all around.

Platitudes are poison to art, which is to say they are poison, period.

Once and for all, art is for reality�s sake.

Poetry is pencil on the canvass of the mind with shadows from the heart.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0014

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On Art�

Asceticism is art with a bodily canvass.

The only reason to paint a vase is to show the vase the eyes refuse to see.

The art of breathing was the first art.

That feeling true art gives is the expansion of your sense of self.

A work of art that uproots even one limiting pattern of self is brilliant; two, genius.

Art is the inaction of self-knowledge.

Science is to Nintendo technology as art is to propaganda, except of roll of quarters won�t cut it in a gallery.

Only the crudest of arts imitates nature; real art insists that our senses deceive.

Science can and will advance beyond our wildest expectations, but it will never be more sure of anything than its own artistic limitations.

If you would do art, suffer.

On Perspective�

The worst marriage is the one where your partner doesn�t even know you exist. The worst partner is the one with whom the worst marriage is the best one.

If your greatest goal is to live a long life, then dying young will be no big loss.

The call to the cosmos for universal truth is not answered with mere silence. The answer is Listen!

If your conditioning is in the way of imagining, imagine imagining.

It is hard to give a calm person advice.

We advertise ourselves during adverse times.

An idol is anything that makes you idle.

Real people are uncomfortable to be around.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0013

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On Money and Caste�

The phrase all men are created equal is only of benefit to those for whom it is unfortunately untrue.

Rich and poor are certainly inevitable; rich versus poor is probably inevitable.

Your superior is the one who has more of what you value.

The natural elite of humanity are those that are content in considering themselves just humans.

The inheritance of a polluted planet is proportionally miniscule in threat to the inheritance of polluted minds.

Money may make the world go round, but self-sacrifice makes the world go forward.

Anything that costs a million dollars to build should be too expensive to drop from an airplane.

On Art�

The ethics of art is in its capacity to inspire the sacrifice of one�s conditioning.

The greater the artist, the higher he sits on the summit of mythology.

The difference between entertainment and art is that while the former caters to the narrow self, the latter inspires expansiveness.

When there is very little difference anymore between art and entertainment, arm yourself.

Paul was a terrible artist and not an historian at all.

If the truth be told, art is more concerned with death than life, which is why art for the artist is prior to life itself.

Life evolves into art, art aspires to know death, and death gives birth to life.

Art is destructive, and deconstructive. The constructive and conditioning art is called propaganda.

The artist who died without coming to terms with mortality might as well have been knitting socks.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0012

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Life is a handful of breaths that can be dropped but not pocketed.

Democracy depends on the presumption that a million idiots are smarter than a single philosopher.

Since the will of the people is easily corruptible, governance based on it is too.

No psychic can give better advice than a calm mind.

Creation implies creator(s), but existence is self-implicating.

On Religion�

The devil would be a fool not to wear a cross.

Childhood catechism turns into youthful conviction turns into adult complication turns into venerable contrition.

If you don�t have knowledge to comfort you by the time you�re old, then your spouse must suffice. If your spouse is gone or unable, then your money must suffice. If your money is gone or unable, then your religion must suffice.

Most miracle stories were authored by frustration with apparent human limitation, that and boredom.

On Politics�

Even the compact half truth sounds bloated out of the mouths of politicians.

Talking is an action often employed to avoid action.

It�s much easier to forgive liars than those who prefer to be lied to.

Anarchy is ideally possible among gods and uncomfortably probable among brutes.

On Money and Caste�

The rich are prone to behave like the scum of the earth toward the poor, but still the poor pine to behave like the rich.

It times of war, the descent of dissent has the scent of the cent.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0011

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The separation of church and state is a terrible idea, because it allows both the freedom to continue amassing power, and eventually merge again.

The state is made of people, and the church is made of the same people. For all his wisdom, James Madison never got around to explaining how a person can be separated from himself.

The only system grand enough to collect all religions and unite them under a single roof is the Dewey Decimal.

A childless orthodox home is a curse for the home and a blessing for children.

If you look closely enough, you will discover that the greedy even breathe too much.

Infant genital mutilation is the surgical stamp of a self-mystifying little Semitic ego.

Spare the parenting education and no amount of the rod will keep the child.

