Final Heart Advice Before Death

TSELE NATSOK RANGDROL
Born 1608 Tibet

FINAL HEART ADVICE JUST BEFORE HE DIED

THE ORAL INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN BY THE GREAT VIDYADHARA OF IMMORTALITY WHEN HIS PHYSICAL BODY WAS ABOUT TO DEPART INTO DHARMADHATU

At all times and in all situations, I bow to and take Refuge in the sublime qualified Master endowed with boundless Compassion who is like a wish-fulfilling Jewel !

To attain the state of unexcelled Enlightenment, upon entering the gate of the precious BuddhaDharma, you must give up concerns for this life !

Your parents , family, friends and other people lead your mind towards the fleeting goals of this life’s activities, and offering all kinds of seemingly affectionate advice. 

Fooling yourself with all this will only result in various hindrances for Dharma practice.

So it is essential not to listen to their words !

Besides a qualified Master you won’t find anyone who can give genuine spiritual advice. If you want to truly practice Dharma you must quickly make preparations for Death. Besides that, someone who entertains many temporary and ultimate plans will not be able to be a Dharma practitioner.

People nowadays may outwardly pretend to try and please everyone but that only proves they are possessed inwardly by Mara.

Place your trust in Dharma and your Master ! 

Take mountain retreats and un-peopled valleys as your dwelling place ! 

Give up clinging to the short lived pleasures of food, clothes and the like ! 

Cut your ties to close family members ! 

Cast away all hypocritical flattery and manipulation ! 

Focus one-pointedly on whatever your Master says ! 

By doing so your Dharma practice will be pure.

In general, people nowadays fall under Mara’s reign. In particular, fickle and indolent women don’t follow the advice of their teachers and instead take guidance from their family. By doing so they postpone doing what they definitely should be doing now: studying and training in Dharma practice. 

They seem to be primarily caught up in pointless worldly activities, kowtowing to family and friends, and the like. 

Therefore take hold of the “rope to your nose” and don’t listen to others !

Sincerely take to heart the fact that the time of Death lies uncertain. Then knowing that there is not time to waste, diligently apply yourself to spiritual practice !

Your parent’s kindness can only be repaid through Dharma practice, there is no benefit in repaying them in with mundane attainments. Your teacher’s kindness can only be repaid by practicing meditation, nothing else will do.

You can only benefit sentient beings through the Bodhichitta resolve and by making aspirations; comparatively any other immediate action is of little benefit.

As for your vows and samayas, unless you take your own conscience as witness, you will only become a hypocrite even though you may maintain a superficially virtuous morality and exterior.

Remain in secluded valleys and mountain retreats, because any spiritual practice done among the masses will only get you caught up in one situation after another. If you fail to take control of your own mind, even though you may make many promises and take many vows, they will result in hardly any benefit at all.

Unless you realize the key point of Natural Awareness ~~~ that knowing one thing liberates all ~~~ you won’t find any certainty in pursuing endless seemingly “important” information.

To summarize all vital points: with the thought “I will surely die !” hasten your plans to practice the Dharma ! 

Since a Master is your only hope, supplicate him/her from your Heart ! 

Since all pleasure and pain, whatever befalls you, is a repayment from the past, don’t entertain many plans ! 

Treat good, evil and impartial people as being above you and always take the lowest seat !

Train in impartial pure perception and do not belittle others ! 

Acknowledge your own faults and don’t meditate on others’ shortcomings ! 

Since the vital point of all the Teachings lies in your own mind, always scrutinize its nature !

Cast away the fixation of rigidly meditating upon a reference point and instead release your awareness into carefree openness ! 

Decide that whatever you experience is the playful expression of Awareness; don’t try to improve good or correct evil !

All experience is your own Mind and this Mind, free from arising and ceasing, is the identity of the Trikaya Guru. This Guru is indivisible from your Natural Awareness. Its cognizant Radiance encompasses all that appears and exists.

Since all of appearance and existence is the magical display of this single expanse of Awareness, the “ultimate view” is to see your Mind in utterly naked naturalness. 

“Meditation training” is to remain in this continuously. 

“Ensuing  cognition” is when a thought is projected. 

“Post-meditation” (Ensuing attainment) is to recognize that projection. “Conduct” is to mingle walking, sitting and all other activities with the state of awareness.

The indivisibility of meditation and post-meditation is to be continuously free from even a second of distraction or confusion, uninterrupted by gaps of stillness or thought occurrence. When perfected it is the indivisibility of appearance and Mind, of self and others, of pleasure and pain, enmity and friendship, and of love and hate. In short, “Fruition” is to have perpetually exhausted all kinds of duality fixating concepts.

