WHY DO BUDDHIST MONKS CHANT?

We just had the monks’ house-blessing ceremony for our new house. It raised many questions.

monks chanting at our house-warming

It was positively medieval and other-worldly. Of course, that’s the point: to perpetuate the continuity of traditions that date back at least a thousand years. Also, religious ceremonies in general are designed to transport people from the day-to-day profane world into the sacred universe beyond our sensory physical world.

Some of the ritual acts can be interpreted in the same way that they are in almost all religions. For example, the monks sprayed us with holy water. Obviously, this is a purification rite. They also showered us with flower petals. I suppose this relates to the abundance of life, fertility, etc.

Many religious ceremonies mark ‘rites of passage’ which are breaks in day-to-day time to mark certain spiritual mileposts – marriage, births, death, etc. Moving into a new house is a similar rite.

Most religious ceremonies are similar, and follow the prescriptions outlined above. Buddhism, however, has some odd quirks, because Buddhists don’t pray to gods.

Buddhist ceremonies are known for their chanting, maybe half in the ancient Pali language, and half in the local Khmer language, so that most people don’t really know what the monks are talking about. In Christianity and other religions with gods, chanting asks the gods to ‘bless’ (whatever that means) the house and its occupants. This can’t be the case with Buddhist monks, who don’t worship gods as such, nor can it be a petition to the Buddha, who was not divine.

Rather, it would seem that the chants are themselves magic words that somehow affect the house and the residents. Many religions believe in the magic power of words. Burning the Quran is blasphemy, not because it burns some paper books, but because it destroys the sacred written words therein.

But why, then, couldn’t the householders chant their own magic words? Who needs the monks?

Recall that, during the Middle Ages in Europe, the priests prayed on behalf of the commoners in Latin, which the commoners could not understand. In most religions, the priests are the go-between between the gods and the people. Through their rigorous training, the priests learn to communicate with the godhead, and to transmit messages in both directions between the gods and the people.

Buddhist monks appear to fulfill a similar role, but there are no gods to communicate with. Rather, the monks have access to the spiritual world outside our physical world. The words of their chants reflect ‘meaning’ in the spirit world, which is an intermediate communication between the spirit world and the people, who themselves are unable to access the spirit world.

When I was in university, I had to read Mircea Eliade’s ground-breaking book, The Sacred and the Profane. Eliade argues that religion is based on a sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane. According to Eliade, for traditional man, myths describe “breakthroughs of the sacred (or the ‘supernatural’) into the World”—what he calls hierophanies.

In this way, the monks’ ceremony, with all its chanting, symbolism, and magic, is a typical hierophany, in which the sacred breaks into the profane world. No gods are necessary for this religious experience.

A NEW, SELF-SUFFICIENT WORLD

Trump’s tariffs, the oil blockade, etc. have destroyed what was left of the interconnected world economy.

Until recently, a car assembled in the US, for example, contained hundreds of parts from all over the world. A vast web of arrangements allowed parts to be shipped from one country to another. We really had a global economy.

The world has learned that all that cooperation was just an illusion. It didn’t take much to destroy the trading network.

Trump thinks that a tariff levied on, say, Canada, is a punishment on Canada. It’s really a punishment on US companies and consumers, who must pay the tariffs, leading to higher prices. Trump’s tariffs, therefore, are shooting himself in the foot. Canada’s only loss is that, with higher US prices, people will not buy as many of their products. Too high a tariff, and Canada will not sell ANY products.

Even after Trump has left, and his crazy tariffs withdrawn, the world will remember just how easy it was to destroy the entire global trading system. They will remember how trust was broken, and treaties revoked. They will hesitate to rush into new agreements that may be broken.

The world will realize that Americans elected Trump, twice. Thus, Americans can and will elect officials who will break agreements. It will take many years for America to regain the trust of other countries, who will mistrust America and American voters as a whole, not just Trump and his cronies.