The human face is a composite of a hundred habits.

The rich used to play Monopoly with lives of the poor, but now they play Jumanji.

The educated, affluent, and comfortable are responsible for much of the ignorance, poverty, and suffering in the world.

A book is a compilation of symbols representing sounds that have to be heard to be read.

Enemies are vanquished by identifying with them.

The only evil is the narrow self resisting its own expansion.

Expensive education disqualifies itself.

In many respects, higher education resembles highway robbery.

In the world of tomorrow, the study of organized religions will not be necessary for a well-rounded education; but it is necessary in today�s world to insure there will be a world of tomorrow.

Evolution is primarily concerned with a developed intuitive, not merely survival, capacity. An overdeveloped survival response will mean a dead roach as much as a dead human.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0010

Mon, 4 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Orthodoxy is just a matter of time.

In the Dark Ages, the light bulb would have been heresy.

The self-righteous are like canines. Only they can hear the high-pitched shrills of blasphemy.

Accepting what you don�t know to be true is as bad as denying what you know to be true.

They call faith a flame, and in a way, it is. It�s the indisputable argument that replaced burning people alive.

Heresy is a personal offense that the offended person believes is a divine one.

Until Catholics vote to canonize people from other belief and disbelief systems, they will merely be beatifying themselves.

It is clear that the Bible is the Word of God. Why else, other than to dissuade people from believing any of it, would He have inserted so many contradictions, falsehoods, and historical impossibilities that have miraculously withstood centuries of possible correction?

To know and not hope takes more courage than to not know and hope.

Since his hopes die with him, death will never let a martyr down.

Religion is the hope that there is meaning to your life and no other meaning to anyone else�s.

Faith is the presumptuousness of intellectual proletariats, the poor man�s elitism, the glorification of the intimidated ego�s unwillingness to squarely question itself. The faithful have not the strength to be humble.

The meek inheriting the earth, which predicts religion�s demise, is the most promising line in the Bible.

Why is it that popular religious symbols like the cross and the skull cap are worn not only where other people can see them, but where wearers don�t have to?

The religion that claims a monopoly on humility disqualifies itself, and the religion that doesn�t also disqualifies itself.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0009

Sun, 3 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On Perspective�

Every source of light gives off waste.

Children are right. We are invisible when we conceal our eyes.

Human beings may be the only animal that murders its own kind, but animals fight each other all the time, only without weapons. If they had weapons, animal murder rates would certainly rise. So it's no use glorifying animals or berating humans in this department. We are merely animals with weapons.

It is easy to offend a racist.

Shrinks are symptoms of their diagnoses.

The view is often better when we're sitting on the fence.

Only the level-headed marry the people they proposed to.

People choose the past of least resistance.

With miracles, it's not "seeing is believing" but rather "believing is seeing."

A book is deep when its surface suffices. A poem is superficial when its depth suffices.

Poverty may be a source of crime, but excessive wealth is a source of poverty and crime.

Half of knowledge is in knowing what to call things.

Artists are those who would pay to do what they do, or at least be willing to have someone else pay.

On Practicalities �

A deep sorrow is worth in inspiration any million pleasures.

If you are healthy but are habitually concerned over your health, you're not healthy.

In this world, God is more seeking truth than truth itself.

Indignation can help in mastering technique.

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How a Spiritual Government Might Have Responded to Katrina

Sun, 3 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The United States government, so good at rushing in to "aid" (or invade) other countries, spectacularly failed its own people recently when faced with the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. To avoid similar scenarios in the future, America can consciously foster spirituality in government. Though the idea of a spiritual government might today seem like a contradiction in terms, it is possible to guide policy-making according to spiritual principles.

A spiritual government-like a spiritual individual-would conserve its resources in an effort to liberate its energies for genuine duties. Just as the spiritual aspirant might practice asceticism to conserve and inwardly direct her energies in mystical practices, the spiritual government would carefully direct its resources to the area of greatest need, avoiding the temptation to waste vital resources on projects of choice, whether they are a war or a lucrative contract given to a crony campaign fund-raiser.

CONTINUED...

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0008

Sat, 2 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On Religion�

Some Jews like to pray in languages they don't speak for the same reason that some people like to listen to operas in languages they don't understand. It minimizes the embarrassment.