When this has happened, samsara and nirvana are purified into the space of Dharmadhatu and you have realized the spontaneously present three Kayas. This is called “attaining Buddha-hood”, the “exhaustion of phenomena and concepts” or “becoming a Siddha”. 

This is the time of gaining mastery over Birth and Death and the physical elements, and when effortless Compassion and activity spontaneously occur throughout the entire universe.

In brief, the basic cause of everything is nothing but your Present Natural Awareness. Therefore, the sublime Key Point is too continuously maintain your Natural Awareness throughout both day and night without any separation.

As for all the thoughts that do occur as the expression of this Natural Awareness, be they gross or subtle, don’t analyze them and don’t follow them either. Don’t try to bring them back into your meditation or obstruct them. If you succeed in simply recognizing the sudden occurrence of a thought, then let it be in just that.

When it happens that you do get involved in thoughts that recollect the past or entertain the future, then let be directly in Awareness. If a thought pattern continues, there is no need for a separate antidote since whatever takes place is liberated by itself. What occurs spontaneously is the Radiance of your own Mind. To See it with Vivid Clarity is the Essential Instruction ! 

It is your mind’s natural disposition to spontaneously reflect. Consequently, spend your life within this state of carefree and pervasive openness, of undistracted nonmeditation, of knowing – One Thing that Liberates All – in which all that appears and exists is Dharmakaya, Samsara and Nirvana are indivisible, and arising and liberation are simultaneous. 

If you spend your entire life in spiritual activities within this kind of state, in which the thinker and the object of thought are an undivided Unity, 
there is not a single doubt that you will capture the “Stronghold of Non-regression” in this very life !

Wherever the person stays who has abandoned all activities,
that very place is the Buddhafield.

If you can supplicate without duplicity, all that appears and exists is then the Guru’s Mandala.

As soon as you cut the root of the Demon Ego-Clinging,
you are permanently free from obstacle, misfortunes and Mara.

The moment you understand that the Guru is indivisible from you own Mind, the falsehood of seeming meeting and separation spontaneously collapses.

Once you resolve that Samsara and Nirvana are the display of Awareness, who is there to experience the pain of any lower realm?

When realizing that your Natural Awareness is the primordially free Dharmakaya, what is the point of entertaining hopes and fears about the paths and bhumis?

In the meeting of the already acquainted Mother and Child Luminosities, what is the use of fearing the collapse of the illusory body?

When dying, die within the primordially pure space of Luminosity !

While alive, there is nothing more important than training in meditation with unflagging constancy !

You may compare all the sutras, tantras and oral instructions, but the essence of Realization is nothing other than this !

The ultimate and essential heart advice is precisely this !

And my last words at Death are also none other than this !

All worthy ones who are devoted to me, don’t pay lip-service to this,
but assimilate its meaning !

The experience of Original Wakefulness will then dawn from within your hearts, and you will arrive at Buddhahood in a single instant !

By whatever merit which might arise from this advice, may all my old
mothers, sentient beings filling all of space, be Liberated !

Mangalam.

Translated by Erik Pema Kunsang

Copyrights: Rangjung Yeshe Institute,

Ka-Nying Shedrup Ling Monastery

Boudhanath, Nepal P.O. Box 1200, Kathmandi, Nepal

THE WHEEL OF SHARP WEAPONS

YAMANTAKA is the wrathful aspect of Manjusri, the emanation of the wisdom of the BUDDHAS. YAMANTAKA wrath is directed against selfishness, self-cherishing attitudes, ego grasping and the grasping for true independent existence. These ignorant attitudes rob us of our chance to gain Enlightenment, and thus YAMANTAKA wrath is opposed to the Great Lord of Death.

THE WHEEL OF SHARP WEAPONS (Originally published on Axis of Logic on 4/11/04)
By Zdzislaw Zmijewski
Sep 1, 2004, 11:59

Editor's Note: We post this reprint of Zdzislaw Zmijewski's The Wheel of Sharp Weapons because of it's penetrating and clarifying relevance to the rapidly developing events we are facing around the world. - Les Blough, Editor

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Perhaps we can assimilate and distill some meaning that could be relevant in understanding the course of events today, by adapting imagery and symbolism from Dharmarakshita’s The Wheel of Sharp Weapons. This is not a polemic against any group or policy. This will not flesh out details of the problems that beset us. It is merely an attempt by one to find out why the cries of children and supplications of the powerless must be so futile. Why those that have so much must take it all. Why the yawning abyss yearns to kill all life and love. If perchance we can find out why – just maybe "the wounded gloom complaining against the light" may yet smile.