According to the classical economist, David Ricardo, free trade is beneficial to both trading partners. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage states that if one country, say Brazil, is good at producing one thing like coffee, and another country, say Canada, is good at producing something else, like maple sugar, then both sides benefit by trading those products if they focus on producing what they are good at. Without such trade, consumption of those products would be impossible, or at least more expensive.

I lived for 4 years in Lesotho, surrounded by apartheid South Africa. In those days, the entire world was boycotting South Africa. The boycott forced South Africa to become amazingly self-sufficient. That included even being the only country in the world to be able to produce gasoline from coal. [They had plenty of coal, and no country would sell them oil.] South Africa had the geographical and climatic diversity to produce just about anything on their own.

The apartheid South African example may signal the future of the world economy. If no country can depend on trade with another country, because of war, tariffs, etc., then countries will retreat into protectionism and self-reliance. Life will become much more expensive, and many products will disappear from the market. Americans cannot produce coffee, so a ban on trade with coffee producers will result in a ban on coffee in America.

Be prepared for a world of self-reliant countries, where many products will not be available at all, while others, manufactured within the country, will be much more expensive.

SHIVA IN CAMBODIA

I was taking my morning walk in the gardens behind Wat Kandal in Battambang, when an Indian-looking guy came up to me saying “Shiva, Shiva”, and pointing to a remote corner of the gardens. There I found a new statue of Shiva, complete with his identifying symbols of the trident, the third eye, and especially the linga. It didn’t look like the typical Khmer style of statue, so I figured it was placed there in the past month by the local Indian community.

It struck me that Shiva statues are rare in Cambodian pagodas these days, but I realized that it hadn’t always been this way.

In fact, in early Cambodian Hindu times, Shiva was perhaps the most important of the Hindu gods. By the time of Jayavarman II (770-850) on Phnom Kulen, Shiva had reached such importance that the king developed the concept of deva-raj, or god-king, in which Jayavarman II believed himself to be the incarnation of Shiva. The amazing carvings in the streambed at Kbal Spean were largely about Shiva, so that the stream became known as the ‘valley of the 1000 lingas.’

Lingas at Kbal Spean

The website hdasianart.com describes the linga as:

Simple in form yet vast in meaning, the Khmer linga represents both the cosmic principle and the spiritual foundation of kingship, fertility, and divine presence. https://www.hdasianart.com/

At the heart of each state temple—such as Phnom Bakheng, Baksei Chamkrong, or Pre Rup—stood a linga consecrated with the name of the reigning monarch, effectively identifying the king with Shiva.

This practice, known as the Devaraja cult (“god-king”), transformed the linga into a cosmological anchor:

Shiva remained the most important god to the Khmers for another two centuries. Banteay Srey temple near Angkor Wat was built by two royal courtiers (but not by any king) in 967, and was dedicated to Shiva.

Shiva linga at Banteay Srei.

Suryavarman II dedicated the well-known temple at Preah Vihear to Shiva in the 11th century, although later it was converted to a Buddhist temple.

When Suryavarman II moved to the Angkor area, he built Angkor Wat in the early 1100s, but this temple was dedicated to Vishnu, not Shiva. From then on, Shiva was relegated to a minor role, especially when Cambodia became more predominantly Buddhist.

It has been widely discussed how Cambodia could be a Buddhist nation and still retain the Hindu gods.

Sadakata’s explanation is the fact that Buddhist cosmology has become, spiritually speaking, irrelevant. More precisely, he says: “Buddhist cosmology is a spiritual legacy of the past, yet it remains a force capable of stirring the imagination of people today. Like old ceremonial garments no longer worn, it retains an attraction for us and can transport our minds to the spiritual world of ancient and medieval people” (Sadakata, 1997: 177).

[Nowadays, Vishnu — the preserver — is the most common god in Cambodia. His image is found in homes and at city gates, as a protecting spirit.]

In this way, a statue of Shiva in Buddhist Cambodia is more a monument to the glorious Khmer past than it is an object of devotion or prayer. However, to Hindus from India, the statue is indeed an object of veneration and prayer.