Theology yields to philosophy, which yields to mortality, which yields to theology.

Faith practically means faithfully deceiving oneself.

The war is not between faith-based and evidence-based outlooks. It's between people who are willing to challenge their interpretation of the evidence and people who aren't.

The struggle is not between serving God and serving money; that's the fable. The rich instituted that God in order to protect their money.

If it's written down, it can be abused.

If Jesus Christ will abandon ninety-nine good sheep to search for a single stray, then he's going to hell.

The Bible Belt needs to be unbuckled before it nooses the nation.

When God is a generalization that talks to political leaders, war is brewing.

Religion is the craft of referring to self-flattery as faith, on mass.

A degree in religion is a degree in the history of bigotry. A degree in divinity is a degree in the bigotry of history.

A little-known saying of Jesus: Those who use as little of their brains that can fit through the eye of a needle will never enter the Kingdom of God.

Working toward God's greater glory is almost always immoral.

A God distanced from humanity is the greatest ploy of the powerful.

Martyrs and movie stars are famous for really very little.

Reason: There is no God but thinking makes it so.

Faith: There is no thinking but God makes it so.

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Ten Ways to Celebrate the Holidays Without Religion

Sat, 2 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

It's a common gripe these days that the holidays have become so commercial they no longer have any spiritual meaning-yet at the same time, increasing numbers of Americans are distancing themselves from religious institutions. Many people recognize that limiting the holidays to gathering with family, eating heartily, consumer shopping, and saying a few prayers undermines a golden opportunity to genuinely embody the spiritual life. How can a spiritual seeker integrate meaning into the holidays while avoiding religious tradition?

Following are ten suggestions for soulfully observing the holidays without the involvement of organized religion...

CONTINUED...

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0007

Fri, 1 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On Aging and Time...

Alone, till death do us part is a trivial pursuit.

Native Americans saw more land in a glance than modern Americans see in their entire existence.

The dominant institutions of martyrs and entertainment stars are both symptoms of social decay, though it is not entirely clear why they often confuse themselves for the other.

Teen mind and teeny mind are not cognates, but they might as well be.

The proper question is not How old are you? but How cold are you?

Youth is not wasted on the young, since the wise in a youthful body would immediately behave like they were young again.

The human race would progress much faster if it didn't take so long for people to die.

Breathing is the one fulltime occupation we pay with our lives to do.

Early to rise and early to bed means just an earlier time zone in the head.

American history teaches us that when you attach a name to a set of principles, contrary principles can be attached to the name once the name takes precedence.

Yesterday is in the custody of billions of minds; a decade ago, millions; a century past, thousands; and hoary millennia, a handful.

On Art�

The coming death of our society will be the birth pangs of art.

These days, artists mystify themselves as much as priests, and then win a prize for going to the trouble.

Real art is drinks of demystification, all around.

Platitudes are poison to art, which is to say they are poison, period.

Once and for all, art is for reality's sake.

Poetry is pencil on the canvass of the mind with shadows from the heart.

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Straight Talk on Sex

Fri, 1 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

What is right and natural when it comes to human sexuality and relationships? Because of the way cultural norms and mores so severely affect our beliefs in these areas, some of my favorite topics of discussion are sex, relationships, and gender-related issues. These topics allow me the chance to keep my culturally implanted impulses from influencing my reasoning. I invite you to do the same as I share with you some of my more controversial conclusions on widely debated subjects.

Adolescents and sex

In my opinion, consensual teenage sex should be encouraged, since it is not only healthy but, from a societal point of view, ethically imperative. Research by such notable scientists as neuropsychologist James Prescott shows that societies in which sexual activity in adolescents is freely accepted are far more likely to produce nonviolent adults than societies that repress such activity. Put another way, societies that deprive their young of the pleasures of the body tend to be violent.

The drive for sex in adolescents need not be approached differently than the body's hunger for food. A child is ready for sex when the child desires it. When adults encourage physical affection and closeness in their youngsters, they simultaneously discourage negative behaviors such as stealing, misogyny, and violence as an answer to problems. Healthy adolescent sex can help create adults who eschew the reptilian predilection toward aggression, nationalism, authoritarianism, and the superstition-laden rituals of organized religion. It follows that sexual repression is not simply unnatural, but is also a crime against humanity.