In the fearsome jungles of Indonesia 1000 years ago, there lived the sage and adept Dharmaraksita. He was one, to whom disciples flocked from the far regions of Asia. Why? He taught a way of mind training that worked to dispel suffering and confusion. This way of mind training still flourishes today. His most illustrious student was Atisha from India. Atisha took on the lonely mission late in his life, to revitalize Tibetan spiritual culture, which at that time was seriously disintegrating and corrupted. His mission was supremely fruitful and a determinative cause for Tibet’s great resurgence until the destruction by China in 1959.

He wrote of Dharmarakshita: "By showing me these supreme nectar-like teachings, he has granted me sovereignty over the mind."

"These teachings" he is referring to is The Wheel of Sharp Weapons. This text is dramatic, poetic and powerful and quite unlike any other mind training text ever composed.

There is transparency through time and space, which offers no resistance or obstructions to universality & truth. If The Wheel of Sharp Weapons was genuinely valid for as great a being as Atisha – then it should be for us as well. The only obscurations in the way arise from our own aversions to clear pondering.

Let us first sip a few drops of this nectar. Below are three of the 120 stanzas:

(12)
When hunger or violent thirst overwhelms us,
This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning
Full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.
Until now, we have kept what we had without sharing;
We have plundered, stolen, and lured people on.
Hereafter let us relieve them from hunger and thirst.

(25)
When those who are close turn against us as enemies,
This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning
Full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.
Until now, we have held grudges inside us with anger,
With thoughts of sly methods to cause others pain;
Hereafter let us try to have less affectation,
Not pretend to be kind while we harbour base aims.

(39)
When attachment and anger disturb and upset us
No matter how much we may try to suppress them,
This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning
Full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.
Until now, we have held on to the improper outlook:
Stubbornly cherishing only ourselves,
Hereafter let us uproot self-interest completely.

In the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, there is cognition of the principle of action and reaction or cause and effect. Action cannot happen in a vacuum or in some willy-nilly reality debased of any common sense, cyclic rhythms or scientific basis. In the Eastern traditions, they know it as karma. Western cultures have appropriated the word/concept of karma in the last century. No need to elaborate. Anyone reading this page knows what karma means. The master of Galilee has succinctly asserted, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." He pronounced a simple precept with very extraordinary repercussions! The Golden Rule exhorted in virtually all the timeless ethical teachings that have sustained viable world cultures, derives its power from the same cognition. Dharmarakshita is on firm ground. The principle, some would say law, is a cornerstone of the mind training he offers.

Another principle reality, inextricably related to the above, is interdependent origination. Many Eastern esoteric philosophic treatises dating back more than 2500 years ago, investigate interdependent origination with deep and subtle analysis. We are not interested in that discourse here. However, interdependent origination exerts profoundly resonant meaning for the discussion at hand and the existential foundation that supports The Wheel of Sharp Weapons.

A simple examination of an ordinary event can illustrate it best. Let us observe the Jones family going to Disney World in Florida. They are entering the gate and papa Jones is paying the tab while their children smile with bated breath. Let us freeze-frame that for a moment to observe the law of interdependent origination in action. The parents decided to go to Disney World for the day, enthused by the hankerings of their children. Is this the primal cause and condition of the event – the originating factor? Some would say – it is. They wanted to go and they went. How did Disney World appear in the first place? That is another primal cause and condition. Walt Disney had many dreams – but it took the labors and talents of tens of thousands of individuals to get it through all the phases of planning and construction, not mention the thousands of employees that keep it running every day.

The land upon which Disney World exists is stable thanks to the infinite equilibrium of the sun, earth, atmosphere and oceans just to mention four of inconceivable zillions of geophysical realities. We must consider the Boeing 767 that took them from Boston as a major cause and condition for the event to happen. Did the 767 just appear at the gate from the void for their safe passage to Florida? Is it in the realm of human calculation to find all the causes and conditions that built the tangible materialization of just that one Boeing 767? Not the least of these would be Adolph Hitler. What?! The Second World War rammed the productions of military technology and specifically airplanes with a ferocity/frenzy that was utterly unthinkable otherwise – thus propelling us into the jet age. Had Bob Jones not gone to the High School Prom where he met his wife Sally – how could this event originate? At the prom, Sally’s unconscious olfactory enjoyment of Bob’s pheromones emanating from his excited nervous sweat, over rode her dislike of his red hair and the rest was history. A seemingly whimsical cause and condition without which their three children could never had incarnated to be present for this so ordinary event.

Ok –ok, we give up!

Indeed - everything and everyone is interdependent!

Upon examining even the most mundane event, we have to arrive at the realization of the incomprehensible interdependency of all phenomena and events in this world. The slightest event is impossible without a universe of galactic majesty in full support of its occurring! How we miss the magic of every moment is one of the tragic consequences of viewing things as being really self-existent and independent. There are other more tragic consequences – not in the purview of our focus here – though addressed in The Wheel of Sharp Weapons and a fitting subject for a separate disquisition.