TRUMP IS GOD

Many people view Trump as God in the same way that most religious people view their gods. However, my explanation of the common perception of God is not the normal one, so let me start with that.

For most people, shit happens. That is the default. Things normally go wrong. But once in a while, something good happens. That is when people shout “Allah Akbar”, and “God is good, always.” That one good thing in a sea of horrors is proof that a good God exists.

My favorite example of this was that airplane that crashed and killed some 200 people, but they found that one baby survived. The world media was full of “Praise God!” and “God is good”.  But wait… God just murdered 200 people. People didn’t even see that; the 200 victims can be ignored. The one surviving baby was enough to reassure people of their religious beliefs. I don’t think I heard anyone claim that the 200 deaths were just part of God’s mysterious plan. No one cursed an evil God for His 200 murders. No, the deaths were just ignored as background noise.

Another example is the patient in hospital with terminal cancer, and with all his relatives praying for his recovery. Normally, he dies, and no one blames God. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. But if he miraculously survives, it’s “Praise be to the all-benevolent God, who answers prayer!”

Now let’s compare this attitude with MAGA cultists’ attitude towards Trump. Trump can rape young girls, steal billions of dollars, and kill thousands of children, but that’s all default background noise as long as he can satisfy his cultists with a couple of things they like.

There are thousands of law-abiding immigrants in the US, but if Trump can catch just one brown-skinned illegal committing a crime, and if he can torture, detain, and deport them to some ‘shithole’ country, MAGA will be exuberant and will praise him to the skies.

He can bomb a school and kill 168 Iranian girls, and his followers just ignore it, but he can make a simple (meaningless) executive order ‘banning sharia law’, and his cultists jump for joy.

Similarly, there are thousands of transgender people in the US, leading normal lives, but if Trump can prevent just one of the small handful of transgender athletes from participating in girls’ sports, he is praised to the skies by MAGA.

The media keep crowing “Trump hits New Low in the Polls!” That’s actually false. Realclearpolling.com compiles all the latest polls and calculates their average. That average has hovered around 40% approval for months. There may be an outlier or two, either to the positive or negative side, but the results are consistent. 40% of the American population supports Trump, no matter what he does or what horrors he commits. Those 40% represent the religious cultists who think he is God and cannot err.

If we ask, “How horribly can he act before his base abandons him?”, we must conclude that there is no red line that he cannot cross. His followers simply ignore the horrors. Just as there are no horrors that God can commit that will cause His followers to abandon Him. Cult followers will accept anything, no matter how awful.

A.I. and DIGITAL BANKING

Everyone is talking about the future of AI these days. Most of the discussions I read or hear center around the loss of millions of jobs, as AI can do tasks that most human employees now perform. However, there are dozens of other ramifications, each more frightening than the last.

Today I saw an interview between Tucker Carlson and economist Richard Werner, that chilled me to the bone. Werner mentioned that the current digitalized financial system will become centralized to government control.

Your debit card or QR code already controls you to a certain extent, when you receive messages like, “purchase denied – you have exceeded your daily $1000 limit,” or “your account has insufficient funds for this purchase.”

When (not if) governments use AI to control your cards and QRs, awful things will happen:

“Your card has been blocked because you criticized our glorious leader Donald Trump. You can re-instate your card with a ‘contribution’ of $500 to the President.”

Or telling you what products you can or cannot buy:

“You are not permitted to purchase that product, because it was made in China.”

Or they can limit your travel or even your residence:

“Your card is no longer valid outside a radius of 10 km outside Columbus, Ohio. We suggest you move there.”

Since their AI has every single piece of data about you, you can be blackmailed or extorted. The government can control whom you associate with, or even whom you marry, simply by controlling your debit cards or QR codes.

______________________

Once you let your mind start conjuring up scenarios, the picture is downright mind-boggling – making 1984 and Brave New World and other dystopias look like free societies.

