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I really dislike violence and it's against my religion (Buddhism). I believe we can change things for the better without resorting to violence. 

The Buddha himself at times took part in non-violent activism. My view is, if it can help change things for the better I think it’s worth a go.

The hard part is if it fails. 

As a Buddhist I train not to get angry or to grieve. It's not easy, I frequently fail at the training, but I keep trying. I'm not saying anyone else should do this, it is just a training I have undertaken for myself and I don't judge others for not doing the same. I just concentrate on my own practise. 

I saw clearly how grief was causing me unnecessary suffering. It didn't change what happened, it made me very depressed and caused me to say and do things I regretted later. I remember after my father died I became an alcoholic and I used my grief as an excuse for this. It took me a long time to break free of it. I had a sudden lightbulb moment (insight) and I saw clearly how my grief was causing me unnecessary suffering. That grief was an activity and I didn’t have to do it.

Things in this world are impermanent, they are always changing, nothing here lasts, and we are all fated to become separated from what we love, and no amount of complaining or grieving about it will bring anyone back or change what has happened in the past.

It doesn’t mean I don't care. I don’t have to be sorrowful to care. I train myself to feel compassion and try to do what I can to help other beings but without getting angry and sorrowful about it.

The goal of the Buddhist path is to liberate the mind from suffering.

Compassion doesn’t have to involve painful feelings and emotions, and often these can make things worse. This is difficult for my non-Buddhist friends to understand, and some people have got angry with me for it, but not getting angry and not grieving doesn't make me cold and unfeeling. There is still warmth there.

You don’t have to get angry to speak truth and make a difference in the world.

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Asoka

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It seems having a conscience makes someone a terrorist now.

In reality, it's those who support genocide and ecocide who are the terrorists.

The world feels quite Orwellian at the moment.

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Asoka

50 years of the Open University

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Thursday 30 September 2021 at 22:14

Link to an exhibition of 50 years of the OU:

https://www.open.ac.uk/…/digit…/exhibition/53/theme/1/page/1

Great story, despite all the opposition at the time and people saying it couldn't be done, it happened and fifty years later is still going and has established itself as a credible university with a strong reputation around the world.

This story shows that when the establishment says something isn't realistic or possible, isn't affordable and dismisses it as a silly idea - they can be wrong.

We can change things, we don't have to put up with the status quo. We don't have to keep voting for the same people. The system doesn't have to be the way it is and new ways of doing things are possible. The people who profit off this current system certainly want us all to think like that, believing things can't change. That this rigged economy is the only way to run the system. Don't believe the nonsense, they are just parroting what the financial sector wants us to think, those scoundrels who caused the 2008 credit crunch, who are still behaving the same way, recklessly gambling with the money people bailed them out with. They divide us and like they always do they blame the unemployed, immigrants, people on low wages, (basically any vulnerable person too poor or weak to fight back) for the state of the economy; it is smoke and mirrors to distract people from the real culprits who are still gambling recklessly with the world's economy and don't care.

So don't believe the bollocks that things can't change for the better, that we are stuck in a rigged economy. It's not true, things can change and have changed in the past, we've just forgotten about it after the long years of Thatcher style politics. The truth is we do not have to accept this current reality, things can be better.

https://www.open.ac.uk/…/digital-arc…/program/video:JOUZ408R


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