Everywhere one looks there is sustenance – just in the viewable realms. Can we dismiss the invisible electro-magnetic spectrums as not party to observable relative reality?

Hardly not. Where the dependency is lacking there is the unknowable non-origination. If in the origins of events of ordinariness there must be infinite interdependent causes and conditions constantly at work, what are we to think about the historical swells that sweep millions of people and whole countries in their wakes? At such times, there must be crucial causes and conditions that effect so many - so widely into maelstroms that overwhelm millions of individual karmas into collective epochal events.

AMERICA APRIL 2004 SUNDRY VIEWS

228 years after the founding of America as a true Republic – crisis and disaster inexorably avalanches with chastening fury and finality over the country …

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

The NEW OXFORD Dictionary of ENGLISH:

REPUBLIC

- a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.

No clear-minded and intelligent person can truly say that the United States of America today is a nation in which the supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives.

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PLUTOCRACY

- government by the wealthy.

…a state or society governed in this way.

…ELITE or ruling class whose power derives from their wealth.

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OLIGARCHY

- a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution

…a state governed by such a group

…government by such a group.

In the year 2004 the United States of America is ruled and totally controlled by Plutocrats and Oligarchs. Today America is neither a Republic nor Democracy. America is a PLUTOCRACY. It is time to call a spade a spade!

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The Three Branches of the Federal Government

The Presidency of the United States is the Executive Head of the Republic - an Office that serves the people and embodies the deepest yearnings and aspirations of all past generations since 1776 and all the future generations. In the Oval Office of the White House, sits a man who besmirches the Presidency at every moment. Criminal Elites installed this man. Now - they can freely go about to destroy the frail remnants of the Republic, rape the Treasury and build Empire in satiating their lust for Power of World Conquest. To abuse in every way the Power of the Presidency of the Republic is treason of the most blatant and serious kind. Are the people offended and ready to throw out this scum to restore true dignity and purpose to their Office? No. Instead, we see flag waving and obsequious rallies embracing their depraver. How could it get this far?

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

The Congress of the United States is supposed to make and preserve Laws for the betterment of their constituents and all Americans. In the year 2004, the majority of Congress is high-jacked by ultra-radicals, working like busy bees for the Oligarchs/Elites - the Military/Industrial Complex - and every kind of Corporate Interest that will throw them a few crumbs. Corruption is normal – integrity is abnormal. They are poltroons and prostitutes selling out the Constitution and the People at every turn. The minority party is subservient and spineless. When a genuine server of the people and Democratic Ideals appears in the Congress – they are shunted aside and despised. Sometimes they die in mysterious accidents like what happened to Paul Wellstone and his family. At the time of his convenient death, Wellstone’s one vote differentiated between sanity and insanity. Insanity won. How could it get this far?

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

The Supreme Court of the United States has the vital role of safeguarding the Constitution and the Republic, especially if the other two branches backslide into the swamp that wallows at the base of collective Humanity. We have seen in every country and in every century of recorded history the same old, same old story of Elites’ degenerate behavior and scalding abuse over the people. This is what happens when self-centered selfish concern controls the levers of power. It is an immutable and ever-repeating law of human nature & governance.

The Judges sitting on the Bench of The Supreme Court positioned onto the Presidency, against the will of the people and the Constitution, a junta of treacherous vipers. Jurisprudence is shredded. The Scales of Justice have toppled. How could it get this far?

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

The American Social and Economic State

Around 100 years ago, the Elites made it their business to change education for America’s children. The educational system had to eradicate History and replace it with Social Studies. Why? - to inculcate children to be dutiful workers and thoughtless cogs in the Corporate State. The Gross National Product is the glory of the Nation. America is Red, White & Blue – the Might and Right of the world. The Republic is in safe hands with the Elites and their minions – do not worry about exercising your rights as citizens – things will happen on their own - was the message imprinted on their brains. It was dangerous for the children to think too much or too well or to think they can cause any change. Now weeds grow amuck strangling the trunk of the Republic. Sterile fruits rot from the bad seeds planted so deep. How could it get this far?

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

The press – journalism - media are the Sovereign Estate of the Elites – no longer is it the Fourth Estate. Herd mentality quivers under the direction of the Plutocracy. Fawning unctuous drivel and bald propaganda floods and consumes the attention of the mesmerized disoriented public. Jingo and vulgarity rules TV. Shallow cesspools of Newspeak smother intelligent discourse and dissent to the point of madness. True art and culture, ennobling to the Soul & Society, is orphaned to the forsaken fringes. How could it get this far?