THE LACK OF FINANCIAL NEWS

The world is teetering on the brink of a financial crisis. Mainstream media are not covering this all-important story, probably because the situation is complicated and would not be understood by most viewers. When the US debt reaches 40 trillion, this is a number that almost no one comprehends. It is 40,000,000,000,000. Hard to get your head around that one.

 I follow the financial news, and I am confused by what appear to be contradictions in policy, especially regarding the recent moves in the bond market. Let me first describe sources of my confusion, in terms of questions that the media are not addressing.

  1. A) Last week the United States bailed out the Japanese yen. Japan was on the verge of selling US Treasuries to buy yen and prop of the yen. The US wanted to prevent the sale of US treasuries, because that would hurt the bond market, so they sold euros to Japan instead.

B) Then this week the US declared that it would sell long treasuries, in order to lower long-term interest rates. This would encourage Japan to buy US treasuries. This move would appear to contradict the policy of the previous week. What is going on? I’m confused.

2. Japan is the largest holder of US treasuries, owning some 1.19 trillion dollars in US debt. That makes it the largest creditor nation. However, when I looked up Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio, I found that Japan’s ratio is about 250%, making it one of the largest debtor nations in the world. How can one country be the largest creditor and the largest debtor at the same time? The media have not addressed this issue.

I turned on CNN today to see whether they had any explanation for these phenomena. Yesterday, their lead story was Michael Cohen’s conversation with Trump, and today it was all about Natalie Swan. Not a word about economics.

I turned to Yahoo News on my computer. Of late, Yahoo News has become more of a touchy-feely magazine rather than a news outlet. Most stories are either about Hollywood celebrities and their love-lives, or else stories about cute pet dogs or cats doing cuddly things.

The real reason for this post is therefore to discuss not the world economy, but rather the abdication of the media from reporting the real news. There is a war going on in Iran, but you’d never know it from watching CNN or Fox. People want happy news, not reports of the US losing a war to Iran, and certainly not a confusing story about the collapse of the US dollar and the world economy.

Internet posts about the bond crisis always must start by explaining to viewers what a bond is. Viewers may not understand that when the price of a bond goes down, its interest rate goes up.

Trump is the leading epitome of Dunning-Kruger among the economic know-nothings. He understands nothing about the bond market or interest rates. His go-to solution for everything is to lower rates. His over-simple logic is that this will allow people to borrow money more cheaply, so they can spend more and help the economy. This simple logic appeals to his MAGA cultists. What he doesn’t understand is that increasing all this borrowing injects more money into the system. That’s the classic cause of inflation. That’s why the Fed, in its battle against inflation, is reluctant to lower interest rates. Trump can’t figure that out.

Where can I find the important news about what is happening?

CATERING TRUCK FOLLOW-UP

Trump is telling the press that the CIA decided to sneak him off AF1, and he just did what they told him to do. This is apparently another total Trump lie.

The CIA didn’t take the Israeli report of a threat very seriously. Rubio was aware and decided that AF1 was not in great danger, so he got on the plane.

But Trump, afraid for his life, decided that he must not fly on that (to his mind) dangerous plane. He could have just ordered that AF1 be grounded for security’s sake. But no, he opted to put all those people at risk of death just to save his own neck. He meant for AF1 to be a decoy target for Iran missiles. He figured they might all be killed.

Interesting choice of people he chose to sneak off with him: his personal attendants, who would take care of HIM, regardless of strategic choice. He would gladly sacrifice all those others as a decoy, just to save himself.

This mindset is Trump’s ego-centeredness in a nutshell. Throw anyone under the bus just to protect himself. No loyalty to Rubio or Bessent. In fact, Karoline Leavitt was also on the decoy plane, and Facebook accounts are suggesting that she resigned partially because Trump was ready to let her be killed by the Iranians.

Trump’s attitude towards the United States is the same. He’s out to enrich himself, at the expense, and perhaps the demise, of America, or even the world economy. He thought he could get his hands on Iranian oil, at the risk of thousands of lives and the destruction of the world economy. He doesn’t give a damn about oil prices or the American people. He wants the oil, the same way he took and hid Venezuela’s oil (the 13 billion dollars cannot be located at present).