CONTINUED...

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0006

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On Adultery...

Adultery is a misnomer. The correct term is ability.

Adultery is natural; fidelity is the proper artifice.

Monogamy, monotheism, and monarchy lived side by side for centuries, and they've been dying side by side for centuries as well.

Monogamy is reasonable, so long as you are requesting it from the right organ.

To Nature, you are counted among the living so long as you want to fornicate.

A mystified marriage can mean a lifetime of fidelity without an ounce of growth.

On Perspective...

Open-mindedness: The willingness to measure the truth of a matter by one's own falsehoods.

Closed-mindedness: The willingness to forgo the formality of open-mindedness.

When wrong is merely opposite your right, you're wrong.

God is not love! God is mutual identity.

When reason reaches its ontological limits, it gets very unreasonable.

A half truth is never the whole truth, but the whole truth says half as much as a half truth.

The natural child of knowledge is action; self-knowledge, inaction; ignorance, faction.

Repeatedly, the people most eager to win arguments are the people least capable of winning them.

The only forgivable autobiography is the one where the author is absent.

And Some Unsolicited Advice...

Chatter may annoy you, but don't turn your back on the silent types.

Asceticism is the only pure pleasure.

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Where is Your Power?

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

To the dismay of many, the American government-along with its spiritual leaders-is becoming increasingly centralized, with power being removed from individuals at an alarming rate. Why is this happening? Because individuals willingly hand over their power to outside authority figures and institutions. Many spiritual seekers claim they're not after power, yet the truth is that everyone wants to feel empowered. To achieve empowerment, people align themselves with political or spiritual leaders and movements. Ironically, this alignment is actually disempowering, because it places power in the hands of politicians, corporations, and corrupt spiritual leaders.

Although we are all seekers of power, we rarely achieve genuine power through the centralization of our faculties and energies via asceticism and sense-introversion. That's because it is far easier to avoid this inner spiritual challenge by directing energy toward institutions of centralized conservatism (from this wider perspective, even so-called liberal institutions represent conservatism) such as organized religions, patriarchy, institutions of higher learning, governments, health-care paradigms driven by greedy drug companies, the mainstream and alternative media, and spiritual leaders lacking universal knowledge.

READ MORE...

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0005

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Unsolicited advice is one thing that only comes free and unused.

Real art is like the self. You can only measure its consequences.

Starving and artist is a natural pair. It's the fat cat artist that's the abomination.

On Religion...

Exceptionally successful religions are those that require the least exception from their followers for them to feel exceptional.

It takes no talent to don phylacteries.

Rejecting dogma takes some effort, but wholeheartedly embracing it ... now that takes devotion!

It's a limited intellect that needs to reinterpret a Bible passage to justify doing the right thing; a limited heart that interprets to justify wrongdoing.

The Hindus claim there are potentially as many gods as human beings. The problem is there are potentially as many devils too.

Jesus Christ is not a "he," but an "it."

What a preacher buys, the congregation will go out and sell.

Siva is not the god of destruction, but deconstruction.

The preacher's Lord is my shepherd; the preacher shall not want. I shall be eaten.

The good Samaritan did good and was immortalized without ever hearing one Christian fable about good Samaritans.

The truly faithful reject religion.

Odd that so many Jews have not yet figured out that for there to be anti-Semitism, you first need Semitism.

Forget the cancer gene, isolate the authoritarian gene!

The fool's profession of faith: "There is no god but my god."

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Is Abortion Murder?

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Here's a question it's hard to believe we even have to ask in this advanced day and age: Are millions of women, many of whom are wonderful mothers, murderers for having had an abortion?

First, I acknowledge that, being a man, I should have no place in a discussion on abortion. Aside from the fact that I can't get pregnant, it takes neither subtlety of perception nor any virtue on my part to identify with a fetus, especially when the fetus is defined in a way that upholds systems of social power dominated by men. Men's enduring challenge is now, as always, to expansively identify with other human beings, including women-not with clumps of cells living in another's body. But until the subject no longer warrants any discussion, it is necessary for men to speak up.

READ MORE...

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0004

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Measured beings are always seeking the immeasurable to some measure.