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

Let us look at the American national Treasure and the Economy - the true Domain of the Elites. In the last century – Corporations won Personhood under a very suspicious ruling from the Supreme Court and became the Law of the Land. The Leviathan was born. Here we can see one action – one interdependent cause and condition giving power to the Elites for the origination of stupendous problems for the people. No longer did we have a fair playing field. The deck was stacked and the Leviathan is holding all the Aces. Self-aggrandizement and profit is the life of Corporatism. Today, 60% of corporations do not pay taxes at all. They are independent of the matrix of America it seems. Their profits they reap in a vacuum without interdependence they infer. The obverse Elite assumption would be that America’s wealth, sweat, talent, environment and resources is their oyster bed spilling pearls that only they deserve. The disparity and unbalance between rich and poor is obscene.

Over the $500 champagne lunch – we can lean over a bit and eavesdrop…

"Let the little peons pay the taxes! Damn! You know, it ain’t easy maintaining our estates and paying them lawyers to make sure our kids get everything we got. Our Bro’s at Wal-Mart – man are they sharp! To hell with labor unions and minimum wages. Family benefits? What is that? He-heh-he! Teach ‘em how to get food stamps – the stupid beggars.
"How does it affect OUR bottom line? – that is all that matters. They give us too much shit – operations go to China or India…after all, we have the White House and Congress in our pockets! He-heh-he! The Neo-cons and Pentagon, oh what darlings! What a racket we got! We make fortunes stuffing petty change into them groveling Congressman’s pockets’, they sign on to all our weapons and useless Stars Wars junk, dole out the contracts to every state so no one bitches - what a cash cow! $400 billion budgets per annum - the skies the limit! He-heh-he! We’re in heaven! Just wave the flag and scream TERRORISM! now that the Commies are out of the picture…he-heh-he! Then our weapons and break contact devices destroy the dirty poor brown-skinned throwback countries and we get more buckaroos for rebuilding and security for the Empire! You know pal – it’s a damn good life!"

"Sure is buddy – but you forgot to mention oil". How could it get this far?

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

"Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." - James 1:27

"Unspotted" should mean to raise the consciousness from the milieu of collective conventionalism to gain birth to a new and vibrant consciousness. Not to walk the beaten path. It does not mean intolerance, bigotry, and sanctimonious unconscious projections against the other. False preachers and Dominionist pedagogues rave patriarchal platitudinous crap adapted from white bearded firebrands that roamed the scorched deserts of the Middle East thousands of years ago. Scarecrows and effigies are the clubs and whips of their trades. Born again! The rapture! Armageddon! We will cleanse the world of evil! Pat Robertson has amassed an army of naive but dangerous missionaries to take over the government and society. The Elites have found their Paul the Apostle. He is not alone.

How could it get this far?

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

American foreign and military policies exist for and serve the agenda of the Elites. There is little "National Security "at stake from foreign attacks. The wars of the 20th century were feasts for the warmongers and weapons manufacturers. The unimaginable suffering and blood letting of millions upon millions gives the Elites opportunity to create more wealth and consolidate power. The more blood, deprivation and depredation their great machines of death can havoc – the better. Viet Nam’s lessons cast aside! Iraq is now the newest playground with cannon-fodder suckers abounding. It does not matter to the Elites what the outcome is. It surely is not about the sanctimonious slogans for freedom and democracy. Chaos and anarchy will serve quite well – thank you Mam. The CIA is the Devil’s Den of America. Its secret lairs and "black ops" are now the tool shops for the Elites. Since Nazis were invited to serve as operatives in the CIA during the genesis period of the 1940s, the infection has spread. There is no hope as long as the CIA exists. How could it get this far?

…this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.

CRISIS

- a time of intense difficulty or danger

…a time when a difficult or important decision must be made the turning point of a disease when an important change takes place, indicating either Recovery or Death.

Recovery or Death. This is the time in the history of the Nation THAT decision will be made. There are cyclic rhythms, as is day and night, far greater than we know. When the turning point arrives, avoidance is not an option! The sin of Omission is as deadly as the sin of Commission. THE WHEEL OF SHARP WEAPONS is thundering! The Wheel is Spinning Furiously now with Retribution and Justice. Every drop of blood – every cry of innocence destroyed brings ferocious might to the Wheel of Sharp Weapons returning full circle upon us from the wrongs we have done! How we can linger asleep in our apathy – the souls of billions scream out!

Dharmarakshita wrote in his text:

As it's true what I have said about self-centered interest,
I recognize the enemy clearly now.
I recognize clearly the bandit who plunders,
The liar who lures by pretending he is part of me.

The only enemy is within us

The subtitle of:

The Wheel of Sharp Weapons Effectively Striking the Heart of the Foe.

The Universe we live in is violent beyond comprehension. At every moment suns and galaxies are exploding and colliding in nuclear embraces of death. Dharmarakshita’s mind training realizes this reality. Wrath and Butchery become servants to Compassion and Enlightenment.