And did you hear his own explanation of why he put all those people at risk? He claimed that his smaller, secret plane was in greater danger than AF1, simply because he was in it. Typical Trump BS, with no meaning or substance. You mean he snuck off AF1 and hid in a catering truck in order to put himself at greater risk? Huh?

TRUMP’S CATERING-TRUCK STORY DOESN’T ADD UP

Like most of the official stories coming out of the Iran war (i.e. ‘excursion’), the stories of the catering-truck episode raise a whole lot of questions.

First, Trump was transferred from Qatar1 to the old AF1. The initial explanation, and the first lie about this was that Trump wanted to show Qatar1 to people in the UK. However, after the New York Times blew the cover off that lie, the Trump camp admitted that there was a security threat and the old AF1 had more anti-missile security.

Trump didn’t want this security threat known, and he threatened to subpoena the NYT journalists who reported the story.

But then Trump was secretly transferred from AF1 to the catering-truck. My question is, why didn’t they transfer him directly from Qatar1 into the catering-truck? Using AF1 as an intermediary doesn’t make much sense.

AF1 and the catering-truck

While Trump snuck out of AF1, the remaining big-wigs, reportedly including Rubio, Bessent, and Miller, were left on AF1, which the Trump team obviously deemed in imminent danger of being shot down by Iran. So Trump was prepared to sacrifice the lives of his team of VIPs to an Iranian missile. In fact, he sent them up there as decoys or as bait, i.e., target practice to attract Iranian missiles.

By the way, if Trump wasn’t on the AF1 with all those people, didn’t some of them notice that he wasn’t there, or maybe suspect something was fishy when they were asked to pull down their window shades?

Both AF1 and Trump’s secret plane arrived in the UK. At that point, the danger was over, and they could have just admitted the stunt they had just pulled off. However, they secretly transferred Trump back onto AF1 To make it look as though he had been there all along. There was no need to do that.

The ruse was never admitted, until the Washington Post revealed the catering-truck stunt. Why was it all kept so secret, especially in light of Trump’s penchant for bragging about escaping assassination plots?

I think that the reason for the secrecy was that Washington didn’t want to reveal that someone had leaked the report of an Iranian attack. In fact, it now appears that Washington got the message from Israel. What Israeli spy learned from the Iranians that they would attack? That is sensitive contact information that must be protected. Now that the public know about the Iranian plot, there may be an Israeli spy who will be executed by the Iranian government.

Is it possible that Netanyahu simply invented the threat in order to goad Trump into attacking Iran? After all, there was no attack on any of the planes. Maybe the whole security threat was all a fake from the beginning, and Netanyahu just fooled the Trump team.

There’s a lot we don’t know. Was the Iranian threat real or just invented? Why all the secrecy, lies, and cover-up? Why was AF1 involved at all? We certainly can’t expect Team Trump to come clean about this anytime soon.

WHY IS FAUCI HATED?

All through the COVID pandemic, I regarded Dr. Fauci as the voice of reason who was saving millions of lives. Nowadays, he is hated and receives death threats. What happened?

The case against Fauci usually boils down to an accusation that Fauci denied or covered up a theory that the COVID-19 virus was invented in a lab in Wuhan, China, and released to kill millions of people. That accusation holds no water.

First, Fauci always kept all theories open, even though he favored the theory that the virus mutated from some unknown animal that was sold in the Wuhan market. This is the prevalent theory today. He never actually denied the lab theory.

Evidence points to Wuhan market as source of covid-19 outbreak– NewScientist.com

Fauci’s critics often use the term ‘gain of function’ to describe how the virus was hopped up in the Wuhan lab (with US funding) to ‘gain’ the function of harming humans.

An informative article in ScienceInsights.com explains:

One point of broad agreement: almost all U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the virus was not genetically engineered, and all agreed it was not developed as a biological weapon. What Was the Cause of COVID-19? Origins and Theories – ScienceInsights

…the research did not involve the regulatory and operative definition of “gain of function” — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the committee, said some Republicans were using a broader definition of the term, one that would also include the manufacture of flu vaccines.