Beauty is like a job application. To get it, you have to fill in the blanks.

The available trillions spent to police the world is the original crime considering the absent pennies needed to insure a developed human conscience.

Self-awareness is the only religion to which we are all ineluctably bound.

Why laziness gets such a bad rap is a bewilderment considering all of the infamous human beings who would have lived and died in obscurity had they only been a bit lazier.

Existence requires persistence.

Weapons manufacturers financially benefit from age of consent laws.

To straighten a wire, you always have to twist it.

Some Unsolicited Advise...

There are roads less traveled that lead to perdition, too.

The question you have to ask yourself every morning upon rising is: How much of reality shall I let in today?

Approve more than advise. That's what people want anyway.

The surest way to be anger free is to be angry for those who do not have the luxury.

Your real self does not come out when others aren't watching, but when you aren't.

On Religion...

Leave it to religion to place common manners of fornication as cardinal sins on par with common sense.

Mystify purloined real estate and you get Promised Land.

It is quite the comedy that so few agnostics actually profess their ignorance and so few human beings honestly admit it.

Holy people have no use for holy water.

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Truth

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

When we think of truth, there are so many directions to pursue. There is absolute truth, there are facts, and then there is information artificially made true by a majority.

But there is also a truth that is neither the absolute truth nor the factual truth, and of course, not up to majority vote. I am referring to the naked and painful truths that we cover with a fig leaf identity.

These truths don't reach to an absolute, they aren't limited by facts, and they certainly are not ever popular, yet their consequences are larger than the sum of our urges to fight them. It is this kind of truth most people profess to seek, though approaching it is exceedingly difficult.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0003

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The only two ways to realistic separate church from state is if the tribal state is so small religion can't fit in it, or if the Marxist state is so big religion can't hide in it.

The brain is not only always the nearest church, it is the only church.

Beware of prophets of peace that can only foresee profits of war.

Crime against reason precedes all other crimes.

Time heels all memories.

A religion with diminishing interest in centralizing power proportionally attracts the profits of reason.

Belief and implementation are mutually contradictory.

Identity was made for humans, not humans for identity.

The sun is the source of all good on this earth and the only practical god above it.

Good and evil are identical twins born of an orgy of wanton assumptions.

Nothing in this world fosters fear like religion.

An atheist is a visible being that expects invisible beings to become visible if they would do the work of visible beings.

What gods hath men wrought? Gods that hath women wrung.

Authority is the easy way to forget mortality.

Pure evil would logically have to be as close to God as pure good.

Once God was decided to be infinite, there was really nothing more to be said on the subject.

Ontologically speaking, everyone has the same life story and history.

The only person's forgiveness worth anything is one's own.

Time is the measure of forgetfulness.

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Questioning Authority

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The greatest enemy to progress, which can be defined by the accumulation of knowledge, is centralized authority, embodied in political, religious, and/or economic institutions. As human beings we often take for granted that we need to follow an outside authority for answers to life's questions, not realizing that we all carry the ultimate authority within ourselves. Our tendency to rely on the edicts and decisions of outside authority-both secular and spiritual-is extremely dangerous because it fosters a narrow sense of self that breeds divisiveness and negates intellectual and social freedom. So why do we continue to invest authority in external figures and institutions? What underlies their authority that makes it so compelling, century after century?

Authority, when all is said and done, is but a chimera of the present borrowed from an artificial past. Though it may be projected onto an institution, book, or figure, in fact it is based on individuals willingly giving away their authority to an individual or institution outside themselves. If an individual believes something because a person or book says so, the belief rests on the individual's decision to give authority to such a person or book. Therefore, arguments from authority eventually revolve back to the very individual who is making the argument, proving that he or she is the one who is truly assuming authority-even if professing to give it to someone or something else.

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Sankara's Daily Memes 0002

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:00:00 GMT

On Christianity...

Christian heavenly immortality absolves a Christian's earthly immorality.

The efficacy of silently repeating Hail Mary in the religious head is quite similar to the productiveness of stopping the ears, closing the eyes, and loudly repeating "Na na na, I'm not hearing you" in denial's mind.

Since Christians are exactly taught that a house divided against itself cannot stand, that must be their purpose.