The true nectar of the teaching and our way out of this mess is contained in the invocation Dharmarakshita entreats for salvation and deliverance from individual and collective doom:

Trample him, trample him, dance on the head
Of this treacherous concept of selfish concern!
Tear out the heart of this self-centered butcher
Who slaughters our chance to gain final Liberation!

WHERE DWELLS THE ENEMY ?

Where Dwells the Enemy?
By Zdzislaw Zmijewski

First published www.axisoflogic.com
Sep 20, 2005, 22:23

"As democracy in Iraq takes root, the enemies of freedom, the terrorists, will become more desperate, more despicable, and more vicious ...

"We can expect such atrocities to increase in the coming months because the enemy knows that its greatest defeat lies in the expression of free people in freely enacted laws and at the ballot box."

- G.W. Bush Aug 28, 2005

Mr. Bush without respite invokes the "Enemy" to further the programs of his true constituencies. Let us search for the enemy that he grandiloquently mongers before our unconscious and acquiescently negligent minds. There must now be an earnest attempt at clarity and understanding by most human beings, because we all stand at the edge of the collapsing precipice overlooking a pit that is without bottom, terrible and terminal. Only when we answer these questions can we wisely and accurately discriminate about the true distinguishable nature of "who is the enemy?"

These questions must be answered before we all go marching meekly - pulled like white buffalos with ropes and rings in our noses - to the doom concocted by the authentic enemies in our midst.

"Enemy" and "Inimical" both stem from the same Latin root word; inimicus. Inimical is the adjective form of enemy, meaning unfriendly, hostile and obstructive. Enemy (pl. ies) are persons, forces, groups, nations or things that deliver harm and destruction to someone or something by acts of commission or (we must not forget) omission. Next, in the context of current world events, it must be precisely understood what forces and groups are the main antagonists - against what do they fight and what motivates this vicious, vibrant and seemingly infinite lust for death and destruction. Only then, with an awakened, compassionate and adamantine consciousness, can we begin to disarm and eradicate the long entrenched, habitual lunacy ruling over nations and Western Civilization. This discernment - with actions - must happen now!

The true enemies are emboldened and empowered - even daily - by our numb unconsciousness, unbearable stupidity and silence.The nexus of the present ultimate crisis - unavoidable and overwhelmingly stark - demands no less than choosing either - Death by valorous sacrifice - or - Death by craven surrender.

The choices are Death of self-centeredness, fear and if need be, body and breath in service for all Mankind or - Death as slavering bovine prey for the slaughterhouses of cruel and contemptuous Empiremasters.

Why such a devastating decision? Tragically, at every turn in the road, the United States as a nation is going the wrong way. It's too late for reforms now, it is past the point of rectifications. The avalanche has long ago begun its terrible descent and we must endure the irrevocable retributions for the spilt blood and agonies of countless innocents and justice betrayed. 9/11, Endless Wars and Katrina are just the foretastes for what is impending.Is this why Bush I and Bush II have incarnated to hold the reins: to ensure that the terrors so long dished out, return to us for the wrongs we have done?

At present, all the drivers and conductors are maniacs. The abyss beckons. Ferocious intensity of intentionality has hijacked the world and we are all trundling towards disaster in a maelstrom of nihilistic chaos. When rare leaders appear - Martin Luther King and valiant independents like Paul Wellstone - the Shadow strikes!

Where dwells the enemy?

The significant seed-causes, for the contemporary disintegration of millenniums of progress, lie deep in centuries past - this cannot be addressed now. However, the culmination is upon the world.

It is administrated by ruling elites who have foisted their puppets to preside over the Grand Finale of wiping out most of Humanity and appropriating the remainders and the jewel planet as their new Babylon "Gate of God", enforced by the Pentagon's "Joint Vision 2020", the blueprint the United States Department of Defense.

One snippet:

"The label full spectrum dominance implies that US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained, and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations, and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information. Additionally, given the global nature of our interests and obligations, the United States must maintain its overseas presence forces and the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance."

"Vision 2020" has just been updated in recent days with the insistence that the State has the right under the puissant guidance and wisdom of the Commander in Chief G.W. Bush, to inflict a nuclear pre-emptive attack against any enemy groups or countries - even on the suspicion of malevolent intentions that he deems to be a threat to the "Homeland".

In more than 300 American Universities and thousands of corporate factories and labs, hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars are expended by millions of scholars, intellectuals and the most educated and trained America professors and professionals for one sole mission - satisfying the Pentagon and the weapons merchants' insatiable lust for profits. The statistics are mind-boggling. The same story occurred before the Two World Wars. What happened then as the natural consequence of that will definitely happen again very soon…there is no hope for disarmament now. War is obsolete…but only after the final lesson - the survivors will know. Tragically, Mankind must tread the way of Via Negativa.