The argument that the virus was created in the lab reminds me of Christian Creationists, whose argument is that the world couldn’t have created itself, but had to be created by a god. Similarly, the market theory of COVID is that the virus basically created itself, which is impossible, so it must have been created with a purpose. (I suspect that the Christian Creationists are precisely the fiercest enemies of Fauci.)

The Republicans on the committee appear to have willfully misunderstood the facts in the case. Rather, they simply wanted to stage a theater event to vilify Fauci for no particular reason that they could articulate. I believe that the Wuhan lab theory was not the main thing on their minds.

From the beginning of the COVID pandemic, time and time again, Trump (who of course is never wrong) played down its importance. He said it would go away, that it was no big deal, and was no more dangerous than the common flu. All this, while thousands of people were dying.

Fauci dared to contradict Trump by saying, “Hey, people, wake up! COVID is really dangerous and you’ve got to do something about it.” He galvanized public opinion around the need for masks, spacing, and most importantly, vaccination. This was already happening around the world; the US was only late to the game.

COVID deaths continued to rise. This made the infallible Trump look like a fool, as Fauci was right and Trump was wrong. This humiliation was increased when Trump made outlandish claims for treatments, such as shining a light up your butt, swallowing bleach, or taking a magic hydroxychloroquine pill. Fauci pointed out the absurdity of these claims, thereby infuriating Trump and his MAGA supporters.

Trump supporters had to stand by their hero, so they started claiming that the rising death toll was due to Fauci’s methods, especially vaccination. The vaccines, they claimed, were actually CAUSING the deaths. In this view, Fauci was the cause of the pandemic. Trump was right all along – COVID was not a big deal until Fauci came along.

Therefore, the theater recently produced in Congress was essentially a pro-Trump rally – a two-minute hate against Trump’s perceived enemy. The play-actors were hoping to trap Fauci into saying something that could be used against him, as perjury. He refused to play their game, and they were furious, calling for him to be held in contempt of Congress. They may follow through on their threat in order to please their master.

ARE AMERICAN PRODUCTS SAFE?

The nation is outraged to learn that, after a meeting with Trump officials and a donation of a million dollars, the FDA reversed its positive test result for cyclospora and apologized to Taylor Farms. Given the Trump administration’s track record, most people are apt to jump to the conclusion that Taylor Farms bribed Trump a million dollars to have its positive test result expunged.

However, this outrage broke out only AFTER the cyclospora scare was traced to Taylor Farms. There appears to be a pattern of corruption here. The Trump administration either abolishes the agencies responsible for regulating the products, or else a specific company bribes Trump to allow them to produce dangerous goods. Then, once an outbreak of a disease occurs, only then is there outrage.

Another example of this is the screwworm infestation that has infected herds of American cattle. Trump cut back the agency that monitors the screwworm fly, so that the parasite was able to spread undetected. Only later was its damage noticed and the public was outraged.

Screwworm: left unmonitored, it entered the US and started killing cattle.

And how about medicines? Would you feel comfortable taking a medicine that has not been tested or checked? Or one from a company whose CEO has contributed a million dollars to Trump? I think not.

There are dozens of similar examples, but the media always report them in isolation, although there is a pattern to these examples of corruption.

My question, then, is: how many hundreds or thousands of other products has Trump allowed to go un-inspected, and how many other toxins or damaging parasites or bacteria has Trump allowed to spread throughout the United States? It is only after an outbreak of some deadly disease that the damage can be traced either to Trump’s cuts to regulation, or to outright bribes to falsify data. By then, it may be too late, as thousands of people (or cattle or other living creatures) have been infected.

The American public is so narrowly focused on Taylor Farms, that they have lost track of the thousands of other dangerous products that Trump has allowed to circulate.

I live outside the States. I will not be buying any American products any time soon. I cannot be sure they are safe.