A Christian soldier is an armed anachronism forever marching toward the end of time.

To its credit, the Catholic Church is sticking to its archaic all-or-nothing proposition even though the modern nothing is quite a bit more attractive than the Medieval one.

From the same metal, Mother Teresa and Tom DeLay forged their gods, one to help the poor, the other to strangle them.

The Church's Jesus might as well have said: I am in the way of truth and a life.

Christians are sacrificing their paydays to bring the End Times closer. Yes, indeed, they are spending on payloads like there's no tomorrow.

Christianity is not all that concerned with original sin, but with the sin of originality; and as you'd expect, that is the one and only sin of which it is not hypocritically guilty.

What does it profit a soul if the whole wide world must lose, that it might gain its puny heaven?

An angel in Christian mythology is a being created by God with a body of superstition, wings of vainglorious hope, legs of undeserved intercession, a head of obtuse theology, and the single minded purpose of compounding a Christian's fear of death.

My dog has made fewer errors in its entire life than the "wisest man" made in his best year.

Once the Bible was called infallible without shame, nothing could be called infallible with it.

The devil is not a being, but a perspective, making the devil the drive behind it own personification.

Violence for Enlgihtenment's Sake

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:00:00 GMT

Buddhism, which began in India with the Buddha incorporating the ancient precept of non-violence into his teachings, distorted as it moved into East Asia to a degree that it actually justified violence by wedding itself to the Eastern code of martial arts and the Way of the Warrior. Unethical behavior to the degree of war crimes was seen in the South Pacific during World War II as a direct result of attitudes that flavored Asia's appreciation of Indian Buddhism. Violent perversions of Buddhism are still prevalent in both East and West, and are practically glorified for the supposed freedom from the morality of the rest of the human race they bestow on adherents.

The idea that the Buddha delivered silent teachings was incorporated into Buddhism through Taoist influence; it did not exist in Buddhism before it arrived in China. However, a hagiographical account of the Buddha emerged to give it a legitimate Buddhist basis.

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Is Scientology a Cult?

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0530

Scientology has been in the news a lot lately due to events ranging from Tom Cruise's couch dancing episode, to Comedy Central's last-minute pull of South Park's Scientology spoof, to a recent article in Rolling Stone magazine painting a frightening picture of the inner workings of the organization. What is this mysterious entity, endorsed by many celebrities-a religion, a cult, or something very different?

Founded 1953 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology at first glance seems to walk the line between religion and cult. Scientologists believe that, seventy-five million years ago, a galactic ruler named Xenu deployed H-bombs and murdered billions of drugged alien beings whose souls now inhabit our bodies, necessitating our shelling out thousands of dollars in "auditing" sessions until we are "clear" of those haunting aliens. Sound hard to believe? ...

Sankara's Daily Memes 0001

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0530

On Christianity...

It was more precisely the Church, not Jesus, which was divinized.

Practically speaking, miracle stories are employed as intimidations, not inspirations.

The biggest historical blunder the Bible makes on behalf of Jesus was not that he performed miracles, which might go undocumented though weren't, but that he was famous, which cannot go undocumented but was.

By in large, people only have faith in a thing when they either have every visible evidence to support it or no visible evidence to oppose it.

Otherworldly faith is another word for denial; thence it is hard to get rid of it...

The Battle for Spirituality

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:00:00 +0530

Now that everyone has had a chance to recover from the materialism that the holidays have become, it's a good time to take an objective look at the phenomenon of modern-day Christmas and the divisiveness it has spawned in our culture - a clash that plays itself out on a larger religious battleground. Right-wing religious zealots enjoy stirring up controversy by claiming that there is an annual war on Christmas, and left-wing liberals swear there is no such war. Where does the truth lie? Is there a war on Christmas - or is it a battle over outdated belief systems?

Let's start by examining what Christmas really is...

Knowledge and Power

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:47:24 +0530

Images generated by the word science generally bring to mind such implements as test tubes, microscopes, computers and telescopes. Scientific investigation certainly uses these instruments, but they are the means of science, not its end. To many, science implies technology, or the application of scientific discoveries to influence our lives. But toasters and televisions are merely byproducts of science. Science is knowledge, and the pure scientist engages in science for the love of knowledge...