The PNAC: Project for the New American Century is the primary intellectual foundation and inspiration for the Empire of "Lily Pads". The authors (who now run things) openly pined for another Pearl Harbor, which then serendipitously happened on 9.11. Within a few hours/days of the attacks, an orgy of pre-prepared plans, Patriot Acts, Carte Blanche resolutions and military mobilizations were executed. The orchestration was breathtakingly vehement. The 9/11 production, being the greatest spectacle beyond even Cecile B. DeMille's wildest visions, stunned Americans into stupefaction. What Satanic zeal, genius and ruthlessness displayed itself to the world! Frankenstein's coming-out party for all to see.

Where dwells the enemy?

Exquisite as well as utterly buffoonish ironies abound every time Bush spouts forth: "we", "terror", "evil", "homeland", "they", "safe", "freedom" "democracy", "enemy" and a host of hackneyed cants. Watching the propaganda machine promulgating his speeches to groveling elites and nescient, distracted Americans, is a sickening and disorienting experience for persons who are half-conscious of what is really happening.The Bush/Rove speechwriters display a hubris-drenched pomposity and condescending, hate-spiked simplicity that along with Goebbels' bilious genius will long fascinate future historians.

Since 9/11, the terms "Ground Zero" and "Homeland Security" have been slipped into the American lexicon and taken on sinister connotations: Amy Kaplan, Homeland Insecurities: Reflections on Language and Space Radical History Review 85: pg. 82-93 "Freedom" as belched forth from the maws of the Bush puppets is true slavery, the dingy gouache smeared across the Big Lie blinds. Their liberty is libertinism. Their freedom: the unbridled Capitalism perniciously plundering the planet and its people.

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"I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects itself too much to be the slave of the many or the few."

- William Ellery Channing

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"Evil", the shadowy reality that forever haunts the Human condition has always existed and always will. It cannot be defeated anymore than the night can be extinguished. Only the acceptance and vigilant awareness of our own evil and shadow will dispel the destructive projections and merciless murders against "they and "other". The vigil light of compassionate awareness dissolves the eruptive violence of the suppressed and long denied Shadow. Carl Jung said many times that if we can emit a bit of light on our own darkness, it would remove some of the larger darkness from the world.

Contrast the two quotations below from speeches given before the UN just days ago:

"No cause, no movement and no grievance can justify the intentional killing of innocent civilians and noncombatants," Condoleezza Rice said. "This is unacceptable by any moral standard." This said, while Americans bombs have done nothing other than kill millions of civilians and non-combatants for the last 60+ years, even to this hour in Iraq and Afghanistan.

- and -

"It is unpractical and unethical to sacrifice the human race by appealing in an insane manner the validity of a socioeconomic model that has a galloping destructive capacity. It would be suicidal to spread it and impose it as an infallible remedy for the evils which are caused precisely by them" President Hugo Chavez said. "Now is the time to not allow our hands to be idle or our souls to rest until we save humanity." This said, while Bush America has done nothing but try to kill and destroy Chavez and his revolutionary reforms.

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"…hypocrisy is the vice of vices in that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

- Hanna Arendt

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Where dwells the enemy?

"Terrorism" is a tactic, not an enemy to be vanquished by War. War itself is the debauched revelry of terror. To destroy terrorism with terrorism is an oxymoronic paradox. It is beyond belief that millions of intellectuals and academic scholars and their like have bought the sham…rather… they have sold out for 30 pieces of silver.

Virtually all the major terror attacks are State initiated, sponsored, fabricated and for the benefit of the War Machines - especially 9/11.

As "Operation Gladio", demonstrated, State sponsored terrorism is a tried and true technique to instill fear and corral the masses into submission.

"Almost three-quarters of the (British) public believe that it is right to give up civil liberties to improve our security against terrorist attacks" as reported by the Guardian on Aug 22, 2005.

This poll of course followed the 7/7 contrived bombings in London. It works every time. How incredibly piteous it is. The mass medias are now the mass herders for the Plut-Oligarchs.

Where dwells the enemy?

The United States has morphed into the purest form of Fascism the world has yet to suffer, its delineations now so plain as to be parodic were it not so grave. Totalitarianism is being carefully crafted by thousands of Executive Orders, Congressional Resolutions, and Judicial Decisions.

The Padilla Case is just one of the latest thrusts of the stake into the Heart of the Republic. J. Michael Luttig, is the Judge who wrote the decision-making opinion that gives the Imperial President untrammeled power to desecrate all that Humanity struggled for centuries to gain. This of course parallels satin-tongued and wily John Roberts's elevation to the Chief Justice - for his years of sycophantic loyalty and recent assenting vote in the Hamdan ruling also granting Bush dictatorial powers. These appointments assure the continued de-structuring of the last vestiges of the founding fathers' ideals, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It also amounts to a nod and a wink to the rest of the Establishment to play ball.

As for the Congress? Walter Karp more than 30 years ago wrote, Indispensable Enemies, The Politics of Misrule in America, which revealed the collusion of the two party party system in America. Now, that collusion has resulted in debasing Congress to the level of doormats for the Elites and their puppets. They lick the gold dust off the heels of corporate lobbyists while sacrificing the common good. Exoterically, they have betrayed representing the people. Esoterically, they precisely represent the American people. Such is really the case.

Where dwells the enemy?

Regarding the CIA - two quotations are emblematic of the countless volumes documenting the brutal truth:

"I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun," White wrote. "Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the all-highest?"

- Captain George Hunter White, an OSS/CIA agent
in a letter to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (OSS was the
forerunner ofthe CIA until thechange in 1947)

In 1947, President Truman created the CIA out of the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He set it up because he:

"... needed at that time a central organization that would bring all the various intelligence reports we were getting in those days...so that the President would get one report on what was going on in various parts of the world. But it got out of hand.

"Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don't just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there's nobody to keep track of what they're up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they'll have something to report on. They've become....it's become a government all of its own and all secret. They don't have to account to anybody."

Harry S. Truman's Oral Biography, Merle Miller's 1973 book Plain Speaking:

"The DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the DCI serves at the pleasure of the President."

At whose pleasure does the President serve?

Ratlines, in espionage jargon, are networks of agents who smuggle fugitives or undercover operatives in and out of hostile foreign territories. From the Nazi ratlines in the 1940s - when The Dulles brothers and "Wild Bill" Donovan smuggled thousands of Nazi SS officers known as the Gehlen Organization into the OSS/CIA - until today 32 years after Truman's woeful comments, the covert CIA has caused the deaths of millions of civilians while it also thrashed about thirty (publicly known) democratic countries. Extreme right wing Fascists and Nazi seed men from Germany as well as US citizens including Richard Nixon's mentor and Bush patriarch, Prescott Bush, poisoned America with noxious roots whose tendrils are now strangling the world.

Who really won the Second World War is a question worth pondering.

Black budgets amounting to more than forty billion annually are kept secret even from Congress - this with the full and continuous consent of Americans and their tax dollars. Thousands of billions of taxpayer dollars have been feeding the CIA Underworld since 1947 alone. This does not include trillions more of illicit dollars off the books.

Meanwhile, for lack of just a meager fraction of these sums, billions live/ed indigently and die/d in misery. Each one a sentient human being, wanting only happiness and freedom from extreme suffering. The precious children - dazed, bludgeoned, traumatized, incognizant and vulnerable…their smiles and luminous eyes frozen, slain and transformed into appalled and wounded glooms of despair - unto early death they are released.

Where dwells the enemy?

Is there hope for transformation and reform? It cannot be as circumstances stand. Only total purging and deracination - only mass cooperative protests storming and over-running Washington and Langley, Virginia - only complete refusal to pay taxes to the biggest group of thugs and racketeers in world history - only total boycotts of the criminal corporations and the stripping of corporate personhood, only full exposure and jailing of the media whores ... [it will seem to most] that these essential actions and more are not likely to happen. Nevertheless, look at Venezuela. It takes only one person ready to die for the people to change everything!

"The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decisions, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now".

- Goethe

By the force of blades and barrels of fire, the Elites rose to the top, lording over, abusing and exploiting the people. Tears and toil, blood and bones were and are their feasts and fat. The systems they instituted more than 2000 years ago, rot and stink like the waters of New Orleans. Truly, they are the overlaying scum of the Earth. Their citadels to self are crumbling. The veneer of civilization is peeling fast. With gratitude and faith, the realization that the Bush Junta is now accelerating the demise of that which must die, can we accept the bitter truth - Bush is the face of the real enemy - which is not separate from us.

Once some years ago, I stayed alone in a houseboat on Dal Lake in Kashmir. Few places are as ethereally beautiful as there. While I was gliding in gondolas on the mist and sun dappled lake, relaxed and beguiled by seas of pink Lotus blossoms a foot across or wider, religious pilgrims were being slaughtered in groups of up to thirty. The slayings happened almost daily just several miles away.

Unlike scum blocking the sunlight and poisoning the waters, Lotus seeds take root in the sludge and mud, raise their stems straight towards the sun and stand high above the surface glorifying purity and beauty. All life below and around thrives and flourishes and humans can only be awed in their midst. I ruminated on the dichotomy and meaning. If only we could emulate the Lotus and be seed men and women in service